Joe McCarthy, who will be Pitt’s next provost, announced this week that he intends to extend the option for faculty to provide impact statements from the COVID-19 pandemic and other ongoing challenges in their annual review materials and in their promotion and tenure applications.

The impact statement were first added in 2021, as outlined in the Provost’s Memo on Revised Guidelines for the Annual Review of Faculty. The memo was subsequently revised in 2022 and 2023 to recognize a variety of broad and on-going challenges, beyond those specifically related to COVID.

McCarthy said in his message that he decided to extend the impact statement option, “Since the world is no less complicated today, and many challenges still exist — both directly and indirectly related to the COVID pandemic.”

He asked that anyone with concerns about this approach, let him know by March 11. If there are none, he will move forward with issuing an updated memo.