President Bernie Machen recently addressed the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty about his proposed changes to the board that reviews tenure and promotions, causing reverberations among concerned employees.
Machen and Jack Payne, the senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources, assured those in attendance at a meeting last week that Machen’s proposal keeps the faculty’s best interests in mind.
The Academic Personnel Board is currently composed of six members who review more than 200 cases a year for promotions and tenure recommendations. The proposal suggests the board split into two bodies with 10 to 12 members, lessening the workload and allowing for a more in-depth review process.
But some of the faculty were hesitant to accept this proposal.
Some faculty members, such as Stephen Futch, felt dividing the APB would create a schism between extension faculty, which are UF employees stationed off campus, and nonextension faculty.
Futch, an extension agent based in Lake Alfred, Fla., said it’s important to make sure that extension faculty are the same as regular employees.
Payne said all faculty are not treated the same, but extension specialists have always been on the tenure track. In the APB’s current form, both groups are filtered through a single review board.
The split in the board would entail one group reviewing tenure-track faculty while the other handles extension faculty.
Payne said the issue with the current APB setup revolves around its recent increase of negative reviews throughout the last few years.
Although only two to three faculty members were turned down previously, 27 received negative votes last year and 24 the year before that.
“You’re dealing with peoples’ careers in those packets,” he said.
Payne said mainly extension faculty are receiving the negative votes. With the current system, board members who might not grasp the facets of an extension faculty member’s job might be more likely to turn them down on review.
“We need a more fair, a more just, system,” he said. “We never wanted to send the signal that we have a second-class faculty.”
Timothy Martin, a professor of tree physiology, said in an email that during a meeting of roughly 50 School of Forest Resources and Conservation faculty members, he asked for their feedback on Machen’s proposal.
The consensus of the meeting was that the split in the APB would potentially be a disruptive way to address a workload issue in the committee.
“There are likely better and less disruptive solutions to the workload problem,” he said.
A version of this story ran on page 1 on 11/20/2013 under the headline "UF IFAS faculty concerned by tenure proposal"
