Faculty members can now look forward to a new postdoctoral policy and the addition of research authorship guidelines to the Faculty Handbook.
James Siedow, vice provost for research and a professor of biology, presented the unanimously approved changes at the Academic Council meeting Thursday.
The new policy governing postdoctoral compensation and benefits separates postdoctoral appointees into associates and scholars.
Associates, who perform salaried research, are considered Duke employees and thus are eligible for most employee benefits.
Scholars typically have research fellowships and do not receive the same benefits.
Postdoctoral appointees enter Duke as associates and may become scholars after one month.
Under the new policy, postdoctoral salary will not be tied to years of experience. Additionally, associates will be granted vacation time and parental leave.
Both associates and scholars will be eligible for health insurance.
Siedow said the need for a postdoctoral policy arose in the late 1990s when postdoctoral tenure started to lengthen.
"They became a little more concerned by the fact that they, by and large, were not recognized at institutions..., and Duke was a good example of that," he said.
After the council approved the policy, Siedow presented a set of guidelines to regulate research authorship and mediate related disputes.
The guidelines establish an Authorship Dispute Board to step in if the parties cannot resolve the issue themselves.
Siedow noted that about three authorship disputes occur annually.
"What we really needed to put together was a mechanism by which an aggrieved party has recourse to deal with [an authorship dispute]," he said. "Is this a big problem? No.... But we simply at the moment have no mechanism for someone to take a grievance of this sort."
In other business:
The council voted to change the name of the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature to the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, pending the approval of the Board of Trustees.
Chair of AALL Leo Ching said the name change will better reflect the composition of the department and its course offerings. Currently, the only African language offered by AALL is Wolof.
African languages will be integrated into the Department of African and African American Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences George McLendon wrote in a memo.
The council also voted for renaming the Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy to the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, which BAA Chair Daniel Schmitt said would better reflect its academic focus.
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