The
University Faculty Senate
Tuesday,
March 20, 2007, at 1:30 p.m.
The
University Faculty Senate met on Tuesday, March 20, 2007, at 1:30 p.m. in room
112 Kern Graduate Building
with Joanna Floros, Chair, presiding.
MINUTES OF THE PRECEDING MEETING
Chair Floros: The January
30, 2007, Senate Record, providing a full transcription of the
proceedings, was sent to all University Libraries and is posted on the Faculty
Senate Web site. Are there any
corrections or additions to this document?
Seeing none, may I hear a motion to
accept?
Senators: So moved.
Chair Floros: Second?
Senators: Second.
Chair Floros: All in favor
of accepting the minutes of January 30, 2007, please say aye.
Senators: Aye.
Chair Floros: Opposed say
nay. Ayes have it, motion carried. The minutes of the January 30, 2007, meeting
have been approved.
COMMUNICATIONS TO THE SENATE
Senate Curriculum Report of
February 27, 2007. This document is
posted on the University Faculty Senate Web site.
REPORT OF SENATE COUNCIL – Meeting of
February 27, 2007
At the end of the Senate agenda are
the minutes from the February 27 meeting of Senate Council. Included in the minutes are topics that were
discussed by the Faculty Advisory Committee to the President at the February 27
meeting.
ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE CHAIR
Chair Floros: Out of
courtesy to our presenters, please turn off your cell phones and pagers at this
time. Thank you.
The Senate Officers completed
spring visits to University Park
units and will debrief Provost Erickson on April 10.
President Spanier has accepted the
Undergraduate Education committees’ First-Year Seminar recommendation passed at
the January 30 Senate meeting. Following
consultation with Provost Erickson and Vice President Pangborn on committee
membership and charge, Dawn Blasko and I will contact individuals to serve on
an ad hoc FYS committee. This committee
will be charged with developing solutions to the shortcomings of the current
seminar, or offer a suitable alternative first-year experience. The ad hoc committee will be asked to report
back to the Senate no later than the end of spring semester 2008.
The Web site for the Committee Preference
Form was sent to 2007-2008 Senators on March 7 and we request that you complete
this on-line form by March 28. I also want to encourage Senators to consider
serving as a committee Chair or Vice-Chair.
The annual Rally in the Rotunda is
taking place this afternoon in Harrisburg.
I would like to acknowledge the work of the Council of Commonwealth Student
Governments’ efforts to increase public awareness of current funding to
institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania.
At the February 27 Senate Council
meeting, there was a discussion about the exodus of Senators leaving Senate
meetings long before they concluded. The
Senate officers and I recognize that some of you have classes to teach, and
others may be concerned about driving home in bad weather. I want to remind everyone that you are here
as an elected or appointed Senator, and as such, you have a responsibility to
your constituents to stay for the full Senate meeting. In the remaining two meetings of this year, I
look forward to seeing many of you still with us at the end of the meeting.
COMMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
Chair Floros: At this time I
would like to invite President Spanier to come forward to make some remarks.
President Spanier: I checked
and the weather is very nice today, but I am mindful of the fact that you have
a number of reports ahead of you so I will be brief. It is nice to see that all of you made it
back from spring break, but how many of you were delayed somewhere? I know some of our students were, or that is
what they told us. I want to say
something positive about our students to begin my report. I always put in a plug for Thon before it
occurs, and this year Thon broke its prior record by one million dollars. They raised
$5,247,000 for children with cancer. It
is just a phenomenal accomplishment; I know several of you attended part of
Thon and saw for yourself what a remarkable enterprise it is. I encourage all
of you to think about attending somewhere along the way.
