Non-Tenure Track Update 

The conversation surrounding potential promotion pathways for Non-Tenure Track (NTT) Faculty has received renewed attention with the public release of General Faculty Meeting minutes. 

Voted down as a part of the General Faculty Meeting held on Friday March 28, Motion 2 worked to specify different guidelines for tenure track and non tenure track faculty promotions in rank. This Motion followed Motion 1, a proposal to establish a teaching professor lane, passed on Feb. 28. 

Professor of English Elizabeth Boquet, PhD, voted against the motion. In the meeting minutes, Bouquet said “[Motion 2] would create a narrower, less flexible pathway for NTT faculty,” and she asserted “that NTT faculty would benefit from broad criteria,” that are not found in Motion 2.

In a statement, she explains why: “The kind of faculty advancement under consideration is in the area of rank promotion. Rank promotion is only one kind of advancement, though it is an important one, and there are very few steps. Many faculty earn only one rank promotion in their entire careers; some faculty earn two, which is the maximum for people who began at the rank of assistant professor.” 

She adds that, “At Fairfield, we have university-wide criteria (not department-based or school-based, which is the case at some universities) and applications are reviewed by a university-wide committee, comprised of faculty from all schools, so our process needs to be especially capable of accounting for comprehensive accomplishments.” 

Released to the public, the meeting minutes provide a new perspective on the thoughts of faculty who both voted for and against the motion and what the future of promotion may look like for NTT professors. 

Speaking in favor of Motion 2, Professor of English Education Emily Smith PhD states, “that for a university that prided itself on putting teaching first, it would serve us well to match this commitment to teaching with a commitment to the faculty who dedicated themselves to teaching excellence,” noting that, “this would be an incredible thing to accomplish and an incredible gift to our students, who, at the end of the day, were supposed to be why we were all here.” 

Dr. Boquet explains her reasoning for not voting in favor of Motion 2: “We needed to vote against the current motion in order to vote for our foundational model—one that instantiated with a lot of wisdom our particular mission,” emphasizing that, “After that, we needed to do the organizational and cultural work necessary to ensure that the pathways were not only open but expansive for all who sought to advance.” 

These statements found within the meeting minutes were further echoed by the Chair of of Politics Gwendoline Alphonso PhD, stated that a vote against Motion 2 was necessary “to better protect NTT faculty and to retain our existing promotion framework,” to help combat “a widespread experience of an everyday culture of alienation and disrespect,” experienced by NTT faculty members. Those of whom, Dr. Alphonso pointed out, are more commonly “women and people of color”. Dr. Alphonso ultimately believed that the voting down of Motion 2 can, “help us humanize each other more and find shared dignity in each other and make it more likely to build a shared culture of respect and common mentoring across ranks.”

Unable to receive the two-thirds approval needed to pass the Motion, with 126 votes in favor and 94 votes opposed, the future for NTT promotion pathways remains a work in progress. 

In a statement, Professor of English Carol Ann Davis who was in favor of Motion 2 believes that “[…] for a path forward, I will assist my NTT colleagues in any way I can, whether that be through governance, or making a case with current guidelines, or any other way.”

She stated, “I will continue to lobby my colleagues on the other side to see that our NTT colleagues are asking for relief from a situation that is not fully addressable with the current guidelines and asking them to utilize a system not built for them is wholly inappropriate.”