The push came from two Writing and Rhetoric teachers
A proposed tenure-track program designed for instructors at CU would greatly improve the academic atmosphere at the school if approved, according to the program’s proponents.
Senior instructor Don Eron and instructor Suzanne Hudson, both of whom teach in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, drafted a resolution requesting tenure for instructors and presented it to an audience of faculty members on March 2. If passed, the resolution would make instructors eligible for tenure after their seventh year of employment with the university. Currently, only full professors at CU are eligible for tenure, though a fact sheet published by Eron and Hudson reports that those on tenure-track make up only 17 percent of the CU faculty.
These instructors are most commonly found in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, said Gerard Hauser, chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly and professor in the communication department.
Eron said faculty members who have tenure are more likely to hold their students to rigorous standards in the classroom. Since faculty course questionnaires play a significant role in the administration’s evaluation of faculty members, those who are not tenured are less likely to give a student a lower grade out of fear that the student would respond by giving the instructor a lower FCQ score, Eron said. A tenure system for instructors would give them the job security necessary to reduce the importance of FCQs, Eron believes, which will in turn give instructors freedom to grade without wondering how the students’ response will affect their standing in the administration.
Eron and Hudson’s fact sheet also states that instructors who have tenure will be more likely to present challenging or unpopular ideas to students.
“(Instructors) will be able to teach with the assurance that they cannot be fired … for presenting (students) with unpopular ideas,” the fact sheet states. “Students will benefit by exposure to ideas with which they’re not already familiar and which might challenge their worldview.”
Tenure for instructors is not a common practice in colleges across America, and CU would set a precedent if it adopted the system, Eron said. He argues that setting such a precedent and offering such job security would attract top-tier instructors from across the country to CU, thus improving the quality of teaching at CU and the academic atmosphere in general.
“It would be an innovative practice,” Eron said. “We would be the first. Consequently, this could create a great public relations bonanza, and I think the best instructors in the country will want to teach here because we’ll have something no else has.”
Hauser does not share Eron’s enthusiasm that a revised tenure system would attract talented instructors.
“I think it may be an attraction for some people,” Hauser said. “But there are other issues that ultimately have to be considered, for example, a living wage. This does not address a living wage or other factors like that.”
Hauser also said there are better ways to address instructors’ concerns about academic freedom than granting them tenure.
“I’m not sure that tenure is the best way to proceed,” Hauser said. “Right now, I feel like it would create more problems than it would solve.”
Hauser proposed that instructors be given earlier notice of decisions on their contracts as an alternative to tenure.
“Instructors would have advanced notice if their contract was not going to be renewed,” he said.
As long as instructors are teaching course material appropriately, they should have no concerns about job security, Hauser said.
“They have the same protection any faculty member has for academic freedom,” he said. “As long as they are teaching the courses they’ve been assigned to teach and teaching the material they’ve been assigned to teach, they should have the same protection as anybody else.”
To be passed, the resolution must first be approved by instructors at CU. It would then move forward to the Boulder Faculty Assembly, Faculty Council and, ultimately, the Board of Regents.
Two instructors in the Boulder Faculty Assembly, Wayne Angevine and Cathy Comstock, declined to comment on the proposal because they feared their comments could be taken as grounds for dismissal from the administration.
“I can’t tell you how frustrating that is,” Eron said of the instructors’ fear of publicly taking a side on the matter. “When people like Cathy Comstock, who’s been here for 18 years and is one of the great teachers on this campus, is afraid to speak her opinion because somebody might perceive it as going against the status quo, that’s a pretty eloquent statement on behalf of our need for tenure.”
Contact staff writer Brian Beer at brian.beer@thecampuspress.com .
