Executive vice president and provost Elizabeth Hoffman presented her annual report on promotion and tenure reviews at the May 1 Faculty Senate meeting. Her office approved 68 of 71 P&T applications in 2011-12. Two additional faculty withdrew their applications.
Twenty-nine tenured faculty earned promotions to professor, one faculty member was promoted to professor with tenure and 38 faculty were granted associate professor with tenure status. Two tenured faculty failed to earn promotions to professor, and one was denied a promotion to associate professor with tenure.
Hoffman said her office is examining the P&T review process, and taking a closer look at faculty grouped by hire date.
"Starting this year, we're going to do a cohort analysis of the faculty who start this year," Hoffman said. "We're going to follow them through their careers here, so we can be able to report -- particularly to the [State Board of] regents and the legislature -- how rigorous the process is."
As an example, Hoffman showed that among the 77 tenure-eligible faculty hired for the 2006-07 academic year, 48 (62.3 percent) now are tenured. Three currently are on tenure clock extensions, and 26 (33.8 percent) left ISU without tenure.
"One of the things we can report to the board is that even though a very high percentage of those that come up for tenure get tenure, there are reasons why faculty leave before they get tenure," she said. "Over the last several years, our hope has been that we can help faculty make that decision before they get turned down, rather than coming up against the final year and getting turned down for tenure."
The upcoming cohort studies also will take a look at the reasons why faculty leave before earning tenure.
"What we are trying to do is collect data going forward telling us who left because they got another job and who left because they were turned down at the third year review. That's what we don't know right now," Hoffman said.
Passing the gavel
Senate president Steve Freeman handed over the gavel to president-elect Suzanne Hendrich, University Professor in food science and human nutrition, closing the books on the senate's business for the academic year.
A proposed Ph.D. program in wind energy science, engineering and policy was introduced and will be first on the 2012-13 docket next fall. The multidisciplinary program involves departments and centers in the colleges of Engineering, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Liberal Arts and Sciences.
