Tenure scale difficult to define

“We’re willing to risk not giving tenure to the right people in order to not give tenure to the wrong people.”

That is how College Dean Dennis DeTurck described the rigorous tenure review process that assistant professors at Penn must undergo to gain tenure, a lifelong appointment and the ultimate mark of success in academia.

And in the wake of the tenure denial of history professor Ronald Granieri, students are raising questions about what factors go into that evaluation process. Specifically, they say they wonder what a highly rated professor must do to gain tenure.

Ask administrators, professors and independent analysts about how research and teaching — the two major criteria in tenure decisions — are weighted in the evaluation process and there will be a different answer every time. All say there is no specific formula, but that anything less than top-notch research won’t make the cut.

To an outside observer, the tenure review process can seem opaque and hard to understand. Candidates are evaluated generally on their research, teaching and service to the University, though how each category is measured and weighted is intentionally left open to interpretation.

“There is no exact formula for the distribution between one and the other,” said School of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell. “We are holding the highest standards for both … it always in the end is going to be a question of balance.”

Tenure decisions are made in an extremely confidential setting — the names of the Personnel Committee that evaluates applications are not readily available — and a candidate’s research credentials can be hard for the average student to assess.

Vice Provost for Faculty Lynn Hollen Lees said tenure candidate’s dossiers include, among other things, teaching evaluations collected by the Student Committee for Undergraduate Education, student comments, letters from individual students and, sometimes, comments from faculty about colleague’s teaching.

Some of this data, like teaching scores, are readily available to the public, and students can speak openly about assessments of their teachers based on class experiences.

Research, on the other hand, is trickier to evaluate. A tenure candidate’s department is required to solicit at least eight letters from external reviewers in the candidate’s field evaluating the candidate’s research, in addition to up to three reviewers the candidate may nominate him or herself.

These external reviews — which are not available to the public — are particularly important for the Personnel Committee, which brings together faculty from different disciplines to evaluate a candidate, said emeritus English professor and former Personnel Committee member John Richetti.

He added that the opinion of external reviewers can differ from that of the department, which is why the department might recommend a candidate who is turned down by the Personnel Committee.

Although Bushnell and Lees say that excellence is required in both research and teaching, others familiar with the tenure process say evaluations of research are often weighted more heavily.

DeTurck said that in “unusual” circumstances, “outstanding” research by a professor might override concerns about their teaching, though such decisions would be made with great care.

On the other hand, he said, doubts about the quality of a person’s research will almost never be overridden by outstanding teaching.

“Obviously at a research university [like Penn] typically research weighs most heavily,” said Cathy Trower, who studies the tenure process as the research director at Harvard University’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education. “You can be an okay teacher if you’re a really good researcher and get tenure for the most part.”

Though Trower said good teaching is more important now than it has been in the past, she pointed to an old saying that a teaching award was like the “kiss of death” at a University — a stereotype that evolved because it was assumed that a great researcher would devote the bulk of their time to research, not teaching.

Faculty Senate chairman Harvey Rubin said the adage was absolutely not true — that teaching, while it may have been undervalued in the past, is considered an important part of the tenure review process nowadays.

But how much?

“You can’t let your teaching take over your life,” said DeTurck, who said he believes that great teaching and great research go hand-in-hand.

But, he cautioned, “to devote time to [teaching] at the expense of not making enough progress on your own research work … can stop somebody’s career.”

Penn is typically known for being fairly generous with tenure for its junior faculty, unlike institutions such as Harvard, which used to be known for rarely giving tenure to assistant professors. A little less than half of assistant professors are ultimately awarded tenure, according to DeTurck.

Rubin said a faculty mentoring system is set up to help professors understand the balance between research and teaching that they need to achieve before they go through the tenure review process.

Faculty are also evaluated on research, teaching and service during their third years when they are reappointed as professors, said Lees. This review process resembles the tenure review process in some respects, but does not include the external review of a candidate’s research.

When faculty members are turned down for tenure during their sixth year and choose to reapply during their seventh and final year, they are encouraged to focus on their research during that last year.

As Richetti described it, “the person has to virtually go into monastic seclusion and produce a ton of work.”

Some professors feel this heavy focus on research detracts from their ability to have a well-rounded career as a professor.

“When junior faculty are made to feel that meeting with students is a luxury, they cannot afford in their quest for tenure, the community loses,” said Granieri, the professor who was recently denied tenure. “Academic life is about opening doors, and it cannot serve that purpose to have students find their professors’ doors closed to them.”

His students agree that their interactions with well-liked teachers like Granieri have furthered their academic development by helping them hone their own research and interests.

Trower said she does not believe good teaching is rewarded enough in the process.

With similar sentiments in mind, the Undergraduate Assembly passed a resolution last night that called, in part, for a more transparent tenure process.

About twice per decade, students will actively protest the tenure denial of a popular professor — usually because these denials are more visible than outstanding researchers who are denied tenure because of subpar teaching skills, DeTurck said.

