Standard V
Faculty
Nancy Kolodny
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Standard V |
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Faculty |
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Nancy Kolodny |
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Faculty Overview
One of Wellesley College's greatest assets is its excellent faculty (roughly 220 FTE). With nearly equal proportions of men and women, in the past decade the faculty has become increasingly diverse. In 1998-99, 69% of the 332 faculty members were full-time, with approximately 99% of the tenured and tenure-track faculty holding doctoral degrees or the equivalent. Of the 175 tenured faculty, 54% are women; in the tenure-track ranks, 59% of the faculty are women. Minority faculty constitute over 14% of the tenured, 27% of the tenure-track ranks, and overall 17% of the total tenured and tenure-track faculty.
Wellesley College also employs non-tenure-track faculty, largely in "leave replacement" positions. (See below for description of changes in reappointment policies for these faculty.) Since there is great turnover in this group from year to year, distributions by gender and ethnicity are variable. In 1998-99, for example, for all faculty (332 individuals (220 FTE)), including tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure track, 61% were women and 18% were minorities, closely paralleling the statistics for tenured and tenure-track faculty.
The size of the faculty, in terms of FTE, has been constant for the last five years, and provides a student:teacher ratio of about 10:1. The faculty grew by five permanent positions between 1990 and 1993, as a result of our commitment to improving our racial environment by increasing the presence of minority persons among faculty, students and staff. To this end, on March 8, 1990, a set of guidelines for "target-of-opportunity positions" was distributed to members of the faculty. This memo (in reading room materials) presents the detailed procedure for the recruitment and hiring of minority faculty to fill five new positions created by the Board of Trustees. These new positions were considered outside of the regular staffing and appointment process, in that appointments were to be made as candidates became available, rather than as a response to current openings, departmental offerings and specializations.
These recruiting efforts have been highly successful. All five target of opportunity positions were filled by September 1993. Four of the five target-of-opportunity faculty members are black; one is Latina. Three were senior appointments at the professor or associate professor rank; two were junior appointments at the assistant professor rank. One of the senior faculty was appointed with tenure, a highly unusual decision for Wellesley College (only one other person in Wellesley's history was hired with immediate tenure); the other two were promoted to tenure in their second year at the College. One of the assistant professors was awarded tenure in 1997-98, and the other will be a tenure candidate in 1999-2000. The target-of-opportunity faculty are in the departments of philosophy, political science, Africana studies, psychology, and art.
The departments of these faculty actively recruited their new colleagues. They worked with the dean of the College and the college-wide Committee on Minority Recruitment, Hiring and Retention to bring them to campus and encourage their interest in Wellesley. The Committee on Minority Recruitment, Hiring and Retention made recommendations to the dean and president about the candidates. Senior appointments were reviewed by the Committee on Faculty Appointments.
During the past nine years the College has sought to increase the diversity of our faculty through regular hiring mechanisms as well. For a number of years our goal has been that one out of three new appointments be minority appointments. As a result of efforts by many departments, as of October 1, 1997, 31% of the tenure-track faculty were minorities, and 17% of the total tenured and tenure-track faculty. Given the outstanding qualifications of our new minority appointments, we expect the percentage of minority tenured faculty to increase significantly as these faculty members become eligible for tenure.
We have been active in encouraging and assisting departments as they seek to hire minority faculty as part of the regular faculty recruitment process. The Office of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Programs and the dean of the College subscribe to publications listing minority Ph.D. holders; we review the advertisements for all positions to make certain they include wording intended to encourage applications from minority candidates and suggest publications in which the advertisements could appear. A complete search plan is reviewed before candidates are brought to campus for interviews.
During this period three externally funded professorships were added to our faculty ranks on a time-limited basis. For five years (1991-96) we were fortunate to have funding for a Clare Booth Luce Assistant Professorship in Physics. Beginning in 1998-99 a new Clare Booth Luce Assistant Professorship in Mathematics is funded for five years. The faculty also currently includes an eight-year Professorship funded by the Luce Foundation. The Henry R. Luce Professorship, in Biology, Ethics and the Politics of Human Reproduction, represents a new, interdisciplinary field at Wellesley College.
