NMHU Faculty Association Response to the Draft Post-Tenure Review Policy Developed by the Administration
July 18, 2005

In preparation of this response, we reviewed the following materials:

• the draft post-tenure review policy as proposed by the administration to the Regents;
• New Mexico State Statute 21-1-7.1 (Post-tenure review process required);
• current NMHU policies regarding faculty evaluation, as presented in the Faculty Handbook, Section VII;
• faculty evaluation and post-tenure review policies at the other five, New Mexico state universities;
• post-tenure review policies at the University of North Carolina;
• AAUP recommendations regarding post-tenure review

We found that the post-tenure review policy proposed by the Highlands administration differs significantly from all the other policies we reviewed in the following areas:

• Faculty Development vs. Punitive Action
• Faculty vs. Presidential Control of the Process
• The Role of Existing Procedures for Evaluation
• Relevance of the Criteria Proposed
• Protection of Tenure and Academic Freedom

Faculty Development vs. Punitive Action

The primary purpose of post-tenure review should be faculty development. It should not be used as a means of undermining tenure by essentially forcing faculty to justify their tenure status every three to five years. This point is emphasized in the AAUP policy statement regarding post-tenure review and in every post-tenure review policy we reviewed. Yet, the Regent’s policy has four core objectives - none of them are faculty development.

The punitive nature of the policy is most clear in the inclusion of “history of disciplinary action” which we discuss in the section on Relevance of the Criteria Proposed, below.

Faculty vs. Presidential Control of the Process

Every single post-tenure review policy we examined for this response had faculty controlling the process. UNM, Eastern, and Western all specify a committee of tenured faculty members, selected by either the faculty of the unit or via election supervised by the Faculty Senate. In NO policy does the President play ANY role in the process, except to receive and act upon recommendations from faculty committees, chairs, and deans, and, in some cases, to serve as an avenue of appeal. In NO case does the President appoint or approve the members of the review committees, and in NO case does a student serve on the review committee.

One of the central concepts behind post-tenure review is that it be a peer review process. This is even specified in the New Mexico state statute. It is difficult to see how a committee appointed by the President, with no input from the faculty member evaluated, the faculty who directly serve with that faculty member, or the Faculty Senate, can serve as a peer review committee. It is even more difficult to see how a student serves as a peer. The policy as it is written provides for a review by representatives of the President, not a review by peers.

The Role of Existing Procedures for Evaluation

Post-tenure review processes should be based upon the annual review process, just as evaluations for promotion and tenure are based upon the annual reviews. The Regent’s policy makes no mention of our already existing annual evaluations. Our existing policy requires faculty to document their activities in teaching, research/scholarship, and service every year. Those documents are then evaluated by their peers and by their chair and/or dean. A post-tenure review policy that fails to make use of this extensive evaluation material just does not make sense. Every other policy we reviewed is fundamentally based upon the annual evaluation process.

It should be noted that for both Eastern New Mexico and University of New Mexico, satisfactory performance during the annual review process is considered indicative of a satisfactory post-tenure review. It is only after two consecutive annual reviews indicating unsatisfactory performance that a more extensive post-tenure review is initiated. This may also be case at Western, although it is unclear from the policies we were able to obtain on the web.

Relevance of the Criteria Proposed

All of the policies of other universities reviewed for this response indicate that the specific criteria to be used for evaluating faculty are to be developed by the relevant academic units. This makes complete sense, since the specific activities that constitute “scholarly activity” are gong to differ from discipline to discipline. The Regents’ proposed policy contains no recognition of this.

In addition, the Regent’s policy uses a description of faculty activities substantially different from the description in the Faculty Handbook. This means that, under the Regent’s policy, tenured faculty are going to be evaluated on their performance in areas which were not included in their job description. Specifically, the activities that qualify as evidence of the three areas of Teaching, Research, and Service are fundamentally different in the Regent’s policy as opposed to the NMHU Faculty Handbook. Under teaching, there is no mention made of considering peer evaluation of teaching performance, or of advising activities. Under research, apparently the only activities to be considered are peer-reviewed publications and a description of the faculty member’s “research agenda”. The description of research and scholarly activity in the Faculty Handbook is much more extensive.

Perhaps the most severe discrepancies occur under the heading of service. There are two separate service areas included in the Regents’ policy, service to the university and community service. There is no inclusion of service to the profession, although that is included specifically in the Faculty Handbook. Service to the university is limited solely to “administrative positions”. And service to the community must be of “activities that advance the University’s strategic plan”, or professional licensure.