Bushnell said she will try to hear the concerns of all involved when such a situation occurs and try to ensure a proper decision was made, but that it is extremely rare for the SAS Dean to exercise his or her power to overturn a negative decision from the Personnel Committee. Since Bushnell began working in an administrative capacity in 1998, she said it has never happened.

And the faculty — even Richetti, who as English department chair in the early 1990s saw a number of his faculty denied tenure — thinks the system works.

“In my long experience there were several disappointments,” he said. “But overall, I think we had more success than failure.”

Comments (12)

As a student I find this quite disturbing. Our parents are paying a huge sum for our education here and want us to learn as much as possible. In my education thus far at Penn I have had a handful of truly superb instructors, but many have been absolutely horrible-- worse than some of the worst teachers I encountered at my public high school. Perhaps if more emphasis was put on teaching rather than research, students would get more out of their education. The research being conducted by Penn faculty is much less important to me (and my parents), than the quality of the teaching in the classroom. Just by looking at the recent Penn Course Reviews for Granieri, you can see how much of a positive impact he has had on the education of many students here. Why would Penn want to send someone like this away? And what kind of message does this send to faculty who have the potential to be outstanding professors and have a positive impact on the education of many students?

The amount of attention the tenure process is receiving is a bunch of farce. I do not understand why Kaplan continues to cover this story when it will only lead to a dead end. Sure it's great to give Granieri some hope I guess, and sure he will feel so proud that his "bright students with A+'s" have been campaigning for him since he is helping them get into Harvard Law School, and the students go into the Harvard Law School interview telling them this brilliant story of trying to fight a battle against all odds to reverse Penn's tenure process, when this story is nothing new. Time and time again good teachers have been turned away, and the students who had them as teachers do not understand. The bold ones who want to enter law school are the ones who want to have it their way and fight this injustice that they believe is injustice. I really do not mind the students initiatives, but for Rebecca Kaplan continuing to report on this story has really hampered the quality of the DP. Not only does she misusse direct quotations from Deturck, keep using "some professors", "some students", that's probably all complete made up lies that are built from your own personal opinion. I'm sorry that you want UPenn to have the tenure standards of Penn State and not Harvard, and you want the DP to have filthy articles so we can have a gap between quality between the DP and the Crimson. I really hope you use this experience to tell brilliant stories for graduate school, but just know it is at the expense of the DP. This story is seriously going no where. Who cares what Alec Webley said, just because he had two A+'s from Granieri and now wants his voice heard since he is UA he thinks he is a big shot. He is voicing a slim minority of student's opinion on the tenure process, when the other 99.9% understand why Granieri did not receive tenure. Is this why we have the UA so the under-represented with issues that are not even issues can be brought up, when on campus there is so many problems that needs to be fixed for the greater good? Seriously the UA looks like a piece of trash right now because of Alec Webley. He probably won't get reelected since it's obvious who he favors and what issues are important to him. He cares about only issues pertaining to himself and not the greater good.

Good God Penn what is happening.

Wharton 09' SAS 09'

Point of information #1: I have neither applied to Harvard Law nor received an A+ in Dr. Granieri's class.

Point of information #2: this is not activism conducted by just "some students," but by hundreds of students, alums, and I presume faculty members who may prefer to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

Your rant about Alec Webley is obnoxious and ad hominem. You might consider that he is frequently contacted by the DP for a comment because he is the highest elected representative of the student body. If you really must take Webley down a peg, contact him directly, comment on an article about his UA initiatives or write a letter to the DP. In response to one of your points that is more germane to this article: I imagine that if Webley's point of view represents the slim minority of students' opinion (a conjecture on your part), it has more to do with how few students know anything about the opaque tenure process than with how much they care about quality instruction. To be fair, this is conjecture on my part though in my interviews with prospective students, "world class professors" is always on their list of why they want to come to Penn, and I frequently respond using Dr. Granieri as an example of our excellent faculty.

You may be correct that Granieri doesn't deserve tenure (though I believe he does), but by calling the interest in the tenure process or the efforts of students on behalf of a beloved professor a "farce", you are essentially denying that the community has the right to ask for a better explanation one of the most important pillars of our institution. Why should the Penn community be kept in the dark about such an important decision, especially when so many hundreds of students and alums (read: future and current donors) seem to believe this decision will be hugely detrimental to a highly respected department with a longstanding presence at Penn?

I suggest you measure your words more carefully when you want to disagree with people's actions. No one is being violent, they are simply and primarily requesting a reconsideration of the Granieri decision, and are secondarily seeking more clarity about the tenure process. If you really believe that having hundreds of people asking for a reconsideration of this decision is a problem, then please explain WHY. You add nothing to the conversation if you don't, other than making yourself a subject of ridicule for not learning squat about the proper presentation of opinions from either of the schools you attended while at Penn. Good God what is happening at Penn?" indeed.

PS: I am also confused about your concern for Penn when you have such a boner for Harvard. Perhaps this boner is appropriating the blood your brain would normally use to correctly conjugate verbs?

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The seniors are part of a 17-person History honors thesis class that is leading a charge to protest the tenure denial of their thesis seminar advisor, Ronald Granieri. An assistant professor of modern European history.

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