Syracuse University’s number of tenured or tenure-track professors shrank to 51% of the university’s total faculty in 2018. The drop has created concern that the low number of tenured faculty could affect the university’s standing and reputation as a research institution.

At a University Senate meeting in March, Senator Matt Huber presented a report on the 2017-18 faculty census. SU’s tenured or tenure-track population dropped from 52% in 2017 to 51% in 2018, he said. Senators at the meeting said that decreasing the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty could call SU’s research designation into question.

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The rest of the university faculty in 2018 was made up of 15% full time non-tenure track professors and 34% part time or adjunct faculty, who are also non-tenure track, Huber said. Full time non-tenured faculty include teaching professor positions and professors of practice, he said.

Crystal Bartolovich, an associate professor of English and senator, was one of the faculty at the March Senate meeting who raised worries about the effects of SU’s shrinking population of tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Bartolovich said in an email that she’s concerned that SU has fewer tenured and tenure-track faculty compared to other research universities. Duke University has 62% tenured and tenure-track faculty, Georgetown University has 61% and Cornell University has 80%, according to data from those universities.

Laurel Morton, president of the part-time faculty union Adjuncts United, said SU does not give reductions in course load for part-time faculty interested in pursuing research. Instead, those faculty have to participate in research on their own time.

“It doesn’t mean they’re not as research-focused, but it has not been facilitated by the institution,” said Morton, who is also a senator on the Senate’s Women’s Concerns Committee.

SU first received an R1 designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in 2015, and it retained that designation in 2018. An R1 designation is the highest research level possible as awarded by Carnegie. Duke, Georgetown and Cornell all have the R1 designation.

At the March Senate meeting, John Liu, vice president for research, said most of the R1 schools have faculties with about 60% tenure or tenure-track faculty. SU’s 2018 tenured and tenure-track ratio shows that the university it not keeping up with its peers, Huber said.

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Liu said at the meeting that he did not know how the drop in tenured or tenure-tracked faculty would affect SU’s R1 designation. Liu was not made available for an interview with The Daily Orange.

“There’s been a lot of talk about Syracuse wanting to be this really important R1 institution,” Huber said. “Well, you gotta kind of put your money where your mouth is in that front.”

Bartolovich said tenured and tenure-track faculty split their time between teaching, service and research, which gives them a unique relationship to the university. Non-tenured faculty, though, have a more “precarious” position in the university and are often compensated less for their services, which changes their relationship to SU as a research institution, she said.

With the university’s added emphasis on undergraduate research, the number of tenured faculty who can oversee that research should be increasing, Bartolovich said.

In January, Chancellor Kent Syverud announced that SU will make 200 hires through its Cluster and Signature Hires initiatives. The Signature Hires initiative will bring in people from select research fields, while Cluster Hires will be made through the use of “multidisciplinary approaches.”

Kari Shaw, Adjuncts United’s treasurer and a part-time professor at SU, said there should be a balance between tenured and non-tenured faculty. Professors without tenure often teach large lectures and introductory courses, allowing tenured faculty to devote more time and energy to research and teaching upper-level courses, Shaw said.

“The important thing is that everybody’s role needs to be valued and respected,” she said.

A decrease in tenured faculty also leads to a decrease in academic freedom, because tenure was created to protect professors from being fired for expressing opinions that were contrary to those of their universities, Bartolovich said. Divisions in the university community have also worsened —non-tenured professors are often paid less, given more courses and are less protected in expressing their views, she said.

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“This is an ethical issue for all faculty, who know perfectly well that this divide makes sense only financially, not professionally … nor in terms of what makes for strong university community and engaged intellectual life,” Bartolovich said.

People who are hired as part-time faculty are unlikely to ever be put onto a tenure track, Shaw said. Sometimes teaching faculty move from part-time to full-time positions, but that is not an option for most people, she said. Making that move does not guarantee any sort of tenure security, Shaw added.

SU is working to institutionalize teaching professor positions at the university, which is reflected in the recent increase of such positions — 76 positions in 2017 to 127 positions in 2018, Huber said. At the same time, professors of practice positions, which dropped from 31 to nine at the associate and assistant level, are being phased out by the university, he said.

Huber said the professor of practice position is meant to be for professionals who teach classes about their profession, but people have expressed concerns that individuals hired did not meet that qualification.

The non-tenured positions of teaching and adjunct professors were created to make hiring additional faculty less expensive and more flexible for the university, Bartolovich said.

The 2018 faculty census also brokedown the ratios of tenured or tenure-track to non-tenure track faculty by school and college. It showed that such numbers vary across the university, Huber said. Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, for example, only has 17.7% part-time faculty, while the School of Information Studies is made up of 63% part-time faculty. Variances can even be seen across departments in individual schools and colleges, Huber added.

“We’re a huge variety of different sorts of people,” Shaw said of SU’s part-time faculty.

Published on April 16, 2019 at 11:30 pm

Contact India: irmiragl@syr.edu