The last budget cycle struck protections for tenure at the university from state statutes. Following this, several faculty have left UW-Madison and former professor Sara Goldrick-Rab has even called the current framework, “fake tenure.”
The Faculty Senate meet this week to debate a post-tenure-review policy they will present to the Regents this spring.
“We have before us an opportunity to choose between accepting the Regent interim policy or submitting a revised policy of our own,” Amy Wendt, chair of the University Committee, said.
After the removal of tenure protection, the Board of Regents began to remove stipulations from UW System policies that weakened the program for faculty. After a change made by Regents to the UW-System policy, an original draft was returned as it was determined that it did not meet new standards.
The senate must approve a revised proposal to be approved by the Board in April or UW-Madison will be forced to adopt a policy provided by the Regents.
Wendt told the committee that the most significant change to the UW System gave greater authority to administration in the review process. Under the Board’s policy, findings from a review by other faculty members would be given to the Dean of the department who would have final say.
An ad-hoc committee under the University Committee has modeled a draft after the UW-Milwaukee, Wendt said, that would protect faculty from arbitrary decisions by the Dean or head of department.
The policy proposal states that the dean would do a “sufficiency review” to ensure that the faculty review is through. Only if the dean disagrees with the faculty review would the provost be called upon to make the final decision.
A representative from Food Science said that they were told tenure protection wouldn’t be weakened, only transferred.
“They're basically asking us to stick it to ourselves and send it through the faculty governance system back up to them, to give them what they wanted,” the representative said.
He questioned the faculty’s ability to trust leadership and questioned the ability of administration to ultimately overrule the faculty.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank responded that any dean or provost who went against a clear recommendation from the faculty would be effectively saying they would no longer be a faculty member.
Kurt Paulsen, a senator for Urban and Regional Planning, noted that the Regent’s policy “refers to a dean’s reviews as an independent substantive review, which is quite a different concept than a sufficiency review.”
He echoed the sentiments of other senators and said while the proposal may not be ideal, it seemed to be the best option to preserve some shared governance.
