Inside Iowa State

April 27, 2007

Senators ponder new research position

by Erin Rosacker

A resolution to create a new non-tenure eligible research (NTER) faculty position was introduced at the Faculty Senate's final meeting of the semester on April 24, giving senators the entire summer to consider the language. The senate's executive board introduced the resolution, which would create a Research Professor position with ranks at assistant, associate or full professor.

The resolution evolved from a senate task force report and a draft resolution developed by the governance council and the faculty development and administration relations council.

"The executive board has not taken a position regarding the recommendations of the task force," said senate president Gregory Palermo. "It has overseen develop-ment of a resolution for consideration of the full senate on the merits of the recommendations and the proposed resolution enabling them."

Three items, modified for the final resolution, were pinpointed by Palermo as crucial to consider:

• Allow professional and scientific (P&S) employees at or above the P-17 level to simultaneously hold an NTER faculty appointment.
• Allow persons denied tenure at ISU to apply for an NTER position after three years.
• Remove language related to bridge funding.

"Throughout the discussion of this, I think none of us were aware of the sensitivity of the P&S issue," said executive vice president and provost Elizabeth Hoffman.

Alan Goldman, professor of physics and astronomy and interim director of the Ames Laboratory, was on hand to address senators about the P&S issue.

"In the form [the resolution] took before - with the exclusion of P&S from holding these non-tenure eligible faculty research positions - it would have a very significant, chilling effect upon centers' and laboratories' ability to hire and retain very high quality staff, who also enable faculty research within those centers and in large part contribute to the research efforts of the laboratories and centers," Goldman said.

Presidential review

Ann Thompson, chair of the task force that reviewed President Gregory Geoffroy and the office of the president, summarized the group's final report.

"In one sense, this is really a stunning report," Thompson said. "The message that came through very clearly was that President Geoffroy has earned the trust and the respect of the academic community."

The task force provided a set of recommendations resulting from concerns raised during the review process - including many shared by the president. They include:

• Continue collaborative work on improving faculty salaries
• Make future searches for highly visible positions more open
• Enhance communication, particularly with President's Council and Deans' Council
• Reinforce the importance and value of arts, humanities and social sciences
• Educate university community on the role of the university president

Geoffroy requested that the entire report be made public. It will be available soon online at www.facsen.iastate.edu.

Promotion, tenure and NTE faculty

Hoffman presented senators with a report on this year's promotion and tenure numbers, as well as statistics on the amount of teaching done by non-tenure eligible (NTE) faculty.

The provost office considered 74 promotion and tenure cases, approving 38 for tenure and 26 for promotion to full professor. Three faculty were given extensions on their tenure clocks, including two who were denied at the college level. The provost denied four tenure cases and one promotion.

"As a long-run strategy, we would be better served by extending the tenure clock in cases where people were extraordinary in all but one aspect of their [position responsibility statement], and where there seemed to be evidence that there was improvement in that aspect or they had a good chance of crossing the bar in a two-year period," Hoffman said.

In data compiled for the fall 2006 semester, the average amount of teaching done by NTE faculty at Iowa State hovered around 25 percent. When calculating the numbers by using the percentage of sections taught by NTE faculty, ISU's median was 22.5 percent and its average was 23.3 percent. The Faculty Senate adopted a policy in 2001 that set guidelines to limit NTE instruction to 25 percent for departments and 15 percent for the university. This year, NTE instructional faculty numbers increased to 1,604, up from 1,592 in fall 2005.

In a departmental breakdown, 11 were below 10 percent, while 23 exceeded the 25 percent limit. Of those over the limit, music (50.1 percent) and world languages and cultures (49.5 percent) topped the list.

"Some departments choose to have non-tenure eligible faculty because it brings expertise to the department from a professional point of view," Hoffman said. "But we need to be very careful, as the budget improves, to reinvest in some of these departments to make sure that our teaching is done by more tenure-eligible faculty. That's certainly going to be a priority of mine."

"In the form [the resolution] took before - with the exclusion of P&S from holding these non-tenure eligible faculty research positions - it would have a very significant, chilling effect upon centers' and laboratories' ability to hire and retain very high quality staff, who also enable faculty research within those centers and in large part contribute to the research efforts of the laboratories and centers."

Alan Goldman, interim director of Ames Laboratory