A couple of weeks ago I had my Appropriations
Hearings, both House and Senate, on the same day in Harrisburg, and both were done as panel
presentations. I know some of you were
eagerly standing by your television sets at 3:00 a.m. for the re-run, and I
think they both went very well. The
people were very friendly and it was certainly the most positive hearings that
we had in my 12 years, but that does not mean the number the governor has
proposed for us will increase. It turned
out to be 1.58 percent that he put out there for us, and we were particularly
concerned that there was no increase proposed at all for Penn College,
Cooperative Extension, or Agricultural Research, and a modest two percent
increase in other parts of our budget. We are at a point in time where it is
very important for us to try to hold down the size of our tuition increase. We
are working very hard in Harrisburg
to try to get those numbers up to some reasonably higher level and we will keep
you informed on the status. We did have
an event last night in Harrisburg
as part of the Rally in the Rotunda that continues today. We had members of our
Grass Roots Network our Agricultural constituents groups, Penn State Alumni
leaders, members of our Board of Trustees and others, making their rounds to
the offices of the Senators, talking about Penn State
and its needs. We are very grateful to
these volunteers who, on our behalf, are making the case for Penn State. Today we have bus loads of students from
campuses throughout the State in Harrisburg
who are also making visits. Yesterday we had an alumni reception with the Blue
Band playing in the rotunda, and with just a small portion of the Blue Band you
could have really rocked that building. We appreciate all the support and
encouragement that we can get because we certainly need it.
This morning we had a press
conference announcing Penn
State’s support for the
Jonas Salk Fund. This is a proposal that the Governor has on the table which
takes a portion of the tobacco settlement funds, and uses it to re-pay a bond
issue of $500,000,000. Those funds would
be used across the State to invest in life sciences, construction projects, and
other ways of supporting what we are trying to do in the area of
biotechnology. If that proposal were to
go forward, Penn State would be in line to receive some
support for some of our building projects that are in the queue and are
extremely important to our work. Penn
State along with the
Secretary of Health and Secretary of Community and Economic Development
participated in a public announcement showing our support.
Things continue to go well as we
move through the applications and admissions cycle. We are up approximately 5,000
applications over the same time last year which was an all time record. We will be approaching 100,000 applications
this year by the time it is finished at all levels and campuses to Penn State,
which is quite remarkable. They tend to
be sorting out the way that we would want them; they are actually bringing down
the number of admitted and enrolled students at the University Park campus. We hope more of our
students will accept offers at other campuses and we also hope that increase
will hold. We thank all of you for any
efforts that you might be a part of in converting the students that we have
accepted into actual enrollments. Those are a few things that I wanted to
mention to you and now we will have time for questions.
Chair Floros: Are there any
questions for President Spanier?
Thomas Beebee, College of the Liberal Arts: On today’s Agenda there are several reports
on fixed-term faculty and as a member of one of the committees that debated and
voted on these reports, I found myself in something of a double-bind. On the one hand I wanted to recognize the
outstanding contribution that fixed-term faculty make towards our University in
terms of giving them significant titles and representation in the Senate. On
the other hand, I felt that in voting for these things, I was in some sense
voting against the idea of a University or College as a community of scholars
that are there on a permanent basis for which tenure is the fundamental
idea. According to a December 15 report
in the Chronicle of Higher Education
in 1975 nationwide 57 percent of faculty was either tenure or tenure-track and
by 2003 that had descended nationwide to about 35 percent. I know Penn State
is still above 50 percent tenure or tenure-track, but I wanted to ask you as
President of this University, where you see us headed in this area in terms of
the percentage of tenure vs. fixed-term, and whether this is a topic of
conversation and policy in the higher spheres of administration of this
University?
President Spanier: I feel
exactly the same way you do and Penn
State is doing a lot
better than most other universities in this regard. The Provost and I have in
many ways, and many times over the years, stated our philosophy that is
consistent with yours. There is a
decided national trend, not so much away from hiring people in the tenure-track,
but it is more of a function of the fact that a disproportional large share of
the newer faculty are being hired as fixed-term.
