Tenure Track Contract Non-renewal

[ditlee]

Hi everyone.
Hope things are found well with everybody. I am glad that I found this website. My friend in the other institution lately contacted me to ask for an advice. I asked for some time to think and promised him to give my objective and impersonal opinion in a week from now as honest as possible. He is a tenure track faculty, 2nd year as an assistant professor. He is in a difficult situation with his term reappointment. His 2nd year term review started early this year and very close to the final decision from Provost this summer. In his institution, teaching is most important above research and service (50/25/25). Every tenure track faculty in his institution gets reviewed first time during the 3rd semester and receives either 2 year extension, 1 year extension, or termination. He received 1 yr reappointment at the end of 3rd semester but there were many comments of improvements to make, especially in teaching, from Dean/Chair. So he said he worked through the last holiday season to improve his portfolio and prepare for the imminent review during the 4th semester. Unfortunately, the class observation by Dean turned out disastrous before mid February (due the 2nd term portfolio);Peer observation was fantastic;Chair observation was so so. He said he did not give up on it and kept doing what he could do best to keep up with other credentials including teaching, service, etc until the pandemic hit. As everybody transitioned to online, he said he continued to work with his diligence to make a smooth transition from in-person to online teaching by recording his labs, providing synchronous lab exercises to students, and etc.

By the time early April, unexpectedly earlier than its timeline, four of five recommendations are all out except for Provost's final decision: Department Committee (recommended), Chair (recommended first and switched back to not recommended), Dean (not recommended), College Committee (not recommended). There was a strong recommendation from Department Committee but Dean was specific to state mostly negative points of his tenure track trajectory not meeting her expectation. She did not recommend to extend the term over August 2021. Chair comments were fair and College CCTA did not say anything specific from what I heard from him.

He tried very hard to stay positive and collect many data since then (students evaluation, lab and lecture recordings, etc) in order to show as many improved facts as possible during the 2nd half of last semester. Fortunately, students course evaluations were out good at the end of May. It was not perfect 5 but close to 4 (1 to 5 Likert) in average of three courses taught. He also was able to save online lecture and lab recordings, respectively from each course. He asked me whether it is worthwhile to send his recordings to provost to impress her enough to recommend him instead of terminating his TT contract. Is there anything else that he could do besides that to stay on the course of TT. Fortunately, he will be given 1 terminal year to stay in his institution for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters even though his contract ending Aug 2021 is terminated. I want to guide him to be on the most productive path possible given circumstances as he seems to be eager to find the best way to maintain his academic career. Can anybody help me to get some ideas and tips please? It would be greatly helpful to him.

Sincerely.
DITLEE

[Ruralguy]

At this point, it would be best if a senior faculty member, trusted by the provost, and him or herself a good teacher,
make this case on his behalf.  If no one is willing to do that, he should, but that in and of itself would be telling if nobody felt they could help.

Other than that, he can try to make a case for appeal, assuming there's an appeals process.

[polly_mer]

I agree with Ruralguy.

In addition, your friend should be on the market right now and be including good non-academic options as part of that search.

Senior colleagues who can be strong references for the external searches should also be lined up.

[Cheerful]

I agree with advice from Ruralguy and polly_mer.

He should talk with tenured people on the supportive Department Committee to get advice.  Definitely secure references and begin a serious job search.  Be prepared for a tough job market due to the pandemic.  Maintain a positive attitude.

[clean]

Why would he want to stay in a place that the chair serves the dean and the dean has already decided he is not worthy?

Frankly, and this is not what he wants to hear, he should cut his losses and do a full press on the job market. This is going to be a terrible year for that, but it is better to do it NOW than to wait to find a job after he is unemployed in 15 months. 

Teach well, but the rest of the industry is more concerned about research.  My advice is to get busy and get something in the publication pipeline that can be published early at the next job.

[Ruralguy]

I  can say from personal experience that the Dean who opposes you leaves, the Chair becomes the idiot in the office next to you who has to listen to you when you are chair.  Five years later, people barely care or remember. Ten years later, you're a fixture and most people don't even know it ever happened.

So, if he wants to stay for whatever reason, he can try to fight the decision.

I agree with everyone that he should be aggressively seeking the next job, academic or other.