Recruitment Process
Tenure-track faculty recruitment begins with a departmental request for a position to the deans and president. Granting of a position is based on the department's stated needs in terms of subfields, overall projected staffing patterns, and enrollments. This system provides some limited flexibility as student interest in some areas of the curriculum changes over the years, and new subdisciplines emerge.
At the time of the conversion to a four-course load in the late 1980's, the Trustees imposed a cap on the number of FTE faculty. Thus, although the number of courses to be taught was reduced by 20%, the number of faculty was to remain constant. With the exception of the target-of-opportunity positions, and the grant-funded positions, this cap has governed faculty appointments policies and their implementation since 1989.
This cap on FTE has meant that we may not expand the faculty, even with newly funded professorial chairs. This had led to an inability to diversify the curriculum to the extent desired by the faculty and students, or to increase the size of existing departments when strong, sustained student interest suggests we should. Given the need to manage growth, we are seeking ways to redistribute faculty resources to increase our flexibility with respect to tenure-track positions. A recent change in policy approved by the president and Trustees will result in a modified management strategy for the size of the faculty. Rather than managing by FTE, as has been the case for at least ten years, management will now be by dollars.
Once a position is granted, a search committee is formed, consisting of members of the department's Reappointments and Promotions Committee (tenured faculty) and at least one non-tenured faculty member. In some departments students serve as non-voting members. As described above, a broad search is conducted, with as much diversity in the candidate pool as possible. Candidates in some disciplines are interviewed initially at national meetings, while in others initial interviews may be conducted by telephone. Ordinarily three finalists are brought to campus for a full day of interviewing, during which they meet with students, a dean, and often faculty from related departments. A combination of increasingly broad searches and requirements imposed by some professional associations, which include renting suites in hotels for interviews, has caused the costs of faculty recruitment to grow alarmingly. However, given our commitment to recruiting the highest quality, most diverse faculty, this seems to be a cost we will have to absorb.
Faculty teaching strength is sustained despite our generous early and sabbatical leave programs through the hiring of "leave replacements." Faculty are replaced on a course-by-course basis (tenured and tenure-track faculty teach four courses per year; non-tenure track faculty teach five) at a rate of between 80 and over 100% course replacement. As will be described below, recent changes in review procedures have been developed to ensure the quality of faculty who serve for more than one year in these temporary positions. Maintaining both our generous leave program and such a high level of leave replacement has become increasingly costly for the College and is of some concern.
Outside Visiting Committees
One of the most significant innovations during the past ten years with respect to the faculty and curriculum has been the institution of a regular rotation of visits to departments by peer committees from outside Wellesley College. The visiting committees are constituted cooperatively by the department and the Office of the Dean of the College, with visits lasting two to three days. We began this program in 1993; as of the middle of the 1998-99 academic year, 23 of the 30 departments and two programs have been visited. They are: Africana studies, anthropology, art, biological sciences, Chinese, computer science, economics, education, English, French, German, Greek and Latin, history, Italian, INCIPIT, Japanese, mathematics, philosophy, political science, religion, Russian, sociology, Spanish, women's studies and writing. The remaining departments will be visited by the end of the 1999-2000 academic year. (Many of the departments not visited since 1993 had been visited in the 1980's, when there was a limited set of visiting committees, mostly to science departments.)
In every case, the process of preparing for the visiting committee, and the visit itself, have been important milestones in the life of the department. Preparation for the visiting committee includes a thorough departmental review of its history, current curriculum, staffing, and other resources. Several departments visited during the last five years were considering major modifications of their curricula or were facing staffing changes of major consequence. Through their meetings with faculty (both within the department and from related departments), students and staff, visiting committees learn about departmental cultures and interactions among members of these various groups.
In many cases advice from the visitors has led to significant curricular changes and to a clarification of future staffing needs and allocation of current resources. In some, morale issues identified by visiting committees were addressed through departmental retreats, reorganizations, or changes in leadership. In general, the visiting committee process has been very successful, in the opinion of the departments and the administration. Follow-up reports by each department visited are available in the reading room.
