Survey of Tenure Understandings at Colby

Toward the end of the 2004-2005 academic year, I circulated a survey among the tenured and tenure-track faculty at Colby, asking them to relate their understandings of Colby's tenure requirements. I had a few goals in mind when I conducted this survey. Among them were:

Try to get a better picture of what the tenure requirements really are at Colby.
Confirm or disconfirm my sense that there really are no clear requirements or even a consensus opinion about what it takes to get tenure.
Confirm or disconirm that even the tenure evaluators (those who have served on the P&T committee) cannot articulate in a clear and detailed way how they evaluate tenure candidates.

In the survey, I asked people to place themselves into one of three categories:

Tenured faculty who has served on the Promotion and Tenure committee

I received 7 responses in this category

Tenured faculty who has not served on the Promotion and Tenure committee

I received 10 responses in this category

Untenured faculty on the tenure track (this group can also include faculty who have been denied tenure)

I received 8 responses in this category

Most responders to the survey answered by email, but some responded by campus mail in order to remain anonymous. I received a total of 25 responses. Below I present those responses. I should make clear that I have lightly edited the responses in the following ways:

Correct typos and spelling errors, and otherwise make the typography consistent across responses (in part to help protect anonymnity)
Remove or alter specific mentions of people, departments, or situations, in order to help protect anonymity
If someone wrote a general response instead of a specific response to each question, I have repeated the response in each section of the results to which the response is relevant.

I have also randomly "shuffled" the responses in each category. So, for example, the first response to question #1 may or may not be the same respondent as the first response to question #2. This is also to help protect the anonymity of the responders.

Here is the text of the survey I sent out.

If you are interested in adding your response to this survey, please send me your answers by email or regular mail. As I collect batches of additional responses, I will add them to the results here (there are so far no additional responses to this survey from the original batch).

Here are the responses to Question #4 (on teaching expectations)

Responses from tenured faculty who have served on P&T
Responses from tenured faculty who have not served on P&T
Responses from untenured faculty on the tenure track

Here are the responses to Question #5 (on research expectations)

Responses from tenured faculty who have served on P&T
Responses from tenured faculty who have not served on P&T
Responses from untenured faculty on the tenure track

Here are the responses to Question #6 (on service expectations)

Responses from tenured faculty who have served on P&T
Responses from tenured faculty who have not served on P&T
Responses from untenured faculty on the tenure track

Here are the responses to Question #7 (on evaluation tradeoffs)

Responses from tenured faculty who have served on P&T
Responses from tenured faculty who have not served on P&T
Responses from untenured faculty on the tenure track

Here are the responses to Question #8 (on additional issues)

Responses from tenured faculty who have served on P&T
Responses from tenured faculty who have not served on P&T
Responses from untenured faculty on the tenure track

Interpretation of the results

I have struggled with how much to try to interpret these results versus just letting them stand and speak for themselves. Obviously this was not a carefully controlled scientific survey, so all we can really glean from the results is some impressions. So here are some brief impressions based on my own reading of the responses:

For the most part, only untenured faculty believe that there are any kind of quantitative criteria to meet.
The faculty members who have served on P&T in particular are are the least likely to provide any detail on what it takes to be considered "excellent" or "outstanding".
Only a small number of the respondents claim or imply that the requirements are clear, but even those respondents are not able to express clearly and in detail what the requirements are.
The extent to which the requirements are clear is also the extent to which they are vague and subjective. For example, it is clear that excellence in teaching and research is required, and it is clear that the P&T committee primarily uses student evaluations and letters to determine excellence in teaching, but it is not clear at all what it takes to be considered "excellent enough".
There appears to be a consensus that excellence in teaching and research are required, excellence in teaching can make up for some deficiencies in research, and service is probably not a serious issue. Service is only used as an extra excuse to deny a candidate.
Among the faculty, there is no consistency of understanding to any level of detail what it takes to get tenure at Colby. This applies as much to the tenure-track faculty, who have no solid idea what they need to accomplish, as it does to the P&T members who are unwilling or unable to paint any detailed picture of what a tenurable candidate looks like. The general required attitude seems to be "Make sure you are well above the bar in all aspects, and you will be fine." But even this attitude requires that you not be significantly misled or confused by where "the bar" is.
It is apparently particularly important to receive numerous superlative comments in your student evaluations and letters. Most (not just some) of your students must express the opinion that you have significantly changed their lives and/or academic interests in extreme ways.

I provide some more of my own thoughts on what Colby's tenure requirements really are in my document on strategies for earning tenure at Colby.

Randolph M. Jones
How (not) to get tenure at Colby College