University of the Incarnate Word Develops Equitable Tenure Process

The University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) is a university on the move. What was once a traditional liberal arts school in San Antonio has grown to more than 7,000 students across Texas and more than 1,000 students on international campuses in Mexico and Europe. UIW recently opened new schools of pharmacy and optometry, with even more professional schools planned for the future. The university has 300 faculty members, about 175 of whom have tenure.

A Need for Change

Rapid growth, and a realization that the tenure process was not uniform across the university, created the need for a tenure improvement initiative. The threat of litigation was also an issue. “We had grown quite a bit, and we had some ‘near misses’ over issues of tenure and promotion,” says Dr. Denise Doyle, chancellor and former provost.

As a first step, the school conducted a United Educators (UE) workshop: “The Goal is Fairness: Improving Tenure Evaluation.” Both faculty and administrators participated. “It was the perfect time [to examine the tenure process], because the university has grown and become more complex. Our policies have to grow with us,” Doyle says.

According to Doyle and Doug Endsley, vice president of business and finance, UIW faculty and administrators took three key lessons from the workshop:

• The importance of candor. At UIW, deans review professors’ classroom performance. Some professors felt that these teaching evaluations were not providing honest feedback. The university “was getting flak from professors who received good teaching evaluations but then [they] asked ‘What happened?’ when the tenure process did not go as smoothly as they expected,” says Endsley.
• Consistent and well-known policies. Incoming faculty did not understand how much published scholarship and creative work was necessary to achieve tenure. “We had faculty who were confused as to whether they would get tenure or not. There shouldn’t be that kind of gap between knowledge and expectation,” Doyle says.
• Fairness to all faculty. The university recognized that tenure requirements should be specific and faculty from across the institution should be involved in the formation of new expectations. Experienced faculty “are reluctant to put numbers on scholarship or teaching outcomes,” Doyle says. On the other hand, “it’s not fair to be unclear to new faculty.”

A Redesigned Tenure Process

The workshop led to a three-year tenure improvement program. Working with a UE risk management consultant, UIW launched the following initiatives:

• Scholarship task force. The task force worked with the Faculty Senate to revise the faculty handbook, adding specific guidelines for determining scholarship expectations for promotion and tenure. The guidelines organize the most common scholarship activities into categories and activities are assigned points that lead to promotion. Deans adapted a scholarship checklist for use in annual merit evaluations of faculty.
• Third-year review process. In a faculty member’s third year, the dean’s annual evaluation anticipates the review for tenure in year six. A three-year holistic view of performance in four categories is used. The review also includes “Institutional Fit,” a grading metric that enables the dean to comment on how faculty “fit in” at UIW. The dean’s feedback is summarized in a letter to the faculty member, including what should be sustained or improved for tenure recommendation in year six.
• Ask force on teaching. Teaching evaluations are completed online, and the evaluation and tenure processes are clearly linked. UIW also revised its student evaluation process. “Student evaluation plays a significant role in the pre-tenure process,” says Doyle. A below-normal evaluation triggers immediate review to determine the problem. Faculty members also have access to the teaching checklists deans use in the annual evaluation.

Completely revising a tenure process is no easy feat, but Doyle says the faculty response was positive. Applying policies consistently across schools led to increased collegiality at UIW. “It makes for a more unified faculty when these things are consistent,” says Doyle. “All our procedures are now standardized from the moment we offer you a job, through your first year of teaching, on toward tenure.”

She recommends that all schools standardize their tenure process, not just those in a pattern of growth. “Universities shouldn’t put off necessary revisions or reviews of processes and handbooks, because it’s possible for change to overtake you. That puts you at risk of litigation. We are now in a stronger position to address change.”