Policies aim to get ahead of Legislature’s debate about weakening tenure rights

TOPEKA — The Kansas Board of Regents ordered state public universities to implement faculty workload and tenure review policies that will bring underperforming professors to remediation, with termination a potential consequence for failure to address deficiencies.

The mandate applied to thousands of faculty employed at Kansas State University, the University of Kansas, Pittsburg State University, Fort Hays State University, Emporia State University and Wichita State University. Expectations for nontenure, tenure-track and tenured faculty wouldn’t be identical from university to university, but all would be assigned annual course instructional loads and undergo yearly reviews in terms of teaching, research and public service.

Faculty at the state’s three research-oriented universities — KU, K-State and WSU — would be expected to teach six to nine credit hours per semester. Annual reviews of these faculty would be based on teaching at 40% to 55% of the workload. Research obligations would range from 35% to 45% of the total. Public service would be 5% to 20% of the job.

Faculty at the three regional universities — PSU, ESU and FHSU — would be assigned 12 credit hours of instructional course work each semester. The faculty evaluation breakdown: teaching, 60% to 75%; research, 15% to 30%; and public service, 5% to 20%.

Tenured university faculty in the Board of Regents system would undergo performance assessments by a campus committee every five years. Those determined to be less than satisfactory would be placed on self-improvement plans. If a faculty member earned a second unsatisfactory annual review, the policy said, the individual would be subject to dismissal, reassignment or other personnel action.

Rusty Monhollon, vice president of academic affairs for the Board of Regents, said the post-tenure and workload policies would help administrators identify faculty falling short of standards and those exceeding those metrics. The goal was to make evaluation of faculty less subjective and to address consternation about the rigor of decisions about faculty appointments, he said.

He expected few university faculty to fail to abide by new productivity standards because the “work they do is good.”

“These are very important policies that are impactful. We want to make sure we get it right,” said Alysia Johnston, a member of the Board of Regents.

Johnston, a former president of Fort Scott Community College, said the final version of policies approved by the Board of Regents left the analysis of tenure review cases to university administrators because the state board didn’t have the expertise to make scholarly judgments. She said the Board of Regents would consider tenure appeals based on claims that due process rights were violated by university administrators.

The Board of Regents voted unanimously at its January meeting to require the six universities to begin documenting and reporting faculty performance data that would be shared with legislators and others to enhance transparency and accountability in higher education.

University reporting would include statistics on student credit hours produced, percentage of credit hours by full-time faculty, bachelor’s degrees awarded, student retention, faculty scholarship and faculty research funding. Information about the number of people granted and denied tenure and the number of faculty who left each university must be documented.

Board of Regents member Matt Crocker, a Manhattan businessman, said he appreciated that the development of a systemwide faculty review policy involved considerable effort by the Board of Regents. He said there was an expectation among members of the Kansas Legislature that faculty workload policies would be rigorous. In the past two years, members of the Legislature raised the possibility of modifying tenure at the state universities.

“The question I seem to get all the time, especially here in Topeka, is making sure I’m a good steward for the state’s funding for higher education,” he said.

Under the Board of Regents policy, each university would craft faculty workload expectations that were “equitable, fair and balanced, and aligned with the unique needs of each department and the whole institution.” While all faculty would be assigned teaching loads, the policy said, exceptions would be permitted for clinical or research faculty, librarians and other personnel in noninstructional roles.

The new systemwide policy was developed by Board of Regents’ staff, university administrators and faculty as well as state politicians. At least four drafts were circulated for review and comment during the past seven months.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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