Post-Tenure Review Report

The Professional Concerns Committee and Faculty Senate agree that the Post-Tenure Review system is not functioning as it was intended and is in need of revision. The very fact that no faculty member has been subject to the system since its inception shows that it is currently non-functional. However, after careful investigation, we have found that the failure is due to a number of factors that will call for an approach involving multiple Senate action items to fix. Here are the deficiencies that we believe exist and will need to be addressed in the upcoming academic year:

1. Lack of clear, uniform, quantifiable divisional benchmarks. Many divisions of the University have designed discipline-specific benchmarks and have tried in various ways over the years to get them published in the Faculty Handbook, all of which have been rejected by the administration. The result has been relatively chaotic for the tenure and promotion process, and this has filtered down to post-tenure review, as there is no clear, quantifiable method for any faculty member to be classified as failing to meet expectations in teaching (or any other category); it often comes down to simply the chair's judgment as he/she conducts the annual review. Complicating the issue is that some divisions have very clear benchmarks while others have no such benchmarks.
2. Recommendation: require all divisions to formulate clear, quantifiable benchmarks for determining adequacy in the areas of teaching, scholarship and service, and have these benchmarks vetted through Senate to ensure that clear equivalencies exist for all disciplines. Have these benchmarks published in a supplement to the Faculty Handbook that is accessible to all.
2. Ineffective triggering method. Currently, the only way to trigger post-tenure review is through the annual review. However, the annual review is not designed to address the sort of serious deficiencies in a faculty member's performance that should initiate post-tenure review.
3. Recommendation: establish a series of clear performance “warning signs” that would immediately trigger post-tenure review. The Professional Concerns Committee should devise a set of circumstances that would warrant the immediate intervention mandated under the post-tenure review system, such as failure to regularly meet and conduct class, unprofessional behavior toward students, refusal to perform regular evaluations of student performance, and repeated credible student complaints about faculty behavior. Should the chair determine that such circumstances exist, he/she will review the allegations with the faculty member and consult with the dean and provost to agree that the circumstances warrant post-tenure review.
3. Hesitancy on the part of chairs to designate faculty as not meeting expectations. Several chairs have admitted that they find it difficult to arrive at the sort of harsh but honest evaluation of faculty that would initiate post-tenure review. The problem is exacerbated by several circumstances, including lack of regular annual review of chairs by faculty and chairs who are appointed rather than elected to their positions.

Recommendation: require chairs to collaborate with deans and/or the provost on problematic faculty under their supervision and, if necessary, recuse themselves from reviewing faculty whom they might hesitate to judge harshly. Mandate that annual evaluation of chairs by the faculty they supervise takes place every year without fail, and that these evaluations allow faculty to rate and comment upon the chair's effectiveness in maintaining standards within the division. Make these ratings of paramount importance in deciding upon a chair's reappointment. Alternately, make chair positions elected rather than appointed positions, as is standard practice in hundreds of institutions. The latter would ensure a