Industrial & Labor Relations School Lets Students Serve in Tenure Review

ITHACA, N.Y.--The faculty of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations (I&LR) voted two weeks ago to allow at leas two students to participate in the tenure-review process of the school.

The faculty changed its tenure-review policy to allow one graduate and one undergraduate to serve as non-voting members of the ad hoc committees that study the qualifications of professors up for tenure.

The change--adopted on a trial basis, to be reviewed after three years--makes the I & LR school the only college at Cornell in which students are permitted to serve in the tenure-review process, Susan E. Bisom, a student government members said.

Last fall, 60 per cent of the I & LR student body signed a student government petition calling for direct student participation in the school tenure-review process, and the establishment of teaching as a criterion for tenure review.

A straw faculty vote last fall showed that the faculty was in favor of giving research more weight than teaching in tenure decisions, Bisom said.

The new policy does not assign more weight to any particular criterion, but states that if a tenure candidate falls short of excellence in an area the candidate should demonstrate "excellence in one activity and substantial strength in the other."