We don’t have any noticeable
diminution of tenure or tenure-track faculty members, and what we have at Penn State
is a lot of additional growth and extra credit hours are being taught by people
on fixed-term. This is not the preferred
approach and there are some units where for good organizational, academic,
pedagogical, reasons there are some very good things that fixed-term people can
do, and you would want to lean that way. In many cases it is being done for budgetary
reasons. It is being done because there are so many courses that have to be
taught, so many students to deal with, and they can do it for less if they go
the fixed-term route. There may be
programs that are in a rapid transition, where enrollment is growing very fast,
enrollment is decreasing, or there is some uncertainty about enrollment, and
you don’t want to bring people in on the tenure-track that you are not sure
about making a long-time commitment to.
For a combination of reasons we are seeing more fixed-term people and it
is a larger percentage of our employee-base.
Philosophically, what Rod Erickson
and I are saying to the Deans is that we have to keep up significant tenure or
tenure-track faculty members, and not fill the ranks with fixed-term
people. This is a tug and pull that we
have with the Deans because they have certain realities that they are trying to
deal with. At the department head level it
is very much where the decision is being made with the resources they have. At Penn State
a certain portion of our faculty are not going to be fixed-term. We have to
treat them fairly and we want to make sure the proper array of titles,
benefits, and opportunities of salary increases are there for fixed-term
people. I don’t like the idea that we have in higher education, and in America, two
classes of citizens. Anything we can do to minimize the gap would be a step in
the right direction.
Chair Floros: Any other questions
for President Spanier? Thank you very
much, President Spanier.
As we begin our discussion of
reports, I remind you to please stand, wait for the microphone, and identify
yourself and the unit you represent before addressing the Senate.
FORENSIC BUSINESS
The Senate Committee on Educational
Equity is sponsoring a forensic session entitled, Revision of SRTE: Inclusion
of Campus Climate, Appendix B in your Agenda.
Committee Chair JoAnn Chirico will introduce this report. You will see there are four questions on page
three of the report. We will move
through the questions in order.
EDUCATIONAL
EQUITY AND CAMPUS ENVIRONMENT
Revision
of SRTE: Inclusion of Campus Climate, Appendix B
JoAnn
Chirico, Chair and Harjit Singh, Vice Chair
JoAnn Chirico, Penn
State Beaver: In the mid 1990’s, the Faculty Senate
considered questions related to climate on the SRTE. At that time the issue was addressed very
narrowly in terms of multicultural concerns.
Penn State’s Framework to Foster Diversity in
the strategic planning process has recognized and elevated the importance of
climate issues as they impact all students in achieving their academic
potential. EECE would like to use this
time to initiate discussion about piloting the SRTE as a tool for faculty to
access student’s perception of classroom climate. I would like two other members of the
committee to make brief statements from their perspective on the SRTE.
Christopher Engelhardt, Penn State Erie: As a student representative, I took the
question of the climate back to my campus and there was an overwhelming
response that we should have a climate question on the SRTE, and it should be
mandatory. To what extent the student
input matters to the Faculty Senate here, I think it should have a big
influence.
Susan Faircloth, CORED representative to EECE: I was asked to speak on behalf of the Commission
on Racial and Ethnic Diversity (CORED).
We had an extended discussion about this issue yesterday and decided
that we would firmly support this initiative to add a climate- related question
to the SRTE, and we firmly felt that this question should be standardized
across units. We proposed a question
which would read as follows, “To what extent does my instructor create a
learning environment where all students are treated with respect and are
enabled to achieve their academic goals?”
We also thought that it was
important before this question was instituted, and became a part of the
promotion and tenure process, that it be piloted. We also understand and recognize that this is
a question that we are recommending, but some other version of that question
might actually be adopted. We are
recommending that the question be piloted across all colleges and units for a
period of three years. At the end of those
three years, data would be collected, and then brought back to the Committee on
Educational Equity and Campus Environment. It would then be analyzed to look at
what are the potential ramifications of that data, and use of that question
particularly to look at what is the potential impact on the promotion and
tenure of junior faculty and minority faculty?
