Gaining tenure at university long process

Earning tenure at the university level can be a lengthy, involved process. But, ultimately, it's worth the effort, professors say.

Earning tenure takes roughly five years. It is an agreement under which faculty appointments are continued until retirement. But tenured faculty still can be terminated for adequate cause, financial exigency or a change in a university program.

Mike Taylor, associate professor of biology, and Bev Evans, associate professor in health, human performance and recreation, have worked at Southeast Missouri State University since 2006. Both say having tenure doesn't mean they've got their feet up on a desk with an umbrella drink in hand.

"I don't do anything differently than before I was tenured," Taylor said, adding that standards must be met in teaching effectiveness, professional development and community service.

Southeast's board of regents recently granted promotions to 82 faculty members. The university has several faculty classifications such as tenure track, regular nontenure track and term, which is temporary.

Southeast has about 410 to 420 full-time faculty, 75 percent of whom are tenure-track, said provost Bill Eddleman. The number of faculty members awarded promotions varies from year to year, depending on who is eligible.

Tenure-track faculty have the highest degree in their field or one expected shortly. If faculty come in expecting to earn their top degree in a short time, their "tenure clock" doesn't start until they've earned it.

"And they're hired as an assistant professor rank. All RNTTs [regular nontenure track faculty] are hired as instructors and stay as instructors, so tenure track are hired as an assistant professor," Eddleman explained. "They are an assistant professor until they gain tenure."

Sometimes a dean or department chairman identifies some areas that aren't going well, and if these areas don't improve, the instructor is put on a "terminal contract," which means they are let go after that year and aren't protected by tenure, Eddleman said.

"There's a number of cases where that happens. It may be obvious to that faculty member: 'I'm not going anywhere here,' and they leave. You never hear about that in the paper; it never gets to the board of regents. If they're doing well at their third or fourth year, they come up for a major review," Eddleman said.

The appointment runs through each department's promotion and tenure committee; the department chair; college committee; the dean; university tenure and promotion and sabbatical leave advisory committee; and provost.

Suggestions for improvement are made, if needed, and that's as far as the review goes. It's looked at by the dean and provost's office, "but we don't do anything with it," Eddleman said.

"A lot of times, if they come up with third-year review," he said, "the recommendation by the department's committee may be, 'you can go for tenure next year.' If it's a fourth-year review ... they have to try to go up for tenure the next year.

"If that's the case, that is a mandatory decision. You're either tenurable, or you're not tenurable. At that point, some faculty leave, because the handwriting is on the wall. If they're in good stead, they go up for tenure the next year. It is a very lengthy process."

At the last board of regents meeting, revisions to the promotion and tenure policy were approved.

"The big changes are faculty will have an option of doing this electronically," Eddleman said. "Right now, it's only hard copy, which means I get a ton of paper over here at the end of the process. And then also it's mandated henceforth that each department will review their criteria every five years, because some of them are quite old."

If someone's teaching isn't up to snuff, there is a termination procedure.

"It doesn't happen often. It's a very lengthy procedure intended to provide the faculty member with due process before they would be dismissed," he said.

One remediation measure is the Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning, which teaches faculty new techniques and gives them pointers on how they can improve.

"We put a high value on quality teaching here. Now, I think it's very interesting if we start looking at student complaints," Eddleman said. "I've seen complaints about many faculty on campus, including our best teachers. ... Students complain because they're not learning something, but oftentimes they complain because they had to do work."

rcampbell@semissourian.com

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