It’s expected that Idaho’s flagship university maintains high-quality faculty to ensure a high-quality education. The University of Idaho’s tenure policy is designed to ensure such faculty, but not everyone is sold on its significance.
Denise Bennett, newly tenured senior instructor in the School of Journalism and Mass Media, said she might be too fresh to the process to understand tenure’s meaning for her, but times have changed. Old fears of career repercussions for controversial discussions or behaviors in academia don’t pervade our current era, she said.
“I don’t know (that) the tenure system works in today’s world,” she said. “At least from my experience here, I don’t think there’s pressure on faculty to not deal with certain course content.”
UI policy defines tenure as “a condition of presumed continuing employment,” which “can be terminated only for adequate cause.” Faculty members embark on their tenure track from the first year of employment and undergo annual evaluations. A more thorough third-year evaluation assesses the candidate’s tenure progress with a review of his or her curriculum vita, professional portfolio, various evaluations and reports with additional materials as the candidate deems appropriate.
UI Provost Doug Baker said gaining tenure typically requires seven years. He said candidates receive much feedback, are provided developmental and mentoring assistance and stay up with the latest scholarly
and creative activity.
“It’s a tremendously complex undertaking,” Baker said. “We’re looking for people (in whom) we have confidence that they’re going to continue to perform at a high level, and typically that does happen.”
Baker said all faculty members are evaluated yearly, and a poor post-tenure evaluation can initiate a committee review. Some folks have been fired in the past for “not doing their jobs.”
Bennett said post-tenure reviews examine a faculty member’s service, teaching, research and creative activity in light of plans they developed for themselves at the beginning of the year, but the reviews aren’t thorough enough. She said the intent behind tenure is good, but the problem is professors are “rewarded for laziness.” This reflects a larger problem in academia, she said, of a lack of “pressure and financial motivation to stay current” in respective disciplines.
“That’s the problem with tenure — once you have faculty who are full professors, there’s really no institutional motivation to continue,” she said.
Scott Wood, dean of the college of science, was given tenure as part of his UI hiring package in 1991 when he transferred from a previous tenured position. He said any system can be misused, but the proportion of faculty members who’ve stopped caring about their students or ceased productivity is small.
“Tenured professors do have a responsibility to not use the classroom as a ‘bully pulpit’ for some particular point of view, especially as that drifts away from their area of expertise,” Wood said. “It can happen, but I think academia’s been pretty good at policing itself.”
Wood said the post-tenure review process is lengthy, but necessary to ensure the integrity of tenure’s purpose.
“Tenure is meant to protect academic freedom,” Wood said. “It’s not meant to protect non-collegial behavior (or) incompetence or laziness.”
Wood said tenure enables instructors and professors to “fully explore their areas of scholarship” without fear of unreasonable institutional or governmental repercussions. Wood said freedom to speak can enrich classroom discussions in which students or professors may otherwise be hesitant. Wood said tenure also aids retention, since workers in the private sector — especially in the fields of engineering and science — stand to make significantly more money but may lack tenure’s job security.
Baker said UI is developing a new layer of its faculty with non-tenure-track “clinical” teachers, a rank recently approved by the Idaho State Board of Education. These employees work under a contract for up to three years, and focus largely on teaching and outreach instead of research. Baker said the position tends to fit those with vast work experience instead of impressive publications, such as newspapers editors, broadcasting directors and accountants with years of practice who can teach accounting classes.
“I think that (group) of folks on the cutting edge doing academic research and teaching, and industry-experienced folks who bring a wealth of practical experience, creates a great mix and a rich learning environment,” Baker said.
Bennett said her teaching goals, work ethic and commitment to students won’t change, but she’d like to use her tenure leverage to propose new courses. She said she wants to stay current in her ever-changing field and provide production students with the tools and resources they require. Her pay raise was nice, she said, but she doesn’t care about rank.
“I don’t really care about titles,” Bennett said. “I think a lot of people abuse their titles, and titles can be meaningless, just like tenure can.”
Matt Maw can be reached at [email protected]