Moving Forward with the Promotion and Tenure Policy

Faculty are very eager to find out details about the forthcoming draft of a proposed new promotion and tenure policy. Today at Senate we created a plan for sharing it with everyone and moving forward.

Right now, the policy draft needs a bit more attention before it is ready for everyone to see. Senators want to ensure that the policy reflects faculty input we have received over the months the policy has been in development. So we are adding a week to the schedule.

A Senate subcommittee will meet tomorrow, January 2o, to revise the draft submitted by the task force. Senate also feels it needs to go over the draft with administration before the draft is shared with faculty. We plan to have meetings with Administration the first part of next week. By Thursday, January 27, we plan to have a draft that is complete and ready for distribution. For this reason, we need to postpone the Special Faculty Association Meeting a week to February 11.

We will use feedback from that meeting to make adjustments to the policy. We hope to pass the final draft at our next Senate meeting on February 16.

Faculty will be able to review the policy beginning on January 27. Faculty can provide input to their Senators, ask them question, and attend the meeting on February 11. Faculty can continue to provide input up to the February 16 Senate meeting, and may attend the Senate meeting that day.

Of course, faculty has already had numerous times to contribute thoughts and ideas The Task Force was comprised entirely of faculty. The Task Force met extensively with faculty from throughout the institution, including past P & T committee members (institutional and college), faculty on the tenure track, and faculty who had experiences to recount from their reviews. The policy was also discussed at the Faculty Association meeting on September 2, and many departments elected to send in written commentary that day or after their meetings. The policy was discussed in two NCE and CAS faculty meetings, too.

Senate is confident that the Task Force created a strong document which only needed to be finalized. Senate is working very hard to ensure that the document that goes to faculty will reflect their input and the needs of the faculty and institution.