We also wanted to note that although we support the inclusion of a
climate-related question, there are other issues related to that, particularly
the issue of diversity. At some point we would push for a discussion of whether
or not this question that gets at the issue of climate, also adequately gets at
the issue of diversity. The discussion
should deal with whether or not they are two separate issues and if they are
how we would address that? We want to
make sure there is ample opportunity to look at the potential implications of
what data is being collected as a result of this question, and the extent to
which this question needs to be revised, kept as is, deleted from the SRTE, or
completely re-written.
JoAnn Chirico: The first
question on our agenda is, “should there be a climate question on the SRTE?”
James Donovan, University College, Mont Alto: On the question of whether the Faculty
wants to include an SRTE question which deals with diversity climate, and I
don’t know how we can respond without knowing just what the question will be,
although I just heard one version; I could approve of the inclusion of a
diversity question but it must be very carefully worded. It should: 1. not appear to prescribe course
content as did one of the questions from 1990 which asked students to “rate the
degree to which the instructor included course content representing a different
or culturally diverse perspective.” This
has many implications regarding course descriptions and redesigning of courses
and syllabi.
2. Not entirely unrelated to the
above, the question must not be framed in such a way that it violates academic
freedom. 3. The words “appropriate and applicable” must be clearly defined or
understood by the students within the context of the course. 4. The word climate should be avoided for
obvious reasons.
JoAnn Chirico: We proposed
this forensic to be a step one in the process. For step two we want to do a
small validity study in the fall term. That would take these questions into
some of your classrooms, not to be piloted with students in terms of accessing
that classroom, but to be interrupted by students to see whether or not we are
capturing what we want. We are trying to avoid the use of the word climate, but
it is hard to come up with another word that has the same kind of
objections. We see doing a validity
study of the questions, which Beverly Vandiver is going to design, and then
getting authorization from the Senate to do the pilot study.
Leonard Berkowitz: As you
develop and continue to work on this, I would ask that you be very careful to
keep in mind what the SRTE was designed to do and its purpose. It was designed very specifically for the
evaluation of teaching effectiveness for promotion and tenure. It was expanded to include the natural
expansion for teaching effectiveness for personnel decisions. The reason that there are two substantive
global questions was that the research showed that the best way to get an
overall view of faculty members’ teaching effectiveness was to ask global
questions by themselves, in addition to specific behavioral questions. That is the reason you have a section A which
has two substantive global questions and two data gathering questions about expected
grade. I am not sure the way you framed
your questions get at those assumptions.
I think one is a mandatory question, but that doesn’t make it a good
candidate to sit with the other two global questions because these are getting
at specific behaviors. That is what is in the B section and you may want to do
a little more revision of what we do with the SRTE if you should decide this is
important enough to include.
Dennis Gouran, College of the Liberal Arts: Did your committee grapple at all with the
question of what you mean by effectiveness?
It is difficult for me to assess the value of adding an item like this
to an instrument, when many of the items that already comprise that instrument
had dubious relationship to any concept of effectiveness that I’m familiar
with. If we are going to make this
mandatory, rather than elective, then it seems to me all the more important
that everyone have a common understanding of what we are talking about when we
refer to teaching effectiveness. I
always have had some problems with the SRTE’s, because I don’t think the
University has addressed this. We had testimony of this kind that Professor
Berkowitz just offered and the evidence shows that you get at this better with
global items than with behavioral items.
How can a particular item that may be included on a questionnaire, in
which students record their perceptions, get at effectiveness in terms of what
they know or what they are able to do as a result of the instruction that they
received? As a University, we keep ducking this question, but it seems to me
that it is a fundamental one.
Richard Yahner, College
of Agricultural Sciences: I like the idea of not having arrogant
professors in the classroom. I like the idea of tolerance and value of
diversity of opinions, because diversity means different things to different
people. In my program it could be
gender, and it certainly is not ethnicity or race because we don’t have that
diversity. I don’t like the word climate
and I think that would be clear to the students because diversity can mean
something to a lot of people, but it may not be appropriate to some programs.
JoAnn Chirico: I think we
have addressed some of the items in the following questions, but were there
other opinions as to whether it should be mandatory.