Academic Support Staff
Wellesley College includes among its academic staff 26 FTE professional language and laboratory instructors. Since we have no graduate students, the teaching support tasks performed at universities by graduate students have been performed at Wellesley for many years by the professional language and laboratory instructors. The largest group of instructors hold the title Instructor in [Science] Laboratory. Over the last ten years the number of lab instructors has grown from 10 to 21 as a result of four factors. One of these factors is growth in interest in the sciences; the second is the growth in the number of courses having "laboratory" sections heavily dependent upon computers; the third is the addition of quantitative courses in the social sciences with "laboratory" components; and the fourth is the decrease in the number of lab sections taught by faculty after the transition to the four-course load. This last factor is viewed by both faculty and students as unfortunate, since it is in the laboratory that close teacher-students relations are easily forged.
The men and women who teach at Wellesley in the instructor ranks generally have master's or doctoral degrees. A large group retired during the past 8 years, many of whom had taught at the college for over 20 years. Many of the current laboratory instructors have been at Wellesley for over 5 years. (Language instructors, in the Russian, Chinese and Japanese departments, tend to be shorter-term members of the teaching staff.) A committee which included science department faculty and laboratory instructors, appointed by the dean of the College, evaluated the guidelines for appointments of laboratory instructors during 1995 and 1996. In 1997 these guidelines were revised to include the opportunity for 5-year contracts as well as promotion to a senior instructor rank, and to clarify contractual and performance expectations as well as benefits. (A copy of the guidelines is available in the reading room.)
Academic support is also provided by departmental administrative assistants. Often the first contact for students seeking information about department class schedules or activities or advice from faculty, administrative assistants play a crucial role in the Wellesley environment. Largely as a result of developments in technology, such as voice mail, e-mail, desktop word processing and use of spreadsheets, the support provided by these members of the staff has changed dramatically over the last decade.
The college has been challenged to provide training to enable administrative assistants to acquire the skills necessary to remain current. An additional challenge is posed by the lack of diversity among the administrative assistants. (See Standard VII and new Staff Standard.
Faculty Expectations, Responsibilities, and Conditions of Employment
Among the most significant changes in college legislation regarding faculty appointments during the last 10 years have been the clarification of tenure-track status, and the corollary contractual and review expectations for faculty in these ranks as well as in the non-tenure-track ranks. The first six sections of Article IX of Book I of Articles of Government (available to every faculty member on the Campus-Wide Information System) delineate faculty appointment policies. They now refer only to "appointments that lead to a tenure review after the stipulated probationary period," or "tenure-track" appointments. A separate section (Section 7) details non-tenure-track appointments, review procedures, and titles. The latter section was adopted by Academic Council in 1997, following several years of study by the Committee on Faculty Appointments (CFA). The CFA examined practices at other institutions, and designed a set of titles more consistent with those found elsewhere, as well as a clear set of expectations for lengths of contracts, and review and reappointment procedures. While the vast majority of faculty in the non-tenure-track ranks are leave replacements at the college for one year, about a dozen have been teaching here for over 10 years on a part-time basis, and several are on two- or three-year contracts as leave replacements. The new legislation recognizes our obligation for professional evaluation and development of this group of dedicated teachers, as well as quality control for students' learning.
Some faculty members have expressed concern about the number of courses being taught by non-tenure-track faculty. Given our generous early, sabbatical, and parental leave programs, as well as our commitment to "replace" most units lost to departments resulting from faculty on leave or teaching in interdepartmental programs, many leave replacement units are needed each year. The only way to decrease the need for such faculty would be to "overstaff" departments in the tenure-track ranks and depend on departments to plan leaves so that staffing is rationalized each year.
