An Example of a (Negative) Tenure Case at Colby

• 1998-1999: Hiring
  • I was hired to the computer science department initially in a one-year visiting position as half a job-sharing team. I spend the other half of my time working with a company I co-founded in Michigan, and I was hired with the understanding that I could continue that work as long as it was consistent with my academic pursuits at Colby (which it always has been).
• 1998-1999: First peer review
  • There is typically a "peer review" of your teaching in your first year at Colby. This involves having a couple of colleagues (usually from your department) review your course materials for the semester and sit in on some of your lectures. They prepare a report that includes recommended areas for improvement and an overall assessment of teaching quality. If there are significant negative issues, the candidate must address them. I believe that in extreme cases a negative peer review could lead to early termination of a tenure-track appointment. In my case, as a visitor, I only had a one-year contract. The peer review was used to justify renewing the visiting position for an additional year.
    • Here is my peer review from Fall 1998.
• 1999-2000: Visiting position renewal
  • Based primarily on the peer review, my shared position was renewed for an additional "visiting" year.
• 2000-2001: Hiring on the tenure track
  • During my second year at Colby a tenure-track position became available in the computer science department. For this position we had to go through a full search/interview process, but we were given the job, again as a job-sharing arrangement. It was at this time that we were led to believe that our future tenure evaluation would appropriately take into account the job sharing, we would not be "penalized" for teaching fewer courses than normal, and our service expectations would be prorated.
• 2000-2001: Second peer review
  • Colby's procedures require a "sixth-semester review" at the end of the third year of employment. A second peer review of teaching serves as a component of the sixth-semester review. Because my first two years at Colby were in a visiting position, I was in the somewhat unusual position of having my sixth-semester review at the end of my first year in the tenure-track appointment.
    • Here is my peer review from Fall 2000, which was also used in support of my sixth-semester review in the Spring of 2001.
• 2000-2001: Sixth-semester review
  • The sixth-semester review is supposed to be a significant and thorough review of a tenure candidate's performance so far, as well as a check-point for progress toward tenure. One of the rumors at Colby is that the recent high success rate in tenure awards has been in part because the rigor of the sixth-semester review has "weeded out" lesser candidates earlier in the process. However, my sixth-semester review was positive and encouraging, giving no indication of serious problems with my tenure case. This is in spite of the fact that much of the "evidence" for the P&T complaints against me in 2004-2005 was already present in my record at the time of the sixth-semester review.

    The sixth-semester review dossier is very similar to the tenure dossier, although it does not have quite as many components to it. I will not review my sixth-semester review dossier here, because everything in it was also in my tenure dossier, detailed below. Because the preparation of the dossiers is so similar, one ought to be able to assume that any organizational or procedural problems with the tenure dossier would already have been identified in the sixth-semester review dossier.

    The sixth-semester review committee is typically composed of members of the candidate's department and one outside member. There is only one tenured faculty member in my department, so I had two outside members. All three committee members have served on the P&T committee, and so are presumably well versed in the standards and requirements used for tenure at Colby. One of the members is tenured in a shared position, and so is familiar with the constraints of job-sharing on a candidate's case.

    After the department has generated the sixth-semester review report, the Dean of Faculty reviews the report and generates his own summary of the candidate's progress. Certainly the Dean of Faculty is intimately involved with P&T deliberations each year, and so this would be his primary opportunity to inform a candidate if there are significant potential problems with the tenure case.

    • Here is my sixth-semester review report from Spring 2001
    • Here is the Dean of Faculty's analysis and summary of my sixth-semester review (sent via email in the Summer of 2001)
• 2001-2002: Sabbatical
  • Subsequent to a successful sixth-semester review, the candidate is normally awarded a pre-tenure sabbatical year (primarily for the purpose of strengthening the candidate's research record) and a three-year contract renewal that will take the candidate up to the year following the tenure review. I spent my sabbatical in Waterville during 2001-2002, doing research, but also supervising a Senior Scholars project and performing some other department and college service (which I was technically not required to do).
• 2003-2004: Merit review
  • Each employee has a periodic "merit review" that can be used to provid merit-based increases in salary. I am not sure of the typical calendar for such merit reviews. I am relatively certain that the timing for my merit review was not typical, because it was offset by the two years I spent in a visiting position. In any event, my merit review took place just before my tenure review, so the merit review dossier contained most of the materials that also ended up in my tenure dossier. As a result of the merit review, I was given a 4.7 percent merit increase in my salary, (mis-)leading me into believing that my dossier painted a picture of high-quality performance.
• 2003-2004: Third peer review
  • There is an additional peer review of the candidate's teaching to support the tenure review.
    • Here is my peer review from Fall 2003, which was also used in support of my departmental tenure review in the Spring of 2004 and my P&T review in 2004-2005.
• 2004-2005: Tenure review
  • The tenure review begins with the preparation of the candidate's tenure dossier, which in my case took place in 2003-2004. The dossier consists of many materials that I prepared concerning my teaching, research, and service records. The departmental review committee also solicited letters of reference from "friendly colleagues", external referee reports from scholars qualified to evaluate my research, and reference letters from every student I had ever taught at Colby.