Beverly Vandiver, College of Education: I
am on this committee as well as the College
of Education caucus and
we are supportive of this question being piloted as a mandatory question. I think there are a couple of reasons for
that. Some very good questions were
asked and those can’t be answered unless we imperatively take a look at
it. By doing a pilot for three years and
collecting the data, we would be able to answer more clearly and more objectively
the questions that have been asked. I am
supportive for a couple of reasons and as a cultural worker it is important for
us to live up to the mission of this University. We are acknowledging and
taking some steps in terms of making this a more welcome place, on the campus
as well as inside the classroom. I
recognize that sometimes when you get into cultural issues it begins to become
very sensitive, and people worry especially as faculty members, what is going
to happen and how is it going to label you.
That is the reason I support a pilot, however at the same time, I think
that it is a double edge sword. Not only for white faculty who may worry about
getting labeled, but minority faculty and women aren’t going to get a pass on
these questions. They are going to be at the same risk as the white
faculty. I hope we would want to move
forward to at least consider a pilot of a mandatory question and see what comes
out of data and then re-visit it in a more objective fashion.
JoAnn Chirico: Is there an
opinion as to open-ended or scaled item?
Chair Floros: Now you have
some feedback. Thank you, JoAnn and
Harjit.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Chair Floros: A report from
Faculty Affairs held over from the January 30 Senate meeting appears on today’s
agenda as Appendix C, entitled Revision of Policy HR-21 Definition of Academic
Ranks. Committee Chair Cynthia Brewer
and Faculty Rights and Privacy Subcommittee Chair, Zachary Irwin will present
this report and respond to questions.
SENATE
COMMITTEE ON FACULTY AFFAIRS
Revision
of Policy HR-21 Definition of Academic Ranks
Cynthia
Brewer, Chair
Zachary
Irwin, Subcommittee Chair
Zachary Irwin, Penn State Erie: The report you see before you, the
Revision of HR-21, is a result of two things.
First is some prior work that the committee has been dealing with about
HR-21 in the earlier revision, and also a forensic discussion in April 2006, on
the question of fixed-term faculty. What
we did in that report was to ask four questions. One of them was should qualified fixed-term
faculty with terminal degrees be awarded professorial ranks comparable to those
of standing faculty? After a lot of
discussion, our sense was yes they should, and in addition we concluded that in
some cases because of professional achievement, individuals with terminal
degrees should also be considered for professorial rank, in particular this
notion of professor of practice ranks.
It turned out that similar institutions already do have professor of
practice. Sometimes they call this a
clinical or adjunct professor of practice; but the pattern seems to be fairly
similar. What it involves are programs typically
in criminal justice, in colleges of schools of law, medicine, and I suspect in
our planned School for International Studies. All of these have need for this
particular rank. Finally, it is our hope
in this particular legislation that it will be understood as nothing that is
going to alter or change existing ranks or reassign some kind of
appointment. We are looking forward to a
change that we think will add some much needed flexibility to different units
of the institution and should be seriously and positively considered.
Cynthia Brewer, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences: We are proposing adding three ranks for
fixed-term faculty to the ranks at Penn
State, which is Table 1
in the Agenda and there is an additional one beyond the ones listed. Our proposal is for two groups of faculty
that do not fit into the current set of ranks that are missing those three,
full-time teaching faculty with a terminal degree who are in fixed-term
positions, who are part of the curriculum and are innovative teachers actively
sought by their units. This includes people with exceptional professional
experience in industry and leaders in the arts who are also sought by teaching
programs and don’t have a terminal degree.
Penn State ranks are complex; these are ranks
not titles, so titles may have additional specificity to them, and all of you have
one of these ranks. To make a distinction between rank and title, between
fixed-term and standing appointments, between tenure-line and non-tenure-line,
between professorial and lecturer or instructor, none of those are one-to-one
matches in which they have slightly different overlaps with each other. When I say professorial ranks I am talking
about Professor, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor. We are proposing a sequence of ranks for
teaching that are parallel to the existing sequence of ranks for research
appointments: Scientist, Research Associate, Senior Research Associate and Senior
Scientist that people that are appointed for research specifically fall
into.
