Compendium of inclusive tenure and promotion policy
Four principles to embed DEIJ in faculty evaluation
This compendium features eight institutional examples of equitable approaches to tenure evaluation; when adopted widely, these efforts can help improve BIPOC faculty retention.
Underrepresented minority faculty represent only about 12% of tenure-track or tenured faculty, a number that has increased by just one percentage point in the last five years. Since faculty are overwhelmingly white, many institutions are implementing diversity recruitment strategies like inclusive job advertisements and cluster hiring.
While recruitment is challenging on its own, equally as challenging is retaining BIPOC faculty after their arrival, especially as they advance in their careers. BIPOC faculty job satisfaction can worsen due to unequal or invisible workloads or tenure denials. In response, progressive institutions are addressing this structural challenge with a structural solution:Â revising tenure and promotion (T&P) policy.
Our research revealed a notable shift in criteria and policy to reflect DEIJ-related contributions. After many years of not acknowledging efforts like community-based research and BIPOC student/faculty mentorship, institutions are beginning to reward these contributions, improving the tenure and promotion odds for BIPOC faculty. This compendium outlines four ways to make T&P more inclusive:
Establish broad and rigorously defined tenure and promotion policies
Provide universal and rigorous guidelines for each core activity of teaching, research, and service. This transparency ensures equal standards for all faculty members. These guidelines should also be broad enough to create room for units and departments to adapt policy to their context.
For example, in a STEM discipline, faculty could be tenured for environmental justice research created with and for local indigenous communities. Without clear definitions and expectations, tenure committees may not recognize this work as either research or service.
Alongside clear guidelines, clarify the difference between minimum contributions and exemplary contributions. For example, advising and mentoring is a typical service activity. Faculty who academically advise undergraduate or graduate students meet the minimum or baseline expectation.
A faculty member who advises a student organization that serves a historically marginalized student population (e.g., Black Student Union) could be considered beyond baseline expectations. An exemplary contribution might be mentoring a BIPOC undergraduate or graduate student beyond typical academic advising requirements like connecting a first-generation student to wraparound services on campus.
Guidelines to recognize nontraditional research
Expand research evaluation guidelines for promotion and tenure to recognize the innovation and diversity of scholarship that today’s faculty produce. Leaders should rely on robust and rigorous rubrics to better assess a wider range of faculty scholarship like nontraditional, community-based research, or campus-wide DEIJ reports on issues such as the admission rates of underrepresented minorities into doctoral/professional programs.
Evaluate and measure service workload
Establish tenure and promotion metrics that reward service that goes unnoticed. University leaders can implement guidelines to help units measure and evaluate service.
Implementing this approach places more value on all types of service activities whether it impacts an individual (e.g., student, faculty, community members, or organizations), a program, or the institution.
Expand teaching assessment criteria beyond student evaluation
Transition away from relying solely on student evaluations to assess faculty. Create robust and rigorous criteria with indicators like DEIJ-related professional development and mastery of student learning.
For each indicator within a teaching criterion, call on tenure candidates to provide examples of practices that demonstrate excellence. For example, a Classics professor could demonstrate inclusive teaching by participating in an antiracist curriculum discussion group and receive recognition for DEIJ-related professional development.
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