The Faculty Senate will host a spring faculty retreat Friday and Saturday to discuss the university’s promotion and tenure process.

Susan Carlson, associate provost, said four years ago the university started to use a new promotion and tenure process that was “forward-looking” and it changed how the work of faculty was viewed. She said the question now is if the new system is working.

“This conference comes at a good time to see how we are using it and making sure it is working,” Carlson said.

Jack Girton, Faculty Senate president-elect, said the current university promotion and tenure policy evaluates faculty work on the basis of scholarship. Girton, associate professor of zoology and genetics, said the definition of what scholarship is and what areas of work it related to were vague to some faculty members.

He said the 90 conference participants will be looking at the work of Ernest Boyer and Charles Glassick, both members of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Glassick and Boyer worked together on a report that defined scholarship and provided a way to evaluate scholarship work, he said.

“In promotion and tenure, we need a definition of scholarship and a mechanism to assess if the work fits the definition,” Girton said.

He said one question that will be asked at the retreat is if Glassick and Boyer’s system of evaluating scholarship should be implemented at Iowa State.

“We need to find out if there are any partial feelings on the topic,” he said.

Girton said the conference will be composed of two panel discussions and small group breakout sessions. The first panel will feature faculty who have had experience working in the promotion and tenure process. They will share ideas on what has worked in the past and what could be improved upon in the future.

The small breakout sessions during the event will feature discussions on different aspects of the promotion and tenure process, such as actual tenure cases, the land grant university mission and how it affects promotion and tenure, what scholarship is and student evaluations of teaching, Girton said.

The second panel will discuss the current system. Girton said Grahm Spanier, president of the American Association of Land Grant Universities, will be featured on the panel. Girton said Spanier’s expertise in the role of the land grant school in society is important to the promotion and tenure issue.

Girton said many key ISU figures are planning to attend the conference. Five deans and three associate deans, 10 department chairs and a mix of faculty at all levels plan to be in attendance along with ISU President Gregory Geoffroy and Provost Ben Allen.

Carlson said the goals of the conference are to see if there are ways to refine the current policy and improve communication and understanding of the policy.

“The conference is important because it will allow us to understand where we are in the use of this policy,” she said.