Approved November 29, 2016
Based upon the findings of a 2016 survey of Emory College Lecture Track Faculty, the Emory chapter of the American Association of University Professors endorses the LTF recommendations and calls on the Emory College administration, chairs, directors, and faculty to enhance the College Mission and improve faculty climate as follows:
- Require transparency and promote equity in Lecture Track Faculty (LTF) guidelines from department leaders: issues include salary and raises, release time for administrative leadership, funding for travel, recognition and reward for research on annual reviews, and opportunities in academic leadership roles.
- Expand scholarship support—given the high level of LTF scholarship activity, the annual offering of 1-2 Winship Awards seems inadequate. Professor of Pedagogy /Practice /Performance could receive an automatic leave upon promotion. Emory could be a leader in the support of discipline-based education research (DBER), a national trend of rigorous scholarship that includes 40% of the LTF, by offering competitive internal research funds.
- Increase support and recognition of excellent teaching—with the granting of 3 Williams Awards per year in the College, the maximum recognition of excellent teaching is limited to <1% of the faculty each decade. Enhanced recognition has the potential to catalyze education reform and excellence by LTF and TTF.
- Examine LTF salary levels and security mechanisms at Emory and comparable institutions.
Furthermore, the Emory AAUP chapter calls for creating a path to tenure for LTF. As the national AAUP states:
The AAUP holds that all full-time faculty members, regardless of rank, are to be considered eligible for tenure. The AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure insist that, “with the exception of special appointments clearly limited to a brief association with the institution, . . . all full-time faculty appointments are of two kinds: (1) probationary appointments; (2) appointments with continuous tenure.”
The AAUP also supports tenure for part-time faculty members. The AAUP’s report on Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments recommends “fractional positions, including fully proportional pay, that are eligible for tenure and benefits, with proportional expectations for service and professional development.”[1]
To protect academic freedom for all faculty, we call on the College and University to ensure that after a number of successive reviews for reappointments, all faculty may be able to pursue a path toward continuous appointment via tenure.
AAUP @ EMORY 