As described in Standard IV, a number of changes in teaching evaluation and development are in their initial stages of implementation this year. It is our hope that four-year initial appointments will, for example, enable junior faculty to take advantage, for almost three years prior to the first reappointment decision, of the many opportunities available for improvement of teaching offered by the Learning and Teaching Center (LTC). During the years 1988-89 to 1997-98, about a third of the 92 initial tenure-track appointments were for four years. This number is somewhat limited because new faculty with prior post-Ph.D. teaching experience are not always eligible for four-year appointments. In 1998-99 almost all of the initial tenure-track appointments were for four years.
Two non-departmental, voluntary mentoring programs for tenure-track faculty have been instituted in the last five years. (Within departments, senior faculty are expected to mentor their junior colleagues. But since the former are also required to make judgments leading to reappointment and tenure decisions, additional mentoring by others was thought to be desirable.) One of these mentoring programs, called "teaching partners," is administered by the LTC and focuses on pedagogy. The other program, administered by a former associate dean, pairs a tenure-track faculty member with a senior faculty member outside her/his department. This mentor advises the junior colleague on all matters related to succeeding at Wellesley College. According to qualitative feedback from mentors and mentees, both mentoring programs seem to have been effective in helping faculty attain tenure and/or have a more realistic understanding of the chances for attaining tenure.
The number of tenured faculty members has increased since 1989 from 143 to 175. During this period, faculty on the CFA have noted the increasing strength of candidates for tenure in all areas evaluated, particularly that of scholarship. Using the methodology of the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS), our faculty was about 70% tenured in 1996-97, the last year for which comparative data are currently available. This value placed us just below the mean and median for the liberal arts colleges whose data are collected by HEDS. Using Wellesley methodology, which simply takes the number of tenured faculty (full- and part-time, teaching or on leave), the percentage is somewhat higher.
Over the last ten years, almost all colleges in the HEDS group, including Wellesley, have experienced an increase in the percentage of tenured faculty. To some members of the Wellesley community, this is a major concern, since as the faculty becomes more highly tenured, some curricular flexibility is lost. We wonder whether we are tenuring too many faculty, and, if not, whether we provide enough encouragement and support for our senior faculty to broaden their teaching portfolios to accommodate to changing curricular needs. This is of particular concern when a department becomes fully tenured. (One department remained fully tenured throughout the last nine years, while three became fully tenured and four others that were fully tenured are not so at this time.)
The figure below shows the "flow" of faculty into and out of the tenured ranks since 1983. The tenured ranks increase due to the normal tenure process, and decrease largely as a result of retirements. For example, while 64 faculty were awarded tenure between 1989-90 and 1996-97, the size of the tenured faculty grew by only 30. Almost all faculty retire before the age of 70, largely through election of our early retirement programs, for which faculty become eligible at age 60. Few faculty have left Wellesley to teach at other colleges and universities. The average age of the faculty has ranged between 45 and 47 during the last seven years. Within the next five years, the number of faculty eligible for tenure is about equal to the number reaching age 65.
Promotion to
the rank of associate professor now accompanies the granting of
tenure to an assistant professor, while in the past a separate review
was conducted. Time in the associate professor rank has also been
modified during the last ten years. Rather than requiring associate
professors to stand for promotion to full professor during the
seventh year in rank, legislation was modified to create a window of
several years during which a promotion review might occur. This was
done following the recommendations of a committee appointed in 1990
which studied the effects of the "market" on Wellesley faculty
recruitment and retention. Thus, initial reviews for promotion to
full professor may occur "no earlier than the fifth and no later than
the ninth year in rank." In practice, several faculty have been
promoted in the sixth year, and most in the seventh year. Earlier
promotion provides an internal mechanism for recognizing unusual
achievement. An issue of concern to
the CFA is the small but increasing number of associate professors
who have not stood for promotion by their ninth year in rank. Most
often, such faculty choose not to stand based on their scholarly
record since tenure.
