The university's board of trustees on June 7
unanimously approved a long-debated reform to the schools
of Arts and Sciences and Engineering's promotion policy
that will allow tenure to be regularly conferred at the
appointment to the rank of associate professor, reducing by
four years the maximum amount of time a faculty member
remains on a tenure track.
The new policy, effective July 1, was approved in order to
strengthen academic excellence, to promote faculty
involvement in university life and to maintain Johns
Hopkins' competitiveness in recruiting and retaining
faculty of exceptional promise.
The existing policy in the two schools is to award
tenure upon the appointment or promotion to the rank of
professor, which could take up to 11 years. Faculty
appointed as assistant professors are considered for
promotion to associate professor no later than the sixth
year; associate professors are considered for promotion to
professor no later than the fifth year.
With the reform, promotion to the rank of associate
professor with tenure will be considered no later than the
seventh year of a faculty member's service at the rank of
assistant professor. In passing this reform, Johns Hopkins
falls in line with its peer institutions, which have long
held the practice of awarding tenure at the associate
professor level.
Adam Falk, vice dean of faculty in the School of Arts
and Sciences, said that with the university's current and
unique policy, it had become increasingly difficult to
retain and attract faculty.
"The competitiveness issue is perhaps the most
important," said Falk, a professor in the Physics and
Astronomy Department. "There are faculty at a point in
their career who are not tenured here, but they would be
tenured elsewhere. These are often some of the most active
and exciting faculty that we have. Faculty are also more
mobile than they used to be, so retaining this group has
been a real issue. And it's almost impossible to attract
associate professors here when they can be offered tenure
at other schools."
The two Homewood schools have periodically reviewed
their tenure policy and considered whether or not a
practice so divergent from the university's peers was in
its best interest. Falk said that the primary argument for
the old policy was that a school as relatively small as
Johns Hopkins could not afford to have even a tiny number
of unproductive faculty in the tenured ranks, and the long
period between appointment of an assistant professor and
the granting of tenure allowed the faculty member ample
time to develop his or her scholarship to the point that
its merit and potential were clear.
Falk said that with the new policy's shorter
timetable, decisions to grant tenure will become even more
difficult to make. In the past, when promotions and
appointments to associate professor were made, Falk said,
there were times when faculty might have been given the
benefit of the doubt because tenure was not being
granted.
"That option will certainly not be available anymore,"
he said. "Will standards be raised? I can safely say they
are already very high. The challenge will be to maintain
those high standards, and do so in a perhaps less forgiving
way. That is the judgment we will have to make, whether or
not a faculty member is unambiguously above the bar."
In 1986, a resolution was passed that allowed the
schools the option of granting tenure to associate
professors under special circumstances. Since then,
however, the granting of tenure to associate professors has
rarely occurred. At present, Arts and Sciences has 207
professors, 20 associate professors (one tenured) and 46
assistant professors. Engineering has 68 professors, 12
associate professors (one tenured) and 36 assistant
professors. Collectively, 71 percent of faculty at the two
schools hold tenure, a number that would go up under the
new system.
As part of the tenure reform, the review process will
change somewhat, too. Currently, a tenure application has
to be evaluated and approved on a departmental level and by
an ad hoc committee, the academic council and the board of
trustees. Falk said the new reform will make each of these
steps more independent and will require more thorough
information at each stage.
The new policy also aims to help faculty members
improve the quality of their scholarship, Falk said, as it
has been argued that the delay in granting tenure
encourages a lack of risk taking at a stage in their
careers that could be especially creative. When an
assistant professor in the humanities is promoted to
associate professor, for example, he or she then embarks on
his or her next project, typically another book.
"That is the point they might say, OK, I have four
years before I'm up for tenure; this is not the moment to
start something risky or long-term," Falk said. "Many
faculty choose a project they can clearly complete in the
three to four years, one that is safe. The old policy
doesn't push them into unknown territory because they don't
want to set out on a path they don't know how long it will
take to finish. Thus, they might do something more closely
aligned with work they have already done. Many felt they
were discouraged by the current clock. Understanding this
dynamic was the consideration that was the most surprising
and compelling for many of the people who came to support
the change."
The policy that goes into effect July 1 came from a
process of consideration that began three years ago.
Provost Steven Knapp said the university has been
extraordinarily diligent in evaluating the proposed reform
from every conceivable angle.
"The academic council spent the better part of a year
working out the details of the new policy and its
implementation," Knapp said. "This was one of the most
careful and thorough processes I've witnessed. What was
especially impressive was the seriousness with which the
council worked to balance fairness and rigor in the new
evaluation procedures."
Knapp also applauded the work of the special committee
appointed by the deans in 2001 to look into tenure reform.
"Many of us were skeptical when the change was first
proposed, but, through the hard work of the committee, we
became convinced that the new policy could significantly
strengthen our ability to recruit and retain faculty at one
of the most formative and productive times in their
careers."
Falk said the new policy has the added benefits of
increasing the number of tenured faculty who are at the
peak of their careers, and enhancing the university's
ability to recruit a more diverse faculty. Women and young
faculty, in particular, were hard to recruit due to the
perceived incompatibilities that a long-tenure track had
with a decision to start a family. The long-tenure process
also discouraged faculty from being as fully engaged with
the broad work of the university as they could have been,
Falk said.
"For faculty who are faced with a tenure decision,
their primary priority is to assemble the dossier that goes
with their tenure application," he said. "But this new
policy should keep a group of faculty here at a stage of
their careers when they are young and energetic and have a
lot to offer to students. We will capture a very important
group of faculty into being more fully engaged with all the
programs of the university. That will be extraordinarily
important to the undergrad programs."
Falk said that every current nontenured faculty member
will be given a year to decide if he or she wants to be in
the old or new system. Recently promoted untenured
associate professors will have the option of having their
cases reconsidered for tenure. There will be a two-year
transition period during which the two schools will resolve
all the tenure cases.
"We will rely on the department heads to provide
information to their faculty to help them make this
important decision, whether it's wise to take this course
of action or not, as we have an 'up or out' policy in
regard to promotion," he said. "These are very individual
situations that need to be considered."
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