Council to Advocate Student Tenure Input

Last night's Undergraduate Council endorsement of a sub-committee report on tenure is a "first step" toward improving the tenure process, but the proposal still faces several Faculty votes before it will take effect, council members said last night.

"The report doesn't mean anything unless we get results," said Evan J. Mandery '89, chairman of the academics committee, which authored the report. But he added that he is fairly optimistic that the proposal will receive the support of the Faculty.

The tenure proposal calls on the Faculty to formalize the channels for student input into the tenure process, and revive the post of tenured associate professor.

Under the proposal, students would be "incorporated in to the tenure process through the existing departmental student-faculty committees." Although currently these committees are confined to discussions of teaching and tutorials, tenure appointments would be considered discussions for the committees if the report passes.

"We think it's important that student input be formalized," said Mandery.

Several council members said that if the proposal is approved, teaching ability will become a much more important element in the tenure process.

According to the report "student disgruntlement" with the tenure system has been generated by the denial of tenure to a number of professors who were, "outstanding teachers" and "extremely dedicated to their students."

A lot of the "student frustration of the fall semester was because there are no institutionalized channels for student input," said Amy B. Zegart '89, vice chairman of the council.

If approved, the proposal will make teaching "stand out as a more important consideration" in tenure considerations, said Zegart.

The report says that the evaluation of a tenure candidate's teaching ability by the departmental chairman is "inadequate." Students "would be of much more use," particularly when considering a professor's accessibility and communicational skills, according to the report.

But the proposal still faces the opposition of those faculty members who argue that students input risks theconfidentiality of the tenure process, councilmembers said.

In response to that concern the report saysthat by utilizing the relatively smallstudent-faculty committees as the chief means ofstudent input their proposal maintains thissecrecy.

In addition to increasing student input, theproposal calls on the Faculty to make the post ofassociate professorship a tenured appointment,which existed until 1968.

But "reintroducing associate tenure as a meansof promoting more internal junior faculty tolifetime posts could greatly benefit the Faculty,"the report reads.

Such tenure would benefit in particular thoseprofessors who have not yet proven themselves asscholars, but have proved to be good teachers,Mandery said.

Although some members of the faculty said thatassociate tenure will create an "overly stratifiedfaculty," this is not a "particulary compellingreason to forego reestablishing the tenuredassociate professorship," the report reads.

If the Committee on Undergraduate Educationvotes favorably on the proposal at their nextmeeting on March 19, it will then go before theFaculty Council. Pending its approval, there couldbe a vote by the full Faculty as soon as thisspring.

Although CUE postponed a vote last Thursday,some of the members there said that "if studentsfeel misrepresented, the [tenure] system should bechanged."

"We would be very disappointed if the argumentsin the report aren't enough to move the CUE tovote," said Council Chairman Richard S. Eisert'88. He said that the report "can only be asalutary mechanism."

In unrelated business, the council unanimouslyvoted for a campus-wide food survey to get studentinput on the quality of the food services. Thequestionaire, which will be paid for by FoodServices, asks students to select their favoritedining hall of ferings.

The council also voted unanimously toappropriate $156.50 for the printing costs ofpamphlets about "available wordprocessingfacilities" to be delivered at all undergraduatesuites.

The purpose of the pamphlets "is to inform theundergraduates of every possible wordprocessingfacility and when they can be used," said JenniferL. Lai '88