Since the early 1990s Wellesley has made a strong effort to maintain faculty salaries and benefits which are highly competitive. One of the results of the work of the Committee on Wellesley in the '90s was the benchmark that tenure-track faculty salaries should be at or above 105% of those in equivalent ranks at a group of 17 comparable institutions (selective liberal arts colleges nation-wide, and universities in the Boston area). We reached that goal by 1994, and have been maintaining it since, despite a college-wide effort to restrain the rate of growth of the budget. Similarly, our benefits have continued to be most generous, particularly our pension contributions. We have expanded and clarified our parental leave benefit, enabling tenure-track faculty to exclude the year in which a parental leave is taken from the years in rank. The benefit includes two units of course release to the parent who takes primary responsibility for the new child in the semester of the birth or adoption, or one unit each in that and the following semester.
The processes for appeals of decisions made by the Committee on Faculty Appointments have been clarified. In particular, the timing of the filing of such appeals directly or through the Board of Appeals was modified to make the process more responsive. Few appeals by faculty members have been filed during the last few years, but those that have were dealt with expeditiously.
A revised and expanded policy against sexual harassment and guidelines concerning consensual sexual relations was voted at Academic Council in 1991. A Faculty Standing Panel for the Grievance Procedures is elected by preferential ballot. This panel hears complaints of discrimination or harassment arising within the college community through a carefully defined set of procedures. Training for members of the standing panel is conducted on a regular basis. In addition, training about sexual harassment is provided to members of the faculty through the Office of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Policy. Department chairs were involved in evaluating pilot programs specially designed for faculty-related issues, and the result of their evaluations is the program now being used on campus.
Faculty Workload
In its 1989 report, the evaluation team representing the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education expressed concerns about the "possible curricular implications of the faculty workload reduction" and a related concern that "Wellesley's strong sense of identity as a liberal arts college could be jeopardized by the perceived conflicting demands of a 'research college' and the demands and expectations of its continued commitment to undergraduate education" (Report, p. 19).
During the 1991-92 academic year, the Four-Course Load Assessment Advisory Committee studied the effects of the course load reduction and issued its final report, recommending that the four-course load be continued. In September 1992, the president and dean of the College accepted that recommendation. A number of indicators allowed us to measure the effect of the workload reduction: class sizes, faculty recruitment, faculty research activity, faculty advising activity, uses of the Learning and Teaching Center. Each of these is discussed in Standards IV or V of this report. We concluded that (a) Wellesley faculty members continue to maintain a healthy and creative balance between their roles as teachers and researchers; and (b) the students are offered a curriculum that is as good as or better than before the change to the four-course load.
Initially, there was concern that, regardless of class size (discussed in Standard IV), the decline in the number of sections offered would affect students' ability to register for the courses they wanted, fulfill distribution requirements, and make progress toward the major. While quantitative data responsive to this concern are hard to obtain, neither the registrar, class deans, nor faculty advisors report persistent student complaints. As before, faculty sabbatical leave patterns, and waxing and waning interest in particular fields with structured majors (such as biological sciences) appear to have a more significant impact on course availability than the change to a four-course load. Improved information on when courses will be offered and careful advising appear to have cushioned the impact of the course load reduction.
An explicit objective of the course load reduction was to strengthen the role of faculty in advising students. This subject is discussed in detail in Standard IV.
Evaluation of Faculty Performance
Evaluation of faculty performance is fully described in Articles of Government, Book I, Article IX. It continues to be the responsibility of department Reappointments and Promotion Committees and the Committee on Faculty Appointments until a faculty member is promoted to full professor. Supporting our long-standing emphasis on teaching excellence, we include visits to classes by senior colleagues for pre-tenure decisions, as well as student evaluations of teaching in assessing teaching performance for all reappointment, tenure, promotion and merit decisions. During the last ten years we have required that each faculty member being evaluated present a statement of his/her professional achievements and plans for the future. This "personal statement" includes a description of the individual's teaching philosophy and its applications in the classroom and beyond.
Evaluation of scholarly achievement depends on direct evaluation of the books, articles, works of art, etc. by members of department Reappointments and Promotion Committees and the Committee on Faculty Appointments. Their evaluations are aided by external professional evaluations, which as of 1996 includes solicited letters from five (formerly three) scholars in the field for tenure decisions. This expanded number of outside letters helps ensure that there will be several useful ones. Service to the college and to the profession also play an important role in faculty evaluation, although not as important as teaching and scholarship.
