Viewpoint

‘New standards don’t give proper support to faculty’

By Geoffrey D. Guttmann

Last October, the faculty of this university gathered together to discuss the new University Standards on Tenure and Promotion.  In actuality, these are not “new” but “modified” standards.  In essence the university administration, through Vice President and Provost Michael Atkinson, has done nothing more than “reinvent the wheel”.  Therefore I would propose a new standard for tenure and promotion based upon the idea that being a faculty member is not just a job, where one meets a standard based upon certain pieces of inanimate data, but a lifelong journey of experiences.

Assist. Prof. Geoffrey Guttmann

When we go on a journey, our friends and colleagues most often ask the following three questions: Where have you been? Where are you going? How are you getting there and can we help?  Most faculty members would like to think that being an academic is a lifelong journey peppered with various interesting and exciting experiences that can also be related to the students in their teaching.  When we apply for a faculty position, our future colleagues want to know where have we been and where do we want to go.  It is also important that the question, “How can the University help you reach your goal and achieve satisfying success in your career?” be asked of the future faculty member.  Should not the University Standards on Tenure and Promotion reflect this attitude?

The University seems to follow the Jewish Calendar when it comes to tenure and promotion.  Each fall, the Jewish calendar includes the Days of Awe, which are between the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, where one should take the time to reflect upon their life during the past year, ask for forgiveness and look forward to the next year.  Well, the University asks the faculty to reflect upon their accomplishments each fall, but that’s it.  Shouldn’t we be looking forward to the next academic year?  How can we improve our teaching?  How can we improve our research?  What are our goals for the next academic year? 

Again, the University must ask, “How can we help you reach those goals?”  The University Standards on Tenure and Promotion defines more items to be required and asks that promotions be evaluated in a particular manner with supposedly set criteria.  The standards micromanage the teaching of the different subjects that are taught at this University.  Wouldn’t this aspect be best left to the faculty and students?  The proposed solution of requiring a dossier for every facet of a faculty member’s professional life is ludicrous and, in my opinion, seems to be a bureaucrat’s fantasy to not having to make a real decision about that person’s potential.  Shouldn’t the faculty members of a particular department be able to pass judgement on their colleague’s work?  Under the proposed University Standards, it is intimated that one must have funding in hand upon taking up employment at the University otherwise, you will be doomed to not receive tenure or promotion.  After all, is the University going to supply startup funding for new faculty so they have an appropriate beginning to their academic career and meet the new tenure and promotion standards?  I doubt it!  Is the University going to make sure that the new faculty member has a reduced teaching load for their first two to three years?  I doubt it!  If the University of Saskatchewan wants to behave like the “Big Universities”, I suggest they take a hard look at how the “Big Universities” operate.  “Big Universities” provide appropriate startup monies.  They reduce new faculty member’s teaching load to nothing in the first year and slowly buildup the teaching load to half that of a typical faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan.

University Standards should ensure that each faculty member is given equal opportunity to explore various avenues in their research or scholarly work, achieve their career goals, substantiate their work with an appropriate portfolio, and demonstrate their ability as a “true” academic.  The proposed University Standards on Tenure and Promotion do none of the above.  They do more to force conformity and follow the bureaucrat’s delight of never having to make a decision.  As Doug Caldwell pointed out in his open letter printed in OCN’s Viewpoint, September 1, 2000, “The proposed standards are mute and presume that this issue [taking substantial intellectual and professional risks] does not exist or is of no consequence.”

It is time to think “outside the box”.  It is time to propose University Standards that ask the questions, “Where have you been? Where do you want to go? and, How can we help you get there?”  It is time ask how did the “Big Universities” get there.  It is time to ask how did their faculty get to where they are?

Geoffrey D. Guttmann is an Assistant Professor in the U of S Dept. of Anatomy & Cell Biology.