Faculty and students will be able to voice their opinions about a proposed promotion and tenure policy at open forums Wednesday and April 22.

During the forum, the Faculty Senate Committee to Review ISU Promotion & Tenure Criteria and Procedures will review major changes that are represented in the draft promotion tenure document.

Olivia Madison, professor of library and committee chair, said changes are primarily in the tenure review process, including “changes in how we evaluate teaching, research and artistic activities and extension/professional practice.”

The new plan also broadens the definition of scholarship.

“In the past scholarship has been associated only with research and artistic activities,” Madison said.

The new plan includes outcomes that involve teaching, extension and professional practice as well, she said.

The new plan also focuses on the activities of faculty based on their position responsibilities, rather than just focusing on one area of excellence as required in the current document.

“The plan also requires a third year preliminary review of probationary faculty as well as five-year periodic peer reviews for tenured faculty,” Madison said.

“The reviews would be conducted by the departments including peers in the DEO and based on an individual’s position responsibilities as applied to promotion and tenure criteria,” she said.

“We hope to receive input regarding those changes from the people who attend,” Madison said.

Mike Whiteford, professor and chair of anthropology, said he is glad discussion about tenure is beginning.

“I think one of the things that is perhaps most controversial are the proposals related to post-tenure review and I happen to be a fairly strong supporter,” he said. “I think we’ll see things like post tenure review emerging on campus.”

Pete Sherman, associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, said he encourages all students and faculty to get involved.

“I sent a memo out to all the faculty,” he said.

Sherman said he is concerned that the new plan is moving more toward running the university like a business.

There has been concern about having dead-weight professors, he said, but such concerns are unfounded because the faculty handbook provides for the dismissal of tenured professors who show incompetence.

“My feeling is, number one, it is essentially elimination of tenure as it is now perceived,” he said.

Doing this, he said, will cause faculty to “be tiptoeing for the rest of their lives.”

He said faculty will not be able to speak out against things as freely.

“I would not have spoken out if I had not had tenure,” during the McHubb issue, he said, because he would have feared personal repercussions.

Sherman said this new plan is dangerous because it allows departments to individually determine what unsatisfactory is by whatever standards they want.

He said it is important for departments to have input in this, but that final decisions about incompetency need to be made at a higher, more objective level.

The committee will modify the plan based on feedback before presenting it to the Faculty Senate for consideration next fall.

The committee has been working on the draft for 11 months, Madison said. After submitting the plan in the fall, the document needs to go through the Board of Regents.

Madison said final approval should happen early in the spring semester of 1998.

The forums will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday’s forum will be held in 101 Carver, and the second forum will be held in the Gold Room of the Memorial Union next Tuesday.

The draft of the proposed policy was presented at the Faculty Conference March 21-22 in Grinnell and is available online through the Faculty Senate’s homepage or in the Faculty Senate office.

Comments on the plan should be directed to Olivia Madison, 102B Parks Library, by fax at 294-4945 or by e-mail at [email protected].