The Tenure Track (TT) Project

The purpose of this project is to capture in one public document all of the key policies, protocols and best practices related to tenure and promotion at Cornell. Currently, information of this kind is sometimes hard to find, incomplete, inconsistent, or otherwise problematic. The goal of the TT project is to review every process that shows up  between point-of-hire and Trustee approval and to suggest improvements as required. Here is a brief ppt overview of the project and a  justification.

With that in mind the AFPSF Committee  developed an FAQ that identifies over 70 issues and “talking points”  associated with the tenure track.

Faculty feedback is now required. To make this as painless as possible, the FAQ has been partitioned into eight sections:

A. Recruitment
B. The Probationary Period
C. Launching the Tenure Review
D. External Reviewer Selection
E.  Letters from Students on Teaching and Advising
F.  Department Deliberations
G. College Deliberations
H. University Deliberations

Each of section has an attending Qualtrics survey that you can take to provide feedback.

GO TO QUALTRICS SURVEYS.

The plan is to stagger the presentation of the eight sections over three meetings: Feb 10 (A,B,C), Feb 24 (D,E) and Mar 17 (F,G,H).

The Project is also concerned with improving the three appeal processes that relate to the tenure track:

Appealing a decision not to renew a nontenure appointment.
Appealing a decision not to initiate a tenure review.
Appealing a decision not to grant tenure.

The AFPSF will be taking up the appeal part of the project and will submit documents to the Senate by  mid-March.

All along the way there will be updates and revisions done in collaboration with the provost office and others. Some proposed revisions will require approval of the college deans. It is understood throughout that processes mandated by the university cannot be too prescriptive given variations that exist across the colleges.  However, the university can and should  be insistent in matters that concern transparency and objectivity.

It is important to remember that there is joint “ownership” of the tenure-related  sections in the Faculty Handbook. While these sections stipulate university rules and expectations, implementation details tend to be documented at the college level. Sharing how the colleges think about tenure is somewhat difficult because most colleges have chosen to store their procedure documents on local  intranets that prevent public viewing.  CALS and  Engineering are exceptions.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email