Section 4: Tenure-Track & Tenured Faculty Policies

4.1 Tenure

Tenure's importance derives from the significant benefits it confers not just on faculty but on academic units and universities themselves. Most critically, tenure safeguards the academic freedom so vital to open academic inquiry and discourse. It also enables faculty members to engage in long range and experimental projects that might not yield immediate results. It permits open and candid faculty participation on committees dealing with controversial issues.

Tenure is not a sinecure guaranteeing lifelong employment. Tenure entitles a faculty member to continuation of his or her annual appointment until relinquishment or forfeiture of tenure or until termination of tenure for adequate cause, financial exigency, or academic program discontinuance. The burden of proof that tenure should be granted rests with the faculty member. Tenure is acquired only by positive action of the Board of Trustees and is awarded in a department, academic unit, or approved center/institute. The award of tenure shifts the burden of proof concerning the faculty member’s continuing appointment from the faculty member to the university.

A typical tenure track faculty career begins with a full-time appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor with a probationary period of six years. The probationary faculty member will apply for tenure during the sixth year. If tenure is not granted, the faculty member will be permitted to serve a seventh year as a terminal year. Faculty may apply for early consideration for tenure, may have their probationary period extended, or may petition for a suspension of one or more years of the probationary period. Tenured associate professors may be promoted to full professor after at least five years at the rank of associate. All faculty members are expected to achieve a significant level of accomplishment in teaching, research / scholarship / creative activity, and service to merit promotion to full professor. Throughout this career path, annual evaluations conducted as are appropriate reviews for promotion and tenure.

The quality of the faculty of any university is maintained primarily through the appointment and evaluation by competent faculty and administrative officers, of each candidate for tenure and/or promotion. The tenure and/or promotion process begins at a department or tenure granting center/institute level (hereafter “department”) and requires an understanding of the objectives and aims of the department, academic unit, and university. In academic units that do not have departments, the evaluation processes begin at the academic unit level.

Criteria to aid in making appraisals have been formulated in guidelines established by the individual departments, the individual academic units, and the university. Departmental and academic unit guidelines must be consistent with the policies of the university and should be tailored to the demands of the specific discipline. Departmental and academic unit criteria are designed to allow each department to maintain the degree of specialization in its faculty that the profession requires.