Tenure at Appointment
Tenure-at-appointment may be granted to senior academic administrators: the President, Provost, and the Dean of Faculty. The Search Committee, constituted in response to a senior administrative opening, will advise candidates early in the search process of the possibility and procedures for tenure-at-appointment.
Once the candidates to be interviewed have been selected, the Search Committee will direct any requests for tenure review to the relevant division and to the Faculty Status Council (FSC). A Divisional Review Committee (DRC), consisting of appropriate tenured members, will then prepare to write an evaluation and tenure recommendation based on: the five criteria for tenure listed above; documents provided by the Search Committee (letters of recommendation, student evaluations from previous teaching appointments, records of publications and professional activities, etc.); a DRC interview with the candidate; feedback from an interview arranged by the DRC with a group of divisional students; and a talk given to a group of students and faculty. The Search Committee will convey clearly to each candidate that the talk should be directed toward students and designed to convey to students and faculty alike a sense of how the candidate would relate to students as an instructor. If a tenure review is to occur, the DRC will forward a written evaluation and tenure recommendation to the FSC. Members of the FSC—informed by an interview with the candidate, the candidate’s student talk, the DRC written evaluation and recommendation as well as the documents provided by the Search Committee—will then complete the usual tenure review process as described above in the section entitled “Consideration for Tenure.”
Both the DRC and the FSC will implement these procedures with sensitivity to the time constraints under which the Search Committee and the candidates must operate. If sufficient documentation is not available at any stage of the process, the DRC and/or FSC will work through the Search Committee to obtain additional information. A tenure review will occur only when the Search Committee indicates that a candidate seeking tenure is likely to be offered the position.