Throughout the United States, the composition of university faculty has undergone gradual but consistent change over the past 20 years.
On most campuses, one change — the employment of faculty who are not part of the tenure-line system — did not occur by strategic planning, but rather organically, as specific needs arose. These faculty now carry key educational, service, and other duties within many US universities. On many campuses these are called “full-time non-tenure line” (FT NTL) faculty. They most often are totally devoted to teaching or totally devoted to research, but sometimes they carry out service duties too. Their full-time appointments distinguish them from part-time faculty who are employed to teach a specific course. On the main campus at Georgetown, they represent about 15-20% of all the instructional staff (including adjuncts, full-time non-tenure line, and tenure line faculty).
Since the growth of this faculty group wasn’t strategically guided, there is a real lack of administrative and career frameworks for this group. We have valued colleagues in this status who have devoted their entire working careers to Georgetown, but have been given no road map for progression in their careers. We are committed to rectifying this.
I’m told that before I arrived at Georgetown some good developments affecting these colleagues were introduced. Instead of annual contracts, a system of multi-year contracts and some procedures for the renewal of contracts were developed. This addressed one of the issues for building a healthy environment for FT NTLs. However, my review of this process leads me to think that the implementation of an explicit merit-based contracting system needs attention.
Further, the rights and responsibilities of non-tenure line faculty are not as explicitly laid out as for other groups. They have long been members of the Faculty Senate and more recently were accepted into the Main Campus Executive Faculty. At the department and unit level, however, there is variation in whether they are invited to faculty meetings and what role they play in their departments. We think it’s time to discuss why these differences exist.
In discussions with many tenure-line faculty and administrators, I am convinced that they respect and honor the role that the full-time non-tenure line faculty play in the university. But, I also believe all of the policies affecting these colleagues should reflect that deserved respect. We have work to do in this regard.
There are some principles that should guide our consideration of the way forward:
- The full-time non-tenure line faculty deserve the explicit career lines and related explicit merit review procedures that other full-time staff at the university enjoy.
- The rights and responsibilities of full-time non-tenure line faculty in the daily life of the university should be explicitly defined and should reflect their central role in the education of Georgetown students and the functioning of programs at the University.
There have been thoughtful discussions, surveys, and plans that have been developed in the past few years at Georgetown that we will utilize in this work.
We must admit that attention to these issues will take place within the constraints of budget and time that we all face. I am, however, optimistic that even within those constraints much can be improved.
To effect good and lasting change, there are other issues that we need to understand better. This is best accomplished in the fine Georgetown tradition of dialogue, motivated by concern for the whole person. If cura personalis works for our students, it should also work for all of our faculty.
We will have an open meeting for full-time non-tenure line faculty on November 14. We will be forming a task force to advise the Office of the Provost in shaping new policies to improve the work lives of these colleagues.
We will make changes as quickly as administratively feasible, but only after wide input from those affected.
I applaud movement on this issue, but echo Sue Martin’s comments and wish to add concerns about PT adjuncts as well. In English, we have many PT adjuncts who regularly and repeatedly teach courses for us every term, for years, and I know other departments such as history have had similar wonderful adjuncts. Their commitment to our students is inspiring. The comments in Provost Groves’ blog imply a “temporary” aspect to PT that does not apply to this substantial group. They work long hours grading papers and having conferences with students, are restricted to no more than 6 credits of teaching (which precludes, for example, teaching a course for a department and a course for Continuing Studies, since the latter are 4 credit courses and pay better), and get low pay with no benefits and no job security. They have to work in multiple places to make a living wage, yet we give them no institutional recognition or merit pay. (In fact, I understand the pay has remained the same in English for seven years, and I suspect that is true campus-wide.) And lest we think the new union is on their side, the union does not include part-timers, nor work for their advantage. Given current concerns across the country about minimum wage and the working poor, Georgetown could be at the forefront of improving the positions of our many under-served and under-appreciated colleagues, finding ways to recognize their substantial contributions.
Thank you for taking up this issue. Another group that seems misplaced now in terms of their situation at Georgetown are full time researchers/part time faculty who are considered to be Adminstrative and Academic Professionals (AAPs) instead of Research Faculty. A number of research institutes, including the one I direct, have very senior staff with PhDs who are the Principal Investigators on large grants and teach one or two courses each year but are treated as AAPs. It appears that only some schools within the university have Research Faculty lines. Consistency across schools would be useful in recruiting senior researchers and would provide equity for the researchers.
As an FT NTL, I really appreciate the energy and thought put into this. I look forward to the results of this work.
Very interesting and very IMPORTANT topic. Thoughts well put.