The new ranks, the professor of
practice ranks, provide a career path for teaching faculty that does not exist
in the current structure. At the end of
the report I have an appendix that gives you some data on the number of faculty
and there are over 5,000 full-time faculty that are in varied ranks, because we
do a wide variety of tasks that mix teaching, research, and service in
different proportions. Forty-five
percent of those 5,000 faculty are not in tenure-line positions. Of the faculties
who already have professorial titles, 17 percent of those are not in
tenure-line positions. We already
appoint people who are not tenure-track to professorial positions. This proposed revision does not require your
unit to use these new ranks, but it does provide you with an option of
distinguishing teaching faculty from the faculty who combine teaching and
research in your college if you want to make that distinction in the
ranks. I am seeing a wide variety of
opinions and some of you believe that all faculties should be in professorial
ranks regardless of your tenure status.
Some of you believe that only those in tenure-line positions should be
in professorial ranks. Resting between
those opposing opinions is a large number of teaching faculty on our campus
without adequate career tracks in our current structure and we have the ability
to remedy that in our proposed rank structure.
Chair Floros: Are there any
questions?
Dennis Gouran, College of the Liberal Arts: Over the period that I have heard this
proposal discussed, I have not seen any consideration of the pragmatic aspects
of doing this. The emphasis has been on
what it would be nice to have, and how this creation of a new set of ranks
brings symmetry to an asymmetrical kind of structure. I would like to be a little more pragmatic
here and ask what the consequences would be of a positive nature that would
stem from the passage of this proposal, and the negative consequences associated
with the failure to pass this, especially under circumstances in which the
utilization of it is going to be voluntary.
Cynthia Brewer: I would
expect that a college or unit would adjust their Bylaws to specify whether they
are using those ranks, and for what situation they are using them. In terms of
the practical implementation, it is up to the unit as to whether they want to
use them. I have heard strong support in
which some people that are fixed-term, currently in an assistant professor
position, have been offered the option of being promoted to a lecturer, which
is a rank that only has a master’s degree requirement. There is an honoring in the excellence of
people and that is very positive. I received a letter from a person in the Harrisburg campus who
feels that if we had these ranks, we would be able to attract better people and
stronger candidates if they had a better ranking position to put them
into. If this doesn’t pass you will
continue to have people who are working hard and for a long time with no
promotion path. Penn
State values teaching,
and the people who come to teach are in a gray area where they don’t have an
obvious set of ranks that they fit into.
Zachary Irwin: When people
seek money or support outside the institution and they are able to say that one
is a professor this obviously means that one’s application for support is going
to be taken a lot more seriously. I
think it is very easy to underestimate the impact of being able to offer a
person professorial rank who might have some appealing alternative and what a
difference that really makes. Going over the literature I really don’t see the
negatives.
Tramble Turner, Penn
State Abington: I appreciate all the thought that Faculty
Affairs has given to the issues associated with this. If we compare Table 3 to Table 1, am I
correct in assuming that the 580 non-tenure line professors that currently
teach at the University are not reflected in Table 1 where we don’t see a
listing of that professor title with a non-tenure line designator.
Cynthia Brewer: You are
saying that these people in these ranks that are not tenure-track, and they are
in here because these ranks are here. In the agenda, I have the columns labeled
tenure-line or fixed-term. Some units choose to, or choose not to, appoint
people who are fixed-term into these ranks, and the 580 are in the count.
Anthony Ambrose, College
of Medicine: You talk about remedying in essence a
deficit. What I don’t understand is why
that deficit can’t be remedied by leaving that table exactly the way it is and
erasing the words “of practice.”
Cynthia Brewer: You are in
the College of Medicine and that is what the college chooses
to do. You appoint both your
tenure-track and your fixed-term people; associate professor vs. professor and
that is your choice. As we talk you will find that many units think that is a
terrible thing to do; they only want tenure-line people to be in those
professor ranks. It is a different
culture and I think we should not impose a uniform culture, but honor those
cultures by having the options of these ranks for people to use. Some people find out that professor rank is
the key thing that identifies them as tenure-line, and that is not so important
in your group.
