August, 2010
Currently, post-tenure review in the School of Public Health (SPH) is conducted via (1) referral by Division Heads of underperforming tenured faculty members to the Dean based on annual reviews, with potential referral to the Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure (APT) Committee, and (2) separate review of tenured faculty members every five years by the APT based on the standard documentation, minus letters of reference, that is used for tenure recommendations. Some members of the SPH Faculty Consultative Committee (FCC), and other SPH faculty members, have expressed concerns about the burden of preparing five-year post-tenure review materials. In light of these concerns, the FCC in 2009-2010 collected and discussed selective evidence on post-tenure review policies of other University of Minnesota units within the Academic Health Center, and brainstormed ideas for revisions to the current SPH procedure.
The FCC concludes that there are alternatives to the current SPH procedure that would satisfy University policy on post-tenure review, and meet the general goal of protecting the School and the public from underperforming, tenured faculty members, but with reduced paperwork burden on the faculty members and reduced review burden on the APT Committee. Prominent among these alternatives are: 1) to rely solely on the present annual performance review process as a mechanism for referring underperforming faculty to APT for formal post-tenure review; or 2) if additional reviews do occur every five years, to decrease the documentation burden on post-tenure review candidates, perhaps to a collation of annual performance reviews from the prior five years, along with the candidate’s c.v. Either of these options suggest that the SPH also consider making annual performance review processes more consistent across Divisions.
The FCC requests that these, or other less burdensome alternatives, be considered by the Dean’s Office and/or the APT Committee as soon as possible or in the next scheduled revision of the SPH faculty review policies. We believe a less burdensome alternative would receive substantial support from SPH faculty.
