Faculty Council discusses tenure

The Bloomington Faculty Council met at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday to discuss the tenure and promotion process and restructuring of prerequisites in the University.

The BFC charged the faculty affairs committee with revising the guidelines to the promotion and tenure policy of IU.  

Claude Clegg, who leads the faculty affairs committee, pushed for the revision of the guidelines to the policy.  

There are gray areas and moderate conflicts between University policy and Bloomington campus policy, Clegg said.

The revision will include new guidelines in case of mergers and consolidations within IU.

“Tenure and promotion appointments determine who the faculty are,” said Tom Gieryn, vice provost for faculty and academic affairs. “The school tries to make sure that the teachers who get promotions and tenure are not just good teachers, but really good teachers.”

The BFC also discussed streamlining the process students must follow to earn a degree.

The Indiana General Assembly passed a law last year stating Indiana’s publicly assisted higher education systems must provide incoming students with maps to achievement the systems’ objectives, BFC president Herb Terry said.  

“Basically, if a student wants to major in X, we need to give that student a map to show them how to do that in four years,” Terry said.

Some departments, however, put different prerequisites in the schedule of classes than the college or school bulletin.

This potentially makes it confusing for students to understand their major
requirements.

“What we have discovered is that there are many ways in which departments currently notify students of prerequisites, and sometimes they’re contradictory or they’re not the same,” Terry said.

The BFC is currently in the process of making sure the prerequisites for each department’s programs are correct. “The maps should reflect our curriculum choices, rather than letting the map affect our curriculum,” Terry said.

Follow reporter Kathrine Schulze on Twitter @KathrineSchulze.