A faculty committee presented changes to tenure-clock policies in the Rights and Responsibilities handbook at a faculty meeting Thursday afternoon.The committee presented a change to the University's Family Medical Leave Act policy, which grants professors time off for family and health emergencies.

Under the current rule, when professors take leave for seven weeks, they receive an extra semester on their tenure clock, University Provost Marty Krauss said.

The new policy would grant those professors an additional year to their tenure clocks, she said.

The handbook committee also wrote a revised policy to extend the tenure clock for assistant professors on the tenure track by one year.

Under the existing policy, after six years of working at the University, an academic dean, Krauss and the respective department chair decide whether tenure-track professors should receive tenure.

Krauss said she was pleased with the FMLA aspect of the discussion.

"It's very consistent with what other universities are doing and we want to maintain that level of competitiveness with our peer institutions," she said.

The FMLA change was passed at the meeting, Krauss said, but it must be presented again to faculty and voted on at April's faculty meeting to become official.

The second policy change proposed would grant an optional seventh year to those professors who want more time to prepare themselves for the tenure review process, chair of the faculty rights and responsibilities committee Richard Gaskins said at the meeting.

The faculty did not vote on that part of the proposal, Krauss said, citing a motion to postpone the vote brought by Prof. Marc Brettler, chair of the NEJS department.

The additional year gives faculty members more flexibility in working toward receiving tenure, Krauss said at the meeting.

Provosts from Vanderbilt, Columbia and Rice Universities say they are "very enthusiastic" about their university's decision to extend tenure clocks," Krauss said.

"Apparently, there's a lot of diverse opinion about [tenure] across campus ranging from people who think, sure, this is a no-brainer, to on the other end, people who don't feel that there's enough compelling evidence that's been presented."

Making the faculty more "family friendly" without weakening the University academically makes amending the FMLA tenure-clock policy difficult, Prof. Jonathan Sarna (NEJS) wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

"If we add a full year on the tenure clock to faculty who give birth or have medical problems, might we inadvertently be hurting weaker faculty, by stringing them along instead of cutting them loose?" Sarna wrote.

In regards to extending the tenure clock for assistant professors, Sarna said it is unclear whether those faculty who take the earlier tenure review would also be eligible for a second opportunity after seven years.

"If we have a seven-year tenure clock instead of six, will the best and most energetic young faculty look to other universities where they can advance more quickly," Sarna asked.

"My hope, in the end, is that we can come up with a clear, well-crafted and balanced policy that will reflect our highest values and serve as a model for other universities," he also wrote.

At the meeting, Sarna said the proposed changes sounded "vague and illogical."

"I know it sounds pedantic, but I really do not think we should be approving language that none of us can really understand," he said.

Faculty Senate member Prof. Ira Gessel (MATH) wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that he is supportive of Professor Gaskins' proposals.

"[They] seem to me a reasonable approach to a problem that is more complicated than it might appear to be, and I think that on the whole they will help to enable the faculty to make better tenure decisions," Gessel said.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe addressed a concern at the meeting that the standards to receive tenure would change if the clock is lengthened.

"There is not any evidence in our experience over the last ten years of tenure either becoming more difficult or easier to get at Brandeis," Jaffe said.