Matthew Wilson, Penn State Harrisburg: I have been asked to read a statement
into the record from Penn State Harrisburg Faculty Senate. “The
Faculty Senate of the Capital
College has voted to
reject the proposed revisions of HR-21.
The Capital College, Penn
State Harrisburg Senate supports the institution of
the rank of professor of practice for individuals who have achieved exceptional
and unique professional distinctions in non-academic professional
activity. Its members express grave reservations
about including individuals who do not merit full professor rank at the time of
appointment.” I am in a difficult
position because I was on the other side of this issue. I think the reservation
was that they didn’t understand the idea of assistant and associate professor
of practice for people who have less than exceptional and professional
experience. From the prospective of Penn State Harrisburg, we didn’t see the
need for the professor of practice for those people who are in non-tenure track
lines who already have a Ph.D.
Kathryn Dansky, College
of Health and Human
Development: How would the promotion
decisions be made? Would you have a separate committee for people who are not
involved in research?
Cynthia Brewer: We wouldn’t
try to cover those in HR-21 which just lists the ranks, but in my college we do
have a separate promotion committee for fixed-term faculty, because they are
doing different things than the tenure-line people. I believe that it would be
a college decision, and other units may choose to have their promotion, tenure,
and evaluation committee all in one group. Currently fixed-term people can be
appointed as graduate faculty. I have
repeated all of HR-21 and I am not trying to edit the portion that refers to
instructors and lecturers, it is written that HR-21 recommends that when a
person is promoted, for example, from lecturer to senior lecturer that
promotion includes a salary increase.
That is also a college-level decision, though. If we were talking about
meaningful promotion steps, they would include a salary increase with a
promotion step.
Mary Beth Clark, College
of Health and Human
Development: I am also on the
Faculty Affairs committee and I would like to clarify that one of the issues that
came up is, do we really need another professor of practice? In my specific school, faculty who are hired
with terminal degrees and are clinically expert; if they do not have a
tenure-line position, they cannot have a professorial rank. They have to be
known as an instructor. This has led to
a problem in recruitment of qualified faculty, because they can easily go to
another university and be accepted in a non-tenure line or tenure-line with a
professorial title. We are not competitive when trying to recruit faculty. Nationwide there is a nursing and nursing faculty
shortage, and by creating this parallel line to the tenure-track would enable
us to alleviate some of that problem.
This would hopefully give each school or department within a certain
college more flexibility and more ability to encourage the Dean to accept this
type of an appointment.
Leonard Berkowitz, University College, York: I find myself persuaded by your argument
that there are good reasons to have three additional ranks for recognition for
faculty who are not on tenure-track. I
am still troubled by the actual titles you have chosen: professor of practice,
associate professor of practice, and assistant professor of practice, which are
almost identical to the tenure-track professorial titles. I think in practice the “of practice” is
going to drop out and people will be know as assistant professor, associate
professor, and professor, and that troubles me. If you look at one of your
arguments, we need something parallel for research, but we didn’t make those
professors of research, associate professor of research, assistant professor of
research, we found names that made them different. Since they are different, if you can find
some other name that doesn’t make it exactly like the professorial titles, I
will vote for it. Until then I am too
troubled, and if indeed it becomes a real major problem for any unit, they are
entitled to use the current professorial titles. I don’t think the negative consequences are
there, and I think if it is something important enough for a unit, use that now,
and if you can find another title, you’ve got my vote.
Cynthia Brewer: The word
professor is not a mistake, these people profess. Their teaching is a key part
of that and a key part of recruiting people to these positions, and we require
people to use specific titles and they would have those as part of their rank.
Cynthia Lightfoot, University
College, Delaware
County: I think what you are doing
here is a wonderful idea and I think it is appropriate. I do have a couple of problems with what you
have proposed. The tension between
promotion on the basis of innovative course and curriculum development,
delivery, and assessment on one hand, and on the other hand, it sounds like
there is an effort being made to reward performance in one’s discipline and
that seems to be a conflict.
