As you may recall, I inquired whether untenured faculty have a vote on
tenure decisions at your institution. Thanks to those who responded.
Here is the promised summary of the results, which as you will see are
very one-sided.
Of the 29 who responded, 23 said "NO, untenured faculty do NOT have a
vote."
Of the 6 who said YES, nearly all qualified their response in some way.
Here are excerpts from the six YES responses:
---YES but we are trying to change to NO because of the obvious
conflict of interest.
---All faculty, tenured and untenured, participate in a tenure decision.
However, if a decision were controversial, the tenured faculty members'
votes would count more. I don't remember the details of how this works.
---Yes. Our contract gives participation rights to all faculty who have
worked for at least one semester. Of course, all that a department can to
is make a recommendation to the Dean, and that recommendation must be
based on more than just a secret ballot.
---There is nothing that would prevent it. At the dept level the tenure
decision is made by a committee of 5 (including the dept chair) who are
elected by the dept for a three year term. An untenured faculty member
could be elected to that committee, and thus would be voting on another
untenured person (one cannot vote on oneself however). Generally it is
rare that this happens, usually untenured faculty are not elected to this
committee (although it does happen more often in small departments).
---Our tenure committee consists of 8 individuals, two at each
professorial rank and 2 advanced graduate students, all elected NOT
appointed. On a tenure vote, however, according to the university policy,
a majority of the committee approving tenure must be tenured.
---Yes...after they've been in the dept for more than two years.
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> My psychology department is considering revamping its procedure for
> making tenure decisions, and we'd appreciate answers to the following
> question:
>
> In your psychology department, do untenured faculty members have a vote
> in tenure decisions for other faculty?
>
> Please send me off the list (at [EMAIL PROTECTED]) a message that says
> YES/NO and the name of your institution; I'll compile the results and
> report back.>
> Thanks.
>
> --Russ
_________________________________________________________________
Russell T. Hurlburt, Ph.D. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Professor of Psychology Telephone: (702) 895-0194
University of Nevada, Las Vegas Fax: (702) 895-0195
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, NV 89154-5030 USA
http://www.nevada.edu/~russ/hurlburt.html
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