Promotion and Tenure Outreach

Public demand on higher education to address social issues presented by the current economic and political context is among the highest rate in the last 100 years.  In this context, continuing in the traditional pattern of defining scholarship as divided duties from other social work faculty roles creates an entropic system, with junior faculty the most vulnerable population as they attempt to negotiate scholarship, service and teaching as separate challenges. 
The context of the social work is already challenged by how to define rigor and relevance of scholarship.  Stoesz and Karger (2008) suggest that scholarship expectations are less than rigorous and symbolically represented in the work of organizational leadership, while  Mohan (2009) suggests that lack of scholarship is inherent in the culture of social work, particularly the over-dependence on the research of other disciplines.    A third possibility exists, specifically that traditional definitions of scholarship are in competition with commitments to other workload demands (i.e., accreditation, teaching, institutional service and community engagement).  In BSW programs, scholarship is performed however, without documentation, it remains undistinguished in quality from other work
Boyer’s model (1990) of multiple scholarships including: Discovery, Teