GUEST COLUMNIST: An explanation of the tenure process

Like all educational institutions, Penn is actively planning for the next century. There are many important decisions, but in the end the most critical are ones of personnel. Dedicated and talented faculty can overcome even the most disastrous of overall planning efforts; but an undistinguished faculty will fail to deliver on the wisest of plans. Requirements for promotion. Universities are about the acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. Therefore, a first-class university needs its faculty to be outstanding along three different dimensions: scholarship, teaching and citizenship. One primary mark of a great institution is the degree to which its faculty contribute to knowledge. The faculty of such an institution are a concentration of some of the finest minds alive, people whose work is changing our understanding of the world. But universities are also places of teaching, of passing that knowledge on to the next generation of scholars and citizens who themselves will change what we know. In order to make this all work, the faculty and staff must go beyond being excellent in their own scholarship and teaching, they must have a dedication to the institution. Institutions do not run themselves; they take commitments of time and energy. Nature of the process. Selecting faculty members who satisfy these three conditions is one of the most difficult tasks facing modern universities. We must make predictions about what an individual will be like 25 or even 50 years from when they are hired or promoted. For this reason, the university engages in an elaborate process by which it gains information about a candidate's potential. It consults extensively with those groups who have the most expertise in judging each of the relevant characteristics. The scholarly activities of a candidate are evaluated both by the experts in the department and by experts in other institutions. In any case of promotion, many letters evaluating the work are solicited from recognized experts throughout the world. The teaching evaluations are informed by formal student course ratings, letters from selected graduate and undergraduate students, reviews of the candidate's own statements about teaching and opinions of Penn faculty who have observed a candidate's teaching. Contributions to the functioning of the institution are typically evaluated by faculty and administrators who have worked with the candidate. All of this information is gathered together and successively reviewed at multiple levels: the department, the school personnel committee and the University Provost's Staff Conference. Each of these contains scholars and teachers of eminence who can take an increasingly broad perspective on the case. If the case is viewed favorably by all these groups, passed on to the Trustees. It should be clear this is a process designed to prevent a certain kind of mistake -- the awarding of a permanent position at the University to someone who proves to be less than outstanding. Such a mistake would have serious long term negative consequences for the institution. Painful as it may be to make a negative judgment on a generally strong candidate, the Iniversity has seen being too severe in rejecting such a candidate to be the preferable of the two kinds of mistakes that can be made. Relative weight of teaching and research. It is fair to say that the sine quo non of promotion at Penn is excellence in research. We believe the University must make its investments in the best minds it can attract. An active mind, as revealed in outstanding contributions to knowledge, is the best predictor of further intellectual engagement. Active researchers bring an excitement to their teaching and an ability to let students develop as far as they can, which is essential to quality education. Students can learn a subject from someone not actively engaged in research, as they do in high school and in many small colleges; but they cannot develop the same understanding of the material and the way it was discovered that they get from one of the discovers. Moreover, an outstanding researcher attracts to the University the next generation of faculty and so lets the institution continue to maintain and increase its own excellence. The primacy of research excellence does not diminish the importance of excellence in teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. At Penn, we can demand that the faculty be excellent in both regards. Students frequently see cases of outstanding teachers who are not promoted and conclude that the University does not care about good teaching. This conclusion is simply wrong both as a matter of logic and as a matter of fact. We care about both research and teaching. Students rarely notice the cases in which a poor teacher is not retained despite excellence in research; but there are many of those. Prognosis for good teaching is a necessary condition, just as is prognosis for good research. But neither is sufficient for promotion at Penn. I have been involved in decisions of this sort for 30 years. I have seen some judgments I believe were in error. But I have seen many more where a sound decision was made. Moreover, I have always been impressed with the seriousness, fair-mindedness and integrity which faculty and administrators at all levels bring to the process. The system for promoting faculty at Penn is lengthy and elaborate. But I believe that it provides an excellent result and has allowed Penn to become stronger and stronger as an institution. I took the position of Dean of the College because of my own commitment to undergraduate education. At every opportunity I am an advocate for decisions that I think will serve undergraduates best. My experience convinces me the procedures that Penn uses to promote faculty -- emphasizing research but insisting on excellent teaching as well -- in fact are in the best interests of our students, even if they occasionally result in rejecting a young scholar who is an unusually effective teacher.

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