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Instructor Tenure Proposals
By Gwendolyn Bradley
AAUP chapters at Rutgers University and the University of Colorado at Boulder are engaged in efforts to upgrade and convert to the tenure track contingent faculty positions at their institutions. Both chapters are proposing that existing contingent faculty positions be converted to teaching-focused tenurebtrack positions; at Rutgers, the gradual consolidation of part-time positions into full-time positions is also proposed. Both proposals are wending their way through institutional governing bodies.
At Rutgers, the conversion of partto full-time positions has been endorsed by the University Senate (which includes students, faculty, administrators, and staff) and by the New Brunswick Faculty Council (composed of faculty from the university’s flagship campus). These bodies have formally encouraged departments gradually to convert the positions of those part time faculty members appointed to cover core introductory courses to fulltime appointments, relying on attrition and voluntary terminations and retaining some part-time positions in each department.
A proposal to convert experienced instructors and lecturers currently serving in contingent positions into tenure-eligible faculty members remains to be considered and is expected to meet with more resistance. Workloads would be determined by the department or unit, and the new “tenure-track teaching” faculty would be periodically reviewed and considered for promotion and tenure using a process parallel to the existing one but with different criteria that give primacy to the quality of teaching and dedication to undergraduate education. Service in departmental and university governance regarding curricular reform and educational policy and standards, and scholarship on teaching methodology, curricular development, and pedagogical practice and theory, would also be weighed under the proposal. The proposal is online at http://senate.rutgers.edu/ContingentFacultyProposal/ Thompson090507.pdf.
In Colorado, full-time instructor positions would be converted to tenure-track positions with no change in pay, rank, course load, or professional expectations. The proposal would also require no changes in the existing tenure track for research professors. What would change would be job security for instructors. “Instead of reapplying for our own jobs every three years, we would have a permanent position; we would no longer be ‘at-will’ employees and would have academic freedom protections,” says Suzanne Hudson, secretary of the AAUP chapter and a leader, with fellow instructor Don Eron, of the push for tenure. “A lot of people have asked us why we focused on academic freedom instead of higher pay or reduced course loads. Our feeling is that we can reach for those things when we can agitate without fear of reprisals.”
Both proposals stress the benefits of tenure for faculty and institutions. And the long progress of the proposals through institutional governing bodies highlights the persistence and patience often needed to make gains in contingent faculty working conditions.
The efforts of the AAUP Boulder chapter, a nonunionized chapter with few resources, are particularly remarkable. For Hudson and Eron, the process began when a local reporter contacted them for a comment about the AAUP Contingent Faculty Index 2006, at which point, they say, the notion of going after tenure for contingents had never crossed their minds. In the next six months, they drafted the proposal and then sent it to the provost, the chancellor, and the faculty senate; submitted numerous op-ed pieces and letters to the editors of local newspapers; compiled a list of 889 members of the contingent teaching faculty and contacted them several times; held meetings and made speeches; and ultimately introduced the proposal to the faculty senate. The proposal failed in the senate last year, but the chapter will reintroduce it this year, and Hudson and Eron are optimistic about its chances. They point to a secret ballot referendum, held after the measure failed, in which contingent teaching faculty voted 279–29 to support the measure. If it fails again, they say, the AAUP state conference will work through the state legislature to gain tenure for instructors. Read more at www.aaup-cu.org. Click on “Instructor Tenure Project.”
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