Category: Promotion and Tenure

Following the March Town Hall discussion, the Faculty Council voted unanimously to support new processes to guide faculty governance in university-level promotion and tenure reviews and to nominate a writing committee to continue drafting the details of the new process. The newly endorsed processes include:

• Forming a Tenure, Promotion, and Appointments Committee (TPAC)
• Electing a faculty chair of TPAC
• Implementing consistent, transparent review processes for TPAC
• Implementing an advisory vote by TPAC elected faculty to the President/ Provost and Board of Trustees (BOT)
• Implementing an advisory memo from TPAC elected faculty to the President/ Provost and BOT

A writing committee will begin work in the summer of 2015, and implementation of the new process is tentatively scheduled for the spring of 2016.

The March Faculty Council meeting closed with a 45-minute Town Hall discussion of faculty governance in university-level promotion and tenure (UPT) review. Kathryn Yount led the Town Hall, beginning with a review of previously approved UPT processes and UPT processes currently under consideration by the Faculty Council, which included an elected faculty chair, consistent and transparent review processes, as well as an advisory vote and advisory memo to be sent to the Provost/President and directly to the Board of Trustees. Professor Justin Remais also presented an assessment of the proposed processes from the Task Force on Shared Faculty Governance, which found the proposal to be in strong alignment with the principles of faculty governance that the University Faculty Council adopted earlier this year.

Yount updated the Faculty Council on the work of the University Promotion and Tenure Task Force, which convened from April through October to explore opportunities for greater faculty governance in university-level promotion and tenure processes. The committee examined promotion and tenure decision-making through a document review of 15 peer universities and interviews with 10 faculty chairs, including an examination of issues such as the size and composition of committees, selection of faculty representatives, term lengths, and leadership. Please contact your unit representative for further information about the results of this document review. Draft resolutions will be presented in November for further discussion in January, as needed.