Cynthia Brewer: Are you
talking about past performance?
Cynthia Lightfoot: You are
instituting this structure in order to reward people who are absolutely
outstanding in their field. The narrative description of all of these sounds
like the promotion is based on innovation in teaching and learning.
Cynthia Brewer: There are
two things in the report, and one is that we are trying to attract a person
that is well established. If Nelson Mandela or Al Gore were to come and be a
professor, you are not going to appoint them as a senior lecturer. If you only
want him to teach, if you aren’t expecting to evaluate him on his research,
then these would be ranks that would identify that person as a teacher. If you were to move through the ranks, you
would be recognized and rewarded for excellence in teaching. As you come into
these ranks it may be either on the merit of what you want to teach and you
have a Ph.D, or you want to come in and teach and not be evaluated also on
research. You would be in the professor of practice ranks. That is a bit of a
distinction from someone who is well established as the Vice President of IBM,
or as a world leader, or as a performer in the theater. They are already well
established and you want them to come in and bring their abilities to the
teaching program. They wouldn’t be
stepping through these ranks based on their continued performance in theatre;
they would step through those ranks based on their ability to teach.
Cynthia Lightfoot: I can
imagine it being used in that way. I can also imagine you wanting to recruit
someone like Mandela, who you want to continue doing that kind of work and also
doing some teaching. The other issue is
who would have access to this, and I brought this issue up when we had the
Caucus meeting last month. You said, as
you have said today, that individual units will decide whether or not they
would want to institute something like this.
It sounds like the choice is something that would be freely given and
freely taken. My impression is that this
is not the case, and that this structure would be differentially available to
units not depending on the person coming in, or who you want to recruit, but
based on the budget. I can imagine some
units that have sufficient money wanting to support this kind of structure, and
would in fact be giving these kinds of ranks and would be able to move through
these ranks. Faculty in other units who do not have the money and would support
the implementation of such a thing would be left in the dust. I think that makes this policy inherently
prejudicial and discriminatory. Despite
the fact that I would overwhelmingly support what is going on here, I think
that my support would only be in principle, and policy is not principle, policy
is applied principle, and I think it is very important to consider issues of
implementation.
Cynthia Brewer: With the
current structure I don’t think there is anything budgetary that determines
whether you are or are not allowed to appoint someone as a Senior Research Associate. If you have someone coming in and teaching
full time, and you want to appoint them as a professor of practice, you can
make that decision. If you want to appoint them as a professor and they are not
tenure-track you could also do that, but that is not a budgetary decision.
Cynthia Lightfoot: I am sure
I was making reference to some of the comments made by the HHD faculty who
already have on their books outstanding faculty that they would like to see
move through the system and this isn’t just for incoming people. We at the University College campuses have individuals who
want to be promoted to Senior Instructor and we have something in place for
that now, and in fact all eligible faculties are not able to advance to Senior
Instructor for budgetary reasons, which mean a system that rewards
accomplishment turns out to be a competition.
Cynthia Brewer: You are
talking specifically about as we re-work current appointments.
David Richards, University College, Hazleton: I think revising HR-21 is perhaps not a
sufficient condition that what probably all of us would like to see happen
probably will happen. If you are going
to have this at all, you have to start somewhere, and unless you revise the law
in some way you are not going to hear about changing the budget.
Winston Richards, Penn State Harrisburg: I want to say I appreciate the thoughts
given to this issue by Faculty Affairs. I want to also add that my colleague
gave an excellent and objective presentation of the feeling of the faculties at
Penn State Harrisburg even though, as he pointed out, he was on the opposite
side of the discussion. We already have
the mechanisms to correct the illnesses this legislation is designed to correct.
We have current provision for assistant fixed-term person, associate fixed-term
and full fixed-term individuals. In
addition, I would also like to point out that those of you who have been here 37
years or more at
