The promotion and tenure process is complicated and fraught with complicated criteria and guidance, secrecy in evaluations, and at times questionable outcomes. Moreover, higher education is experiencing a reduction and elimination of tenure tracks. Faculty members have numerous competing demands and struggle to find time to organize daunting…

The conferment of tenure at a United States university provides substantial job security to its recipients. Tenure is designed to allow a professor the ability to explore new and risky research questions without fear of losing their position due to lack of publications. At the same time, this policy creates an incentive system with an ambiguous…

Faculty in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) are expected to excel in their technical work, teaching, and professional service. Their career advancement is often determined by academic peers evaluating accomplishments in these three areas. Recently, however, there is a growing concern that the evaluation of those…

This article examines current and previous practitioner experiences of faculty in Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration accredited programs. Using original survey data, this study demonstrates that a majority of Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration program faculty members have prior or current…

Four faculty members of varying rank provide insight into beginning a career as a faculty member and the tenure process based on their experiences at three distinct universities in the United States. Examples of evaluation processes and documentation of activities are provided. Institutional support systems for teaching and scholarship are…

The "Survival Guide for New Faculty Members: Outlining the Keys to Success for Promotion and Tenure" provides new faculty members with practical, down-to-earth wisdom and suggestions for successfully working through to tenure and promotion. The authors--both successful and experienced administrators and experts in higher education--have provided…

This article presents the results from a survey of political science department chairs regarding the tenure procedures and standards at their colleges or universities. The findings reveal that only a small fraction of the colleges and universities in the United States refuse to offer tenure or are attempting to limit tenure. We also find general…

This article defines applied rhetorical work as integral to the intellectual work of writing program administration and asks our professional organizations to classify it as such within our position statements. With a specific case, it offers a generative framework for representing and assessing the work's scholarly commons for professional…

All tenured and tenure-track faculty know the trinity of promotion and tenure criteria: research, teaching, and service. While teaching and research are relatively well-defined areas of institutional focus and evaluation, service work is rarely tabulated or analyzed as a key aspect of higher education's political economy. Instead, service, silent…

Presents recommendations of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Task Force, addressing the issue of faculty workload. Suggests several questions to form the basis for discussions on this issue. (MM)

This study explored the association between tenure and college faculty productivity by comparing the efficacy of traditional and alternative definitions of faculty productivity and different productivity measurement systems. Specifically, the study addressed how college faculty use their time, how time spent on "scholarly" activities…

Guidelines for agricultural education faculty promotion/tenure include (1) assessment of institutional expectations (categorized by teaching or research institution); (2) documentation of teaching, personal attributes, advising, research, publications, committee and association work, time in rank, public service, and graduate student supervision;…

This paper examines efforts by the Department of Psychology at Ursinus College (Pennsylvania) to realign its faculty evaluation, promotion, and tenure guidelines with the increasing emphasis placed on student-centered instruction at the college. It focuses on the need to link faculty rewards with student achievement and to give faculty more input…

A national survey of baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs concerning tenure policy and practices provides information about institutional tenure criteria and predictors of tenure award. (MSE)

A junior faculty member reflects on the dilemma of that professional position, noting that its anxieties fall into two categories: "Is this all there is?" and "What if we lose it?" She examines problems with, and prohibitions against, speaking one's mind in that position, sees solutions as being institutional or individual, and examines how…