Last semester Faculty Senate approved a document allowing Missouri Southern to have a tenure process.

Now the tenure committee is working on getting the document finalized so it can be added to the faculty handbook. 

Nii Abrahams, chair of the tenure committee, said the work is now in its beginning stages.

“We haven’t worked anything out yet,” he said. “We had a proposal and I think the initial document … was approved by the faculty senate, had a five year timeline. The VPAA made a suggestion that we might want to make it six or seven. I think it’s a good idea — that’s standard in most schools so I think we’re going to take it up to six or seven years, but the committee will have to sit down and do that. In terms of the actual timeline, we haven’t worked anything out yet but I promise we’ll be doing that in the next week or so.” 

The committee met with Dr. AJ Anglin twice last month to discuss what the administration wanted to see in the document. The committee generally agreed with Anglin and took his considerations into suggestion.

“On a document this important it doesn’t just stop with the faculty,” Anglin said. “It also has to have administrative ownership, and for better or for worse will be seen through the eyes of the president and the Board of Governors through me. We have mutual evaluation of a document that has merit, that has value that can stand the test of time over the years.”

Abrahams said new employees’ ability to receive tenure will be based on three areas of teaching, service and scholarship, which Anglin brought up in the meetings. Teaching will be determined inside the classroom and will be based in part on peer and student evaluations, while service will be based on extra service to the University and community abroad. Scholarship, however, will be a different situation.

“The traditional way to define scholarship is to define things that people have published [in] peer review journals, but there are … also other areas of scholarship,” Abrahams said. 

“So somebody could have come up with an innovative way to teach a class. That could be considered a scholarship. In the document that we have, we have defined areas that could be identified as scholarship. 

“There is a little bit more leeway defining what scholarship is depending of the area, even though the most common way of defining scholarship is by writing in peer review journals. That is not the only way to define scholarship.” 

Examples included the music and theatre departments, which Abrahams said could keep up with their fields by continuing to write and perform their arts, and for those in the school of business to write to peer review journals.

“The whole idea about scholarship is that we want to have faculty members that are, once they get an appointment or once they get their degrees, want to keep up in their field, so however they keep up with the field in that particular area is the most important thing.”  

Prior to this document, Missouri Southern has lacked a specific tenure procedure, though tenure has been given to individuals in their time at the University, sometimes without any mention.

“When I was here for my fifth year I went to Jack and said, ‘What’s the procedure for me achieving tenure? I’m in the midst of my sixth year,'” said Stephen Schiavo, member of the tenure committee. “He said you’ve got tenure and, well, nobody told me. He said if you’re still here then you’ve got tenure. 

“I would have liked a letter or, well there wasn’t a brass band walking down the street but some kind of convocation, recognition.”

Schiavo said he would like to see some kind of formal acknowledgment for those who receive tenure in the future. 

Another point of discussion was a change in the length of time it takes for a person to get tenure and the signposts along the way, along with the level of detail that should be in the final document.

“Certainly at the end of the second year, I would really want my dean making a very deliberate assessment of all the data that the department chairs put together,” Anglin said. 

“The student evals are there, my portfolio is there; I’d like to get a reading of that because if there are some issues, I need to know that.”

Anglin said the document should be written for new faculty so they know how to get and maintain their job from the beginning. 

He also suggested that colleague interaction be part of the process so people know how well they can work with those already in the system.

“I would look at it as a document [for those] coming in new to the system,” Anglin said. “What do I need to know for the guideline that’s specific enough that helps me navigate through this?

“It’s the institution’s responsibility to help the faculty member be successful. It’s our responsibility, and by that, meaning to provide input. 

It’s to provide resources, many times collegial resources. That’s why I like colleagues interacting with colleagues. They’re your best resource.”

Anglin said he would like to see the third year evaluations moved to the second year so corrections could be made earlier than currently proposed.

There is also a plan for two committees to decide if a faculty member should get tenure when the time comes, though the idea has not been finalized.

“These are things that have to be worked out,” Abrahams said. “We do have a promotional committee right now — we don’t have a tenure committee on campus, so once this document is done, the way the document is written right now, there are essentially two committees that will look at the tenure document. 

“One is a department committee and the other is … what we call a local committee. For example, we have departments that don’t have a lot of faculty so you could easily get a group of admins together and get a group we call a local tenure committee and they will look at it. 

“There’s also going to be the big, University wide tenure committee so those are the two committees that will be looking at the tenure document as it comes up, so what we want is more faculty input. 

“Peers will look at the document and decide if this is a candidate or this is a faculty member that we want to hand over, that we can trust, with the future of this school and we want to demonstrate that they merit the distinction of that honor.” 

The committee wants to bring the final document to Faculty Senate in April so it can be pvoted on for placement in the faculty handbook.

As of press time the document is being reviewed by the President’s Council and the committee is waiting for feedback.