Memos to Campus
New fillable form for departmental merit & promotion case letters
August 15, 2025
To: Deans, Department Chairs, Business Officers, and AP Staff
From: Omar Saleh, Acting Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel
Leesa Beck, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel
Re: New fillable form for departmental merit & promotion case letters
The Office of Academic Personnel is preparing to introduce a form to streamline the merit & promotion case process and help ensure alignment with Red Binder policy, by standardizing departmental case recommendation letters. Fillable forms based on population and action can be found here.
These forms are intended to be mandatory for all of campus starting with next year’s case cycle (2026-27, for advancements effective 7/1/27). In the meantime, we would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on the forms.
Some departments will be adopting the forms in the current 2025-26 case cycle. If your department would like to use them in this cycle as well, we would very much welcome the additional assistance in testing the forms. Please note the following caveats: (1) if you opt-in during the current cycle, the form must be used for all cases in your department, and (2) the final version of the form that will become mandatory for the 2026-27 cycle may change slightly from its current format.
We will follow up with additional resources and training in the coming weeks.
Feedback on the forms may be sent to Helly Kwee at helly.kwee@ucsb.edu