We have scheduled a faculty town hall on Friday, September 12, to review the key findings from the faculty survey of satisfaction toward various aspects of their careers at Georgetown.
The value of the survey is that we can compare our results to those from other universities that might be considered peers. We can see how we excel, in the judgment of faculty, and how we, as they say, face challenges.
One of the clearest signals that the survey provides, I think, is that many Georgetown faculty, in percentages that exceed those on peer campuses, have concerns about the process of tenure and promotion. In the terminology of the survey, the tenure process is that of moving a faculty member from an assistant professor without tenure to an associate professor with tenure. By “promotion,” it is meant the move from associate professor to full professor.
The questions about the tenure process were asked only of untenured assistant professors faculty; the questions about the promotion process were asked only of associate and full professors.
When we look at faculty on other campuses, it’s clear that these questions generate very large variation across institutions. There are some where faculty give the whole process high marks; there are some where very low marks tend to be given. Among all universities, our peers tend to be on the high side, with positive ratings. In contrast, Georgetown faculty average ratings are in the lowest 30% of all university faculties measured.
Three attributes of the tenure process were measured: satisfaction with tenure policies, perceived clarity of the tenure process, and perceived reasonableness of the tenure process. The lowest ratings of pre-tenured faculty concern the clarity of tenure standards and the lack of consistent messages about tenure. With regard to the expectations regarding tenure, there was generally high perceived clarity of expectations regarding scholarship and teaching, but less clarity regarding requisite performance in student advising, being a campus citizen, and outreach to the larger community. The pre-tenured faculty have relatively high ratings for the reasonableness of standards for tenure.
The tenured faculty provided ratings on the promotion process. The lowest ratings implied relatively low agreement to the statement “My department has a culture where associate professors are encouraged to work towards promotion to full professorship.” There were similarly low ratings about the lack of clarity in promotion standards and lack of clarity regarding the time frame for promotion. Associate professors tended to provide lower ratings than did full professors on these items.
I’ve written about the tenure process in prior blogs (see “Granting Tenure in the University”), expressing concerns that there were signals that there was lack of clarity about processes, standards, and expectations. Hearing the same sentiments directly from the faculty increases the certainty in my mind that there is work to do here. The work cannot be done without input from a variety of sources. The town hall will be one attempt; we need a faculty task force to help guide the discussion to assure that wise decisions are made to improve the tenure and promotion process.
This blog is timely, and it is great that the faculty is being consulted about their level of satisfaction. In its earnest strive to become a full-fledged research university, GU’s standards for achieving tenure have become more stringent in recent years. It appears that a number of assistant professors in various schools and departments have failed to achieve tenure and promotion in recent years. It is always sad to see promising young scholars not achieve their goals. Also, there seem to be a disproportionate number of Associate Professors who for some reason have not made it to Full Professor. Below are some issues that need to addressed and some suggestions.
• Every school and department needs to have an established system for monitoring and advising new Assistant Professors on their progress towards tenure, including an initial briefing of what are the requirements for tenure, annual and mid-tenure clock reviews, and well as informal advice and mentoring.
• Some programs and funds should be available for the development of young faculty members for additional training in research and teaching skills, professional/academic writing (especially for faculty whose mother tongue is not English), how to prepare their dossiers for requesting tenure, etc.
• Six years is not a long time to publish enough books and/or peer-reviewed articles to achieve tenure, if a newly minted Ph.D has not published any when joining GU. This is especially difficult in fields where a large number of manuscripts by young, relatively unknown scholars chase a limited number of leading peer-reviewed academic journals. Senior faculty should try to advise younger non-tenured faculty in this respect but there is no easy solution. GU could try to recruit Assistant Professors who already have articles published, in press, or in the pipeline, as well as some successful teaching experience (e.g. post-docs). This is possible in some fields but the competition for such people is strong and the leading top 6 to 10 universities known as CHYMPS often get the first pick.
• The rank and tenure committees have their traditional standards, giving the highest value to single author books and articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, but they may need to show some flexibility and adjust to times. For example, the question is what weight to assign to the rapidly multiplying on-line academic and policy journals. Also, with the greater emphasis placed on interdisciplinary research and studies at GU, it is hoped that the members of the rank and tenured committees, steeped as they are in the canons of their own disciplines, will not undervalue interdisciplinary research and publications and thus jeopardize the tenure chances of faculty members with such research and publications. Furthermore, GU prides itself at aiming at have an impact on society and the world, and being a major center for the study of public and international policy. Therefore, publications in leading policy and trade journals, as well as area studies journals, should be given adequate weight, although perhaps not as much as peer-reviewed academic journals. Finally, as the GU faculty is becoming increasingly international, members of tenure committees should be careful not to undervalue publications by faculty in foreign languages such as Hungarian, Turkish, Korean, Chinese, etc. to name a few.
• When talking about tenure, little mention is made of teaching quality. Yet GU has a tradition of quality teaching that is very important to undergraduate students and to undergraduate alumni. In cases where a tenure-track Assistant Professor does not have quite enough publications to obtain tenure but has excellent teaching skills, thought should be given to offering her or him a position as a teaching professor. Departments spend years investing in a tenure-track Assistant Professor. This investment is lost if he or she is denied tenure and has to leave, and the department has to start all over developing a new Assistant Professor.
• In the case of Associate Professors, the reasons for their seeming relative discontent with the tenure process should be more deeply investigated. It is quite possible that the research and teaching requirements, and the timeframe for promotion to Full Professor need to be better defined and communicated. Dr. Groves has a point that the department chairs should be if at all possible be chosen from among Full Professors in order not to overburden Associate Professors with service responsibilities. However, it is not always possible to find a Full Professor who is suitable and willing to be a department chair. One possible compromise would be limit the term of Associate Professors serving as department chairs to three years so that they can return to their research.