Regular evaluation of faculty performance continues beyond the granting of tenure. As described above, associate professors are extensively reviewed for promotion to full professor six to nine years after tenure is granted. Full professors are evaluated on a three-year cycle by an Advisory Committee on Merit which makes recommendations to the president regarding merit increases. The committee consists of the members of the CFA who are full professors, supplemented by six full professors elected to the committee. Evaluation criteria emphasize teaching, scholarship and service equally, thus bringing service into greater importance than before senior status is acquired. This policy reflects the participatory nature of the governance and functioning of the Wellesley College community, which depends heavily on the voluntary efforts of committed faculty.
The CFA considers changes in faculty appointment and review procedures as part of their regular activity. When such changes seem warranted, as has been true regularly during the past ten years, extensive discussions are held with members of the faculty prior to formal motions at Academic Council.
Faculty contracts and records are handled by the Office of the Dean of the College. With the introduction of SCT Banner, a database system used college-wide for administrative records, data have become both more complex and available, while also requiring more staff time for maintenance. As is the case with many institutions, our administrative computing needs are driven to a great extent by the software manufacturers' continuous upgrades coupled with diminishing support for older products.
Academic Freedom
Wellesley College fully protects and fosters academic freedom for every member of the faculty as outlined in the American Association of University Professors 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments. The College has taken an active role in educating alumnae and the larger community on the importance of academic freedom as a bedrock value. In 1993, as a result of one professor's publication of a controversial text, President Diana Chapman Walsh took the unprecedented action of sending a letter to all members of the Wellesley College community, including all 30,000 alumnae, condemning the book but affirming the right of all Wellesley faculty to academic freedom. The letter read in part:
Occasions arise in the life of any community when it becomes necessary to reaffirm values so essential that they must not be left to chance. We will continue to defend the rights of all faculty members to express themselves freely, without fear of reprisals. At the same time, we must speak out against the content of this particular book. It violates the basic principles that nourish and sustain this college community and that enable us to achieve our educational goals: norms of civil discourse, standards of scholarly integrity, and aspirations for freedom and justice.
The president and dean of the College also spoke to alumnae groups across the country on the challenge of academic freedom. The controversy engendered much constructive discussion on and off campus about the basic values undergirding a liberal arts education and life in the academy.
A June 1997 report by the American Association of University Professors on Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications recommends a consideration of "whether - and how - new media and information systems may alter traditional approaches to safeguarding academic freedom within the university community." This discussion has not yet taken place on the Wellesley campus. The vice president for Information Services and the dean of the College will consult with the Wellesley chapter of the AAUP to review this report and recommend any policy changes that may be needed.
Projections
1. After many years in which the management of faculty staffing was based on FTE, it will now be possible to manage by dollars. This change presents a number of challenges. Over the next three to five years, the Office of the Dean of the College will work with faculty on the following:
2. As the tenure ratio has increased, concerns about flexibility of the faculty both on an individual and a cumulative level have increased. The College must seek funds over the next two to four years to maintain and develop opportunities for faculty to continue to remain abreast of the latest developments in their fields, and perhaps to broaden their areas of specialization.
3. Wellesley's system of post-tenure review for full professors is among the most participatory of any college of which we are aware. The effectiveness of the system, both with respect to faculty satisfaction and changes in behavior, will be monitored regularly, and modified if necessary.
4. In addition, questions have arisen about what, if any, review system should be instituted for associate professors. This is particularly pressing for the small but growing number of associate professors who have not been promoted to full professor despite having served the required number of years in rank. During the next two years the faculty, led by the Committee on Faculty Appointments, will determine whether the College will change its expectations for promotion to full professor, and/or institute a mid-course review or a continuing merit review system for associate professors.
5. Faculty training in such areas as staff supervision, sexual harassment and diversity, and teaching in a multicultural classroom will be ongoing. The Office of the Dean of the College will decide during the next two years how to provide such training most effectively.
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Make Comments on Standard Five |
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NEASC's Commission on Institutions of Higher Education's Standards for Accreditation |