    As with my sixth-semester review committee, there was only one tenured member of in my department, so it also included two outside members. Again, I had committee members who had served on P&T and who represented fairly diverse points of view. They are also people I know well and trust implicitly to do a good job. I was not aware at the time that one of the people on my department review committee was also going to be on my P&T committee. The departmental review committee considered my case in the Spring of 2004 and then forwarded their report to the P&T committee. The P&T committee deliberated over my case and many others during Fall 2004. I received word of my tenure denial toward the end of January 2005.

    • Here you can find most of the contents of my tenure dossier
    • Here is a redacted copy of my departmental committee's report and recommendation
      • Upon denial of a tenure case, current Colby procedures require the Dean of Faculty to provide the candidate with a summary of the substance of the department's report. The current Dean of Faculty accomplished this by giving me this redacted version of the report. I consider that going beyond the requirements, and I greatly appreciate it.
    • Here is my tenure denial letter, P&T summaries, and my responses to the summaries
      • Current Colby procedures require a tenure denial to be accompanied by an anonymous written summary paragraph from each P&T committee member, together with an indication of how that member voted. I am told that each committee member writes a thorough report to the President of the college, and that these summaries discuss all the key issues in those reports. However, my summaries were woefully brief, vague, and full of gaps and inaccuracies. I would love to be able to see the full reports, but for whatever reason those are secret. There is currently no obligation on the part of the P&T members to provide denied tenure candidates with informative or even accurate summaries of their decisions.
• 2005: Request for reconsideration
  • In the case of a tenure denial, Colby's procedures allow the candidate to request reconsideration of the tenure case. This involves writing a formal petition for reconsideration, to be read and investigated by a reconsideration committee. The reconsideration committee is composed of the candidate's division chair, the three faculty who most recently rotated off of the P&T committee, and one tenured faculty member of the candidate's choosing. The reconsideration committee can award a reconsideration based on evidence of any of three factors: discrimination, violation of academic freedom, or failure to adhere to proper procedures. If at least three members of the committee vote to support the reconsideration, then the candidate gets the chance to meet with the P&T committee for a formal interview. However, there is no obligation for the P&T committee to change their minds or address any of the issues identified in the reconsideration request. And in fact it appears that historically P&T committees have tended to "circle the wagons" and instead try to concoct even more reasons to deny the candidate tenure (although I am aware that there have been at least occasional successful reconsiderations at Colby).

    In my case, the reconsideration committee rejected my arguments by a vote of 3-2. The majority appeared to endorse the position that it is the P&T committee's prerogative to use any evaluation standards they want, regardless of whether those standards are reasonable, fair, or consistent.

    • Here is a redacted version of my request for reconsideration
      • Note that this is an extremely lengthy document (longer than my dissertation!). But it is also the most thorough treatment of the errors made by my P&T committee and contains what I believe to be a very compelling analysis of my record. In particular, it presents clear evidence of the positive trajectory in my teaching across all of my courses, as well as across the courses I was able to repeat. It is clear that the P&T members overlooked this evidence in the original tenure dossier. In hindsight, there are a lot of elements of this presentation that I should have included in my tenure dossier, but I did not because I was under the misapprehension that there were no significant problems with my case or my dossier, and that the P&T members would do a thorough and careful job of examining the material I did include.
    • Here is the "sanitized" version of the report from my reconsideration committee
      • I am not entitled to see the "confidential" version of this report. I understand that nobody is entitled to see it except for the Dean of Faculty, and that it now sits rotting in a filing cabinet somewhere, instead of being used usefully to assist in improving tenure procedures at Colby. I do wonder what kind of secret elements might be in that report, which make it necessary to keep it hidden.
      • Of course I have a few comments on the reconsideration committee's report. One of the main things that jumps out is that the majority of the committee decided to deny any sense of responsibility or accountability to any of the people involved in my case. The implied opinions in this report include:
        • It is not the Dean of Faculty's job to declare significant reservations or to make sure that department committees are consistent in how they decide to declare significant reservations.
        • It is not the department committee's job to anticipate significant reservations that will (or might) be raised by the P&T committee.
        • It is not the P&T committee's job to declare or follow up on any new significant reservations it raises.
        • It is not the department committee's job to make sure the tenure dossier is completed properly. It would be nice if they did a good job, but there is no accountability or remedy if they do not.
        • It is not the P&T committee's job to make sure that their evaluation methods are appropriate, fair, and proper. They can use their judgment any way they want as long as they claim to have considered all aspects of the case. The paragraph at the top of Page 5 is particularly telling, where the majority of the reconsideration committee refuse to conclude that the P&T committee appropriately evaluated my teaching record, but do conclude that it is within the P&T committee's rights to evaluate my record any way they see fit (appropriate or not).
        • It is not the reconsideration committee's job to provide the candidate an opportunity to respond to clearly bad judgment on the part of the P&T committee. Rather, the reconsideration committee is free to adopt the narrowest interpretation of their obligations to ensuring the tenure candidate has been treated fairly.