Are "short bios" at the end of a letter of recommendation the new thing?

Question

I noticed that a recent teaching faculty candidate's LORs from an institution outside the US all had not-so-short and shamelessly hagiographic "short bios" appended onto the end. One went on for a whole page, making me wonder who they were recommending, the candidate or themselves.

I've always taken the attitude when I've written an LOR that the reader doesn't know or care who I am, they care about the candidate, my relationship to the candidate, and the up-close observations and evidence I'm able to offer in support of my recommendation, so they can judge for themselves whether this is really a top candidate. (In the unlikely event they do want to know about me, I give them a link to my faculty page.)

So, this was the first time I've seen a short bio at the end of an LOR. Is this the new thing or something that's been going on forever that I've just never noticed?

Answer 1

When writing letters of recommendation, especially for graduate students, I start my letters with a short bio. I do this because I am not a faculty member, but instead work at a government research lab. This helps with context for the letter. I have noticed that some applications ask for me to rank students compared to other students I interact with. However, I only have limited interactions with students. But, the students I work with are almost all high quality. Also, this helps the letter reader see why I think the students will thrive in graduate school (i.e., that both the students and I are doing serious research even if I am not a professor).

Furthermore, I do this as an opportunity to link in the prospective student's research in with my research. And, ideally, their target program by describing collaborations with faculty there or alumni from their program. Here's a paragraph from generic template:

I am pleased to recommended XX XX for admission into YYYY. I had the privilege to <mentor/supervise/etc.> XX (usually first name only) as a <ZZZ then describe situation>. I am my job title at my org. Through this position I mentor undergraduate students and serve on graduate committees <_link to ZZZ>. My primary research focuses on <CCC> and XX has assisted me with CCC.

Answer 2

In actual practice, who the letter writer is actually matters quite a lot -- maybe not so much when it's a letter for an undergraduate applying to grad school, but certainly when it's for tenure or for promotion to full professor.

Now, we could argue whether that's useful or not, but it is what it is -- though we probably agree that when evaluating someone's qualifications as a researcher it does make a difference whether the evaluator is a senior faculty at a research-active university with a good perspective on the research landscape, or a just recently hired assistant professor at a teaching-intensive university. As a consequence, letters often do contain a brief paragraph about the letter writer's qualifications -- in essence, a short bio.

These paragraphs were typically at the very beginning of the letter. In recent years, at least some universities have asked letter writers to state their qualifications/affiliations/prizes/... along with how they know the candidate they are writing for, on a separate page at the end of the letter. That's because universities had to contend with candidates who use open records laws to gain access at the letters, and the letters had to be redacted to remove personal information about the letter writer. This is easiest done if all personal information is on a separate page.

Answer 3

(I'm in the U.S., in math.) I wouldn't claim that "it's a thing" in math in the U.S., but I have been asked occasionally to provide a brief auto-bio when writing letters in support of fellowships and other things. Not, to my recollection, for graduate admission (in math, in the U.S.).

But/and when I'm on our grad admissions committee, it does matter a bit to me what the context of a letter-writer is. Not so much about their childhood, etc., :) but certainly about their own experience with grad education in math in the U.S. Many people I am vaguely acquainted with, so have an idea of their context, but more-and-more younger faculty I do not know, etc. And, in particular, being faculty at a small liberal arts college, or a branch campus, certainly no longer gives any indication of one's grad school experience! So some explicit remarks (often volunteered in any case within a letter of recommendation) are helpful.

Answer 4

Presumably the short bio is to convince the reader that the LOR was written by "not just anybody" which, presumably again, should correlate with the quality of the assessment in the LOR (spoiler: the rho does not equal 1). And yet we can usually tell from the LOR itself whether or not the referee makes sensible and or useful comments on the candidates; we don't need their bio. It makes some sense in our world in which academia has exploded exponentially and more often then not I am not sure of the quality of the referee (they may hold X rank at institution Y, but even so I am usually not sure about the quality Y is able to attract on average). But I bet all these bios are telling you that ref is world-class, world-leading, excellent etc.! It is part of a much wider trend of padding and puffing-up, I'm afraid.