[polly_mer]

So, if he wants to stay for whatever reason, he can try to fight the decision.

The couple times I've seen someone successfully fight the tenure decision, the end result a few years later was not no one remembering.  Instead, grudges were held for all that time and I know of more than one person who finally left because it was so unpleasant to "win".  And that was for straight-up tenure.

This person is only fighting for renewal at the third year.  In a couple years when this person goes up for tenure itself, the people involved will likely still be in place and the bar may be higher than normal.

Energy spent fighting is energy that isn't going into becoming better at teaching, increasing research productivity, or obtaining a new job.

If the person can find a champion, then fighting might be worth a shot, but the champion does the fighting.

[Ruralguy]

Right, and that is exactly what I said in my first post.

But you do have a point. Since this is pre-trenure, there could be more of a problem.
Still, if he wishes to fight it, fight it.  I know that my school's appeal process would apply to any adverse hiring decision. I say "fight" somewhat figuratively, since that might mainly have to be done via others, if there are others and prior to any official appeal.

[mamselle]

The handicap so early in the scholar's presence on campus is identifying a safe champion who's also willing to go to bat for them.

Experience and fora-lore are rife with examples of two-faced champions, or, more likely, everyone who might be reliable deciding they can't be drawn in, either because of their own limited resources, or the possibility of the fight turning into a swampy mess politically, or both.

Is this in the sciences or the humanities? External options vary a lot between the two fields.

That will, necessarily, color what recommendations may be the most viable, too.

M.

[Ruralguy]

The best advice is to play every angle possible.

So, OP, your friend has 3 jobs now:

1. normal job
2. fighting for normal job
3. finding new job

They may, as per Polly's post, act against each other in some ways, but I don't think ignoring any of these is best at this point.

[ditlee]

Unfortunately, my friend still waits for the provost recommendation. I talked to him to encourage him though to continue to be positive and be open-minded as everyone in this thread expressed as the common fact to focus on with varying degrees of each plan. I feel bad for him since I did not know how to help him more than that. I just hoped things turn around better for him.

Thank you everybody. 

[Dismal]

Seems like the only case a champion could make is if the faculty member has a hard-to-replace specialty and is teaching courses that no one else could teach.  But the OP didn't mention whether that was the case.   The provost is unlikely to overturn college and dean unless procedural irregularies were present - but OP didn't mention that either. 

[Caracal]

Hi everyone.
Unfortunately, the class observation by Dean turned out disastrous before mid February (due the 2nd term portfolio);Peer observation was fantastic;Chair observation was so so.
DITLEE

Perhaps this is just my morbid curiosity, but disastrous sounds bad. I've had plenty of classes that haven't gone great and I wouldn't have been excited to have an observer for, but I can really only think of one or two classes that were actually "disastrous."

[bento]

I feel for him.  That's a lot of teaching observation so early in his time at the institution.

Most of us had a few bumps in our road to becoming more adept in the classroom, and every institution has its own student climate that needs some familiarity.

With a neutral chair, and an opposed dean, I feel conditions are stacked against your friend.  I'd be dusting off my c.v. and working every connection I had.  Sabbatical replacements, fellowships, whatever gives him a softer landing and some time to reflect.

It really sounds like a lot of stress, and not a great institutional culture.

[eigen]

I feel for him.  That's a lot of teaching observation so early in his time at the institution.

Most of us had a few bumps in our road to becoming more adept in the classroom, and every institution has its own student climate that needs some familiarity.

With a neutral chair, and an opposed dean, I feel conditions are stacked against your friend.  I'd be dusting off my c.v. and working every connection I had.  Sabbatical replacements, fellowships, whatever gives him a softer landing and some time to reflect.

It really sounds like a lot of stress, and not a great institutional culture.

I dunno about elsewhere, but at my institution it's expected that you will get every department faculty member to observe your teaching, as well as several faculty from outside your department. My previous institution was similar, but it was just "highly suggested".

Granted, we're a PUI where "excellent teaching" is a significant portion of our jobs and review criteria. But having 3 observations doesn't sound like a lot to me.

I would also wonder exactly how bad "disastrous" was. To me that description tips things from "this person seriously needs some guidance and work" to "maybe this person isn't what we need in this position".