STATUS OF NONTENURE-TRACK INSTRUCTIONAL FACULTY STANDING COMMITTEE

Meeting
Thursday, December 5, 2002
2:10 PM

Minutes:

The committee met with Diane Bricker, Associate Dean, College of Education (dbricker@oregon.uoregon.edu)

Committee Members Attending: Robert Davis, Romance Languages; Lynn Kahle, Business; Jim Long, Chemistry (co-chair); Margaret Hallock, Morse Center (co-chair); Susan Fagan, English; Jeanne Wagenknecht, Business; Greg McLaughlan, Sociology (Senate President 2002/3).

Following introductions, Dean Bricker explained that the College of Education faces some unique challenges. The College of Education (COE) has many more part-time and non-tenure track faculty (over 80) than tenure-track faculty (38). Only about 30 of the 38 tenure-track faculty are instructional faculty. The COE receives about $21M in grants yearly and many tenure-track faculty buy out of teaching. Dean Bricker told the committee of COEŐs search solutions to two perceived problems: What to call the NTTIF in COE and how to treat them fairly and equitably. She told us that a search of how other institutions approached similar situations revealed the uses of special ranks for NTTIF, like "Clinical Faculty" or "Practice Faculty." A proposal to adopt the special ranks of "Program Faculty" for NTTIF within the COE, was not approved by the Vice President for Academic Affairs. The ranks allowed are Instructor, Senior Instructor, Visiting Faculty, and Adjunct Faculty (where "Faculty" would be Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor). Many NTTIF within the COE feel that taking a rank of instructor would damage their future career chances. The COE has been able to use dual titles to help with this: Research Associate/Assistant Professor. Dean Bricker remarked that the first part of these dual titles, as well as "Visiting" and "Adjunct," at times get dropped by NTTIF in their correspondence, etc., thus losing a crucial distinction.

Of the 80 or so NTTIF, about half stay for relatively long periods of time, while the other half turn over. The volatile half are often local teachers hired to supervise students in Practicums and are most often hired as Adjunct Faculty. Because of the long-term nature of some NTTIFŐs employment by the COE and the various decisions made when they were initially hired, the COE NTTIF have a huge array of ranks and titles, including officers of instruction, officers of administration, and officers of research. Dean Bricker said that COE hopes to standardize these in the near future. The COE tries to maintain general parity, especially for tenure-track faculty, but faces the same problems that other units within the University face, including salary compression. They are trying to minimize the differences between tenured and non-tenured faculty. The NTTIF are often much more heavily involved in teaching than the tenure-track faculty, yet COE wants to avoid making them second-class citizens.

Tenured faculty face annual reviews and three-year reviews with specific criteria such as teaching, publications, scholarship, and service. Among NTTIF, those with the rank of Instructor may be promoted without tenure to the rank of Senior Instructor if they teach well and demonstrate leadership within their field. Some NTTIF have served well over six years at the rank of Instructor. The ranks carrying the prefixes "Visiting" and "Adjunct" are given using criteria for the tenure-track faculty.

The flexibility it affords the various units within COE provides strong incentive to continue the current levels of employment of NTTIF. The COE values this flexibility, but is open to the UniversityŐs providing a "bottom line" for such positions.