This year's process for deciding faculty appointments, promotion and tenure is well underway, and as faculty evaluate their colleagues they will follow several new guidelines. The new APT process is the result of recommendations from a committee established last year to study the process for appointment, promotion and tenure. The recommendations were endorsed April 19 by the Academic Council, and are the first changes to the process in five years.
Some of this spring's changes have yet to make a visible difference because this year's process is still in its earliest stages, with most cases still being considered by departments. Over the next several months, candidates will head to the Advisory Committee on Appointment, Promotion and Tenure for recommendation to the provost.
Many other changes to the APT procedure were made to streamline the process, eliminating documents and meetings that the APT committee felt were unnecessary. For example, deans of schools no longer need to meet with the committee for appointment of an external candidate to full professor.
"The new changes are reducing the amount of needless detail work that the committee had to do, and has allowed the committee more time to effectively review cases," said George Tauchen, chair of the APT committee and professor of economics.
It is too early to tell how the committee will handle some changes to the process, Tauchen added. For example, the review recommended new procedures to evaluate interdisciplinary work. It also suggested improved mechanisms for mentoring junior faculty and that the committee not reconsider cases it has turned down.
Two changes to the APT process have the potential to affect the role of teaching in evaluating a case. The candidates' dossiers will include results from the new teacher-course evaluation forms distributed to undergraduates in the spring, an attempt to measure a candidate's teaching ability in a more comprehensive manner. Previous evaluations from students had been used in APT decisions, but Lange said he hopes the new form will be more useful because it is more specific to each course.
"We need to have some measure that is both reliable over time and as specific to the course as we can make it," Lange said.
In addition, internal candidates being considered for promotion from the associate level to full professor will, for the first time officially, need to have high quality in two of three criteria--scholarship, teaching and service--and good performance in the third. Previously, APT rules required a candidate to excel in research, but Lange said the rule was not strictly followed and that the change was a codification of actual practices.
How much importance to lend teaching in APT decisions has sometimes raised controversy on campus, most notably in the mid-1990s after several popular teachers were denied tenure. Excellent research will continue to be required for granting a candidate tenure--promotion from assistant to associate professor.
In the past, the focus on research even for promotion has discouraged some scholars from focusing on teaching and service, even if those are areas where a professor is very talented, said Peter Burian, professor of classical studies and chair of the Academic Council. By changing the rule to reflect the reality of APT decisions, he said the University reinforces its commitment beyond research.
"The people who have tenure here, for all intents and purposes, are going to be here for a long time," Burian said. "The process ought also reward the people who have done great research early but could now better serve the community with teaching and service. It simply means that we have multiple values, multiple roles people can fulfill."
Maureen Quilligan, chair of the English department, praised the change as one that underlines the University's commitment to teaching. She also criticized the recommendation of last year's tenure review that department chairs continue to rank professors within the department. The lists are used by the APT committee to evaluate how a candidate compares to a department as a whole, a measure Lange said is useful for the committee.
"I understand the need to see how the case fits into the general department, but I think you can do that in a few paragraphs of substance rather than a short list," Quilligan said.
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