Iowa State University


Inside Iowa State
April 2, 1999

Letter

To the editor:

Two questions are very much in need of discussion at ISU: (1)What constitutes peer review? and (2)What legitimate restrictions can be placed on the outcome of post-tenure review? The debate last year was so polarized that these very real issues never even surfaced.

Individual "position responsibility statements" have been represented as innocuous bits of procedural detail hardly worthy of comment, yet half-way between normal peer review for promotion and tenure and the writing up of those responsibility statements is a profound increase in the power of DEOs over individual faculty members, a major shift in the way workloads are assigned, publication quotas and unregulated use of student evaluation data.

The Faculty Senate needs to call a timeout while some of these issues are discussed. Later may be too late.

-- Virginia Allen
Graduate College

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