For some unknown reason a review of the faculty member’s complete personnel file, “including evidence of disciplinary history”, is included under service to the university. This is irrelevant to the post-tenure review process, and is the best example of the punitive nature of this proposed policy. If there are disciplinary issues that warrant a tenured faculty member’s dismissal, there are already procedures in place at the university for accomplishing that. Disciplinary issues need to be dealt with at the time they arise, under already existing university policy. There is no rationale for a policy which allows any and all disciplinary issues, which have already presumably been dealt with at the time they arose, to be brought up during a review process that is supposed to focus on teaching, research, and service, not discipline.

This point is emphasized by the fact that NO OTHER post-tenure review policy we reviewed mentioned a review of personnel files or disciplinary actions. In addition, the very state statute that this policy is attempting to address specifies that the ONLY grounds for placing a tenured faculty member on probationary status is unsatisfactory performance in teaching.

Finally, although we have not yet had time to have this evaluated by legal counsel, we believe the proposed policy of allowing committee members, including a student, access to confidential personnel files is almost certainly illegal.

The fourth category listed in the Appendix to the proposed policy is “evidence of community service”. This is an entirely new category of faculty responsibility, since in the Faculty Handbook community service is just one sub-category of general service. This is a significant change in the job descriptions of faculty. Under the Faculty Handbook, there is no explicit requirement for community service. Community service is just one of the activities through which the general requirement of service can be met. The university can not hold a faculty member accountable for activities the faculty member did not know he or she was required to perform.

In addition, the only activities that are included in the proposed policy as demonstrating community service are professional licensure and “community activities that advance the University’s strategic plan”. Since there is no clear definition of what constitutes an activity that will advance the University’s strategic plan, a faculty member has no way to judge whether or not his or her activities have met this requirement. It is questionable that this is in any way a useful description of what constitutes “community service”. Just as an example, suppose the goals of a community are in conflict with a university’s strategic plan? If a faculty member worked to meet the goals of the community, but not the goals of the strategic plan, they would be judged to be deficient in community service under this policy.

Protection of Tenure and Academic Freedom

The clearest objections to post-tenure review policies in general are that they can be used by university adminstrations to circumvent the protections of tenure and academic freedom. This is the fundamental basis for the AAUP’s objections to these policies. It is in order to safeguard against this disturbing possibility that every policy we reviewed was controlled by the faculty, and was framed in a way that emphasized faculty development, not disciplinary action.

A policy such as the one proposed by the administration, in which faculty are regularly reviewed by a committee appointed by the President, according to criteria not in the Faculty Handbook, and including a review of confidential personnel files, clearly threatens the institution of tenure and the exercise of academic freedom.

Existing NMHU Policies and the NM Post-Tenure Review Statute

The statute is actually very simple. It requires that all tenured faculty undergo periodic peer review, at least every three to five years. That peer review should cover the areas of teaching, research/scholarship, and service. The review should include student teaching evaluations. If the faculty member receives an unfavorable evaluation in the area of teaching, the faculty member must undergo a two-year probation and evaluation period. If, during that time, the faculty member’s teaching fails to improve, the faculty member faces loss of tenure.

Highlands already meets a number of these requirements. All faculty at Highlands, tenured and non-tenured, must undergo an annual evaluation. That evaluation covers the areas of teaching, research/scholarship, and service. It includes student teaching evaluations. The evaluation includes a peer review, and a review by the chair and/or dean. These procedures, already in place at Highlands and described in the Faculty Handbook, Section VII, Evaluation Procedures, meet the majority of the requirements of the state statute.

Where we do not meet the requirements of the state statute is our lack of an explicit two-year probationary period for any faculty member who receives an unfavorable review in the area of teaching. Highlands faculty most certainly can lose tenure due to unacceptable teaching, and that is covered under termination for cause in the Regents’ policies for dismissal of a tenured faculty member. Dismissing a faculty member for unsatisfactory teaching would certainly involve a recognition of the problem, the development of a remediation plan, and subsequent reevaluation of the faculty member. However, we have no policy in place that explicitly requires a two-year probationary period. Adopting a simple policy that explicitly requires the probationary period would bring NMHU in complete compliance with the state statute. As it stands, we basically have the same procedures as New Mexico State.

Summary

The NMHU Faculty Association strongly objects to the proposed post-tenure review policy on the grounds that it:

• is controlled by the President, rather than by the faculty;
• does not incorporate our current system of annual faculty evaluations;
• has a punitive focus, rather than focusing on faculty development;
• relies upon activities and criteria that are not listed in the Faculty Handbook;
• is not necessary for compliance with New Mexico state statutes;
• does not resemble any other policy we reviewed;
• includes irrelevant and confidential material;
• and, in its entirety, constitutes a significant threat to tenure and academic freedom.

  If you have questions or comments about the NMHU Faculty Association or the collective bargaining process, you can email our President, Tom Ward, at