Provost Marty Krauss has assembled a faculty committee to advise her on lengthening the tenure clock for assistant professors, allowing them more time to establish funded research and publish, according to the charge her office issued to the committee on Sept. 28.Krauss, who said that she would like to extend the tenure clock an additional year, has asked the task force to submit its report and recommendations by Nov. 15. "I don't know anyone against this," she said. "This is a reality."

In the current tenure track system, assistant professors are hired under a three-year contract, which, if renewed for an additional three years, then brings the professor under tenure review at the end of the sixth year.

The five-member committee is chaired by Prof. Michael Rosbash (BIO) and includes Profs. Marion Smiley (PHIL), Tzvi Abush (NEJS), Jacqueline Jones (HIST) and Rachel McCulloch (ECON/IBS). Committee members declined to comment because they have only met once and feel it is premature to release any public statements.

According to the provost's charge, departments and individual faculty members have expressed concern over "the difficulties of faculty in the sciences establishing funded research and of faculty in other disciplines publishing books" during the six years.

Tenured Prof. Susan Birren (BIO), said reviewing the tenure process for the sciences is reasonable. "Five years can be a real push to get a lot of publications out."

But not all faculty are convinced the one-year extension is necessary. "I'm not sure it would make a difference," said Prof. Patricia Johnston (CLAS), who also has tenure.

Faculty can be hired either on the full-time or part-time tenure track, meaning a professor is eligible to receive either full or partial tenure. Faculty can also be hired outside the tenure structure on contract.

Some professors are concerned about how lengthening the contract for the assistant professor position may impact distinguishing between full-time tenure and non-tenure track faculty.

"Tenured faculty are first-class university citizens; they can't lose their jobs for expressing opinions about academic policy, or for following their intellectual agendas. Contract and junior faculty, by definition, don't have that protection," Senate Faculty Chair Harry Mairson wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

"Extending the tenure clock, awarding partial tenure, and proposed changes in the role played by contract faculty risk a weakening of faculty citizenship, and a blurring of the roles of contract, tenure-track and tenured-faculty," he said.

The committee's charge includes investigating the tenure practices of other research universities and analyzing Brandeis' current policies on tenure review, including research on the standard "variations in practice based on discipline/professional school [and] the impact of FMLA on length to tenure review."

FMLA, the Family and Medical Leave Act, mandates temporary leave for faculty in cases of childbirth and health emergency, and may impact a professor's ability to conduct research and get his or her work published in the six years.

Some professors are also unsure whether a standard tenure clock is necessary because depending on the department, levels of academic success may be measured in different ways.

"A dean who oversees promotion procedures needs to behave like an anthropologist studying academic societies," Mairson said. "He must look at the departments and the academic cultures surrounding their fields, and understand each discipline's totems of professional success."

Johnston said some standardization is necessary, but depending on whether or not a change is proposed in a professional school or in the School of Arts and Sciences, the dean or provost should be sensitive to individual circumstances.

"Our situations are all so different," Johnston said.

Birren said she is looking forward to seeing the findings and recommendations of the committee because she and other faculty members need more information before they can effectively evaluate the extension of the tenure clock.



Editor's Note: This story was first posted errorneously attributed to Dan Hirschhorn. The Justice regrets the error.