The effective date for this proposal might seem to suggest that it will not affect current faculty. See the phrase at the bottom of the proposal:
This policy applies to all tenure-track faculty hired in or after August 2009 and all tenured faculty seeking promotion after August 2014.
It will not affect those applying for tenure who are currently here and those applying for promotion before 2015. So it will affect those here who get through tenure and promotion to associate, but whose application for promotion to full professor comes after 2014.
However, every policy has unintended consequences, what might be called spillover effects. Here are a few of likely effects that might affect everyone.
1) Leakage into the Post Tenure Review Process. Currently the Post Tenure Review process states that people will be judged by the same standards at which they were promoted. This year the PTR Committee was asked to change that policy so that people are measured against current standards. This PTR Committee chose not to do that. But no guarantee exists that future PTR committees will not move in that direction.
2) Usefulness of annual ratings in the PTR Process. The PTR process rests on annual reviews that rate scholarly activity and service as either satisfactory or meritorious. These two acceptable ratings have a natural fit with the existing two acceptable ratings in P&T standards. It is easy to figure out if someone really excels in one area or the other. That will no longer be true if only "involvement" is required in service and if the highest level of merit is required for scholarly activity. So the old "satisfactory" will become an unacceptable rating in scholarly activity and the old "meritorious" rating in service will be of no value.
3) Leakage into the annual review process. If meritorious service is of no value in the P&T or PTR process and if satisfactory is no longer satisfactory in the P&T and PTR process, will we eventually feel compelled to change our annual ratings, which now have three levels, into a kind of pass/fail rating system? If so, then this will affect everyone. The only ones not affected would be those who are within a few years of retirement.
4) Recruitment of new faculty for the next 5 years. Having a delay in the effective date of this policy might place us in the uncomfortable position of showing job applicants two sets of P&T policies in our Faculty Manual. One, a flexible policy that does not apply to them and two, a one-size-fits-all policy that seems to expect higher standards in scholarship for them. We already are having problems in retaining faculty who find they can move to to other schools and make more money, teach fewer classes, and have the same research expectations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
While it does not seem to apply to instructors, I am seriously interested in this discussion, because it will also spill over into promotions from instructor to senior instructor -- and what impact would it have on recent action by the faculty assembly to allow for instructors to have multi-year contracts and earn "de facto tenure"?
ReplyDeleteThe description offered by Dr. Botsch suggests that the proposals reflect dramatic change. From discussions on the FAC and FWC, my understanding is that the intent of the changes is to provide a clarification of the decision making processes currently being applied. Thus I do not see "leakage" as a large problem.
ReplyDeleteI fail to see the logic in the following: "That will no longer be true if only "involvement" is required in service and if the highest level of merit is required for scholarly activity. So the old "satisfactory" will become an unacceptable rating in scholarly activity and the old "meritorious" rating in service will be of no value."
It seems more intuitive that meeting the standards (peer-reviewed publications) should qualify as satisfactory, and exceeding the standards should be regarded as meritorious. The same should apply to service, where "involvement" is satisfactory, and service that goes sufficiently beyond the minimum should qualify as meritorious. I think the justification for dropping the "active" is that it essentially is redundant, or at least difficult to quantify. Is it possible to conduct passive-service?
I also think that Dr. Botsch is looking at faculty recruitment from the wrong angle. The main goal of publishing these guidelines should be to ensure that new faculty understand the scholarly expectations, and are not afforded the opportunity to be led to the incorrect conclusion that they can substitute service for scholarship.
It seems to me we're losing the point.
ReplyDeleteHow is policy to be made?
Shall our policy creep along behind a practice that is unbridled and out of control, not tied to the text of the manual?
Or, should policy dictate practice?
I cannot find persuasive any argument that policy should change to conform to the past abuses of policy.
Unclear policy allows for a broad range of practices.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't changing policy to match what is done, it is clarifying what the current interpretations are of vague descriptors.
I find nothing abusive or unbridled about these interpretations.
As an aside, I think that hiding behind unsubstantiated allegations of abuse is certainly outside of the spirit, if not the laws, of this discussion. I think the P&T committee should be commended for their work, and not insulted, and would request that Dr. Millies post be removed.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Dr. Zelmer intended--in his 14-hours-contemplated aside--to offer a sly example of what he meant by 'interpretation' when he called my references to "abuse of policy" an "unsubstantiated allegation." Who can fail to appreciate such wit? Read it any way you wish, of course. But the words I wrote mean what they mean. So does the Manual.
ReplyDeleteWe all must live by the letter, not the spirit, of the Faculty Manual (and RONR, as I believe Dr. Zelmer would agree). Neither, also, by interpretation. The text must have a plain meaning, not be layered with unwritten meanings. Presently, the plain meaning of the text is to describe a path to promotion and tenure through service. That is not the practice, clearly.
I suspect that some faculty might be fine with the current interpretation that practice has favored, despite its distant relationship to the plain meaning of the text, so long as they agree with the outcome. Myself, I agree in the abstract with new language--as I've said. I very much disapprove of how we're getting there, and under what circumstances we're getting there.
Others can disagree. I believe we are bound to the text of the Manual. All that constrains us, and administration, is the text of the Manual. Without that fidelity to the text, we have no rules.
But I've said all of this before, and now I'm repeating myself. I'll leave it to others, henceforth, to fill this space. I've said my full, and I cannot add much new.
No need for a sly example when there is an obvious one before us. You clearly see the proposed changes as differing from "active involvement", and I see them as an objective clarification of what "active involvement" means.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the text must have plain meaning, and I am glad to see that we are progressing towards that goal.