Tenure is a status granted to a professor typically after six years of demonstrating qualification in teaching, service and research (or professional development). The awards most attributed to tenure are job security, higher wages and academic freedom in their research and teaching, dean of the college of science and mathematics Phil Bailey said. Faculty members begin the tenure-track process when they are hired as professors.
“The whole deal with tenure is to give faculty members the opportunity to have reasonable research agendas and reasonable innovations goals within their academic career without intimidation of others who may not agree with what they’re doing,” Bailey said, “and it does give a lot of permanency a lot of people don’t have in their jobs.”
The university’s tenure-track system sets time periods and requirements for faculty to follow in order to eventually achieve tenure status, and guidelines vary by each college.
To start at the beginning, faculty job opportunities at Cal Poly come in two forms: lecturers and tenure-track professors.
Those chosen as lecturers typically have a master’s degree, but may get the job with only a bachelor’s degree, depending on the college and the applicant’s level of experience, associate dean of the college of liberal arts Debra Valencia-Laver said. Lecturers are not entitled to promotion and although they do not technically have job security, “in some ways they build an entitlement for that same number of units for next year,” Valencia-Laver said. In other words, they are not guaranteed a job but they do take priority over new applicants.
Lecturers can be either part time or full time.
Part-time lecturers are those who have taught at the university every quarter of the past year. On the other hand, full-time lecturers are on three-year contracts that can be renewed as long as their yearly evaluations are satisfactory.
“It’s not the same kind of job security like tenure (status), but there is some recognition of a continuing relationship with those lecturers,” Valencia-Laver said.
For tenure-track positions, a whole different status than lecturers, an assistant professor is the bottom rung of the tenure-track process. An assistant professor must have at least a master’s degree and will typically spend six years earning their way to get promoted to associate professor, the next rung on the ladder in the process, and tenure. This process occurs through an extensive process of evaluation. Each promotion earns professors a minimum of a 7.5 percent increase in wages, Valencia-Laver said.
Before achieving promotion or tenure, professors are evaluated every year through four levels. The first level is evaluation by a professor’s own department, the second is by college committee (other faculty members who are already tenured), the third is by the college’s dean and the fourth and final say goes to the university provost, Enz Finken. Every two years, the evaluations go up to the department level, while every year in between goes up to the dean level, until about six years pass and professors go up for tenure. All four levels of evaluation take effect the year the candidate applies for tenure.
To receive good evaluations, professors must submit yearly evidence of their qualifications and progress, including peer reviews of their teaching, evidence of service to the department, college and university, evidence of scholarship and research and student evaluations.
Some Cal Poly professors view the tenure-track and evaluations as a very straightforward process.
“It’s like any job in a sense,” said Cal Poly English professor Dustin Stegner, who was promoted to associate professor this year. “We’re getting lots of feedback (each year); they tell you every year you’re making progress. The transparency is what makes (the process) most beneficial at Cal Poly, because not knowing would be really anxiety-producing.”
Each college defines what tenure expectations are, Stegner said, and the college of liberal arts, as well as the English department, helped him through grants and support.
Department and faculty support is common throughout the process, Brian Greenwood of the college of agriculture, food and environmental science said. Greenwood was promoted to associate professor last month and will go up for tenure this coming academic year.
“I have felt and feel very well supported,” he said. “I have great mentors here in my department; I have plugged into the resources on campus that academic personnel has provided to help explain the process, and I feel like Cal Poly does a pretty good job in that.”
Opinions of the process can vary by college, however.
Glen Gillen, who teaches physics in the college of science and mathematics, said he sees room for improvement in this evaluation process, as it puts too much pressure on candidates.
“What each level is looking for isn’t the same thing,” said Gillen, who obtained tenure and promotion to associate professor last month. “For some, (publishable research) is the top priority. For others, working with students is a top priority; the dean loves that we work with students. If I want good reviews at all levels … you basically have to do everything to make everybody happy.”
The research aspect in particular causes him a lot of stress, he said.
In the tenure process, a professor’s teaching, service, and publishable research (or professional development) are the three key factors determining qualification for tenure. Throughout Cal Poly’s history, the process was focused on the teaching aspect, Greenwood said. However, within the last 15 to 20 years, Cal Poly has migrated more towards a balance of the three factors, with a considerably higher expectation for publishable research.
“That’s kind of a natural process that’s just evolved, not just at Cal Poly,” Greenwood said. “If you don’t publish, if you don’t bring in money, you don’t get tenure.”
Contrary to Greenwood, Gillen does not find fairness in the increased expectation of research. He said “the expected research is what makes the workload for tenure track professor completely unreasonable.”
The time allotted through Weighted Teacher Units (WTUs), through which professors’ schedules are organized, only provides time for the teaching and service aspects of the job, Gillen said. Research must be done on a professor’s own time, which could take away from time helping and working with students, he said.
“To do publishable research is incredibly difficult to do on a part-time basis,” said Gillen, who worked four years as an experimentalist and theorist researcher at the Air Force Research Laboratory before coming to Cal Poly. In his field, doing part-time research on top of a full-time teaching job creates an unreasonable workload, he said.
“You do have to decide how to spend that time,” he added. “If your job depends upon getting publications, you’re gonna choose that.”
Gillen said he has turned down students who wanted to work with him in order to make time for research.
“For many of the theorists, it means you push the students away,” he said. “I lock myself in my office, and I plow through equations and I have to work by myself for long periods of time.”
The heavy workload of moving up to tenure has long-lasting effects, Gillen said.
“I feel like I’ve been working at an overtime job for six years,” he said. “What can happen to faculty members is you get burnt out; you get tired of working so much. You can become apathetic and lose that drive for perfection.”
Although professors may become weary after going through the promotion and tenure process, Greenwood said he believes it is a misperception that having tenure causes professors to check out.
“I don’t run into very many people in this field that don’t strive to be the best that they can possibly be,” Greenwood said. “We’re all overachievers; we’re all perfectionists. You don’t get a Ph.D without that. But I think what tends to happen is sometimes students run into maybe that one isolated professor who’s been in the position maybe too long and has tired and is grumpy.
“There’s a misperception that tenure protects the lazy or protects people from ever getting fired and there is a certain aspect to that protection, but that protection is earned. It’s six years of basically showing that you can maintain this level of academic excellence.”
Tenured professors still continue to strive to progress in their career, Greenwood said. Those who wish to become full professors keep up their teaching, service and publishable research for typically five more years before going up for promotion to full professor.
Bailey said he evaluates about 80 professors up for retention, promotion and tenure each year, and that he is complimented on his time, effort and quality in the evaluation process.
“(Professors) have a hard job,” Bailey said, “and I understand the stress that goes with it. On the other hand, I’ve been dean thirty years, and almost everyone has achieved tenure.”
Cal Poly’s tenure-track process is what makes for its great faculty, Bailey said.
“This whole process of hiring faculty members to the university is a serious and sincere process, and that’s why we get good people. That’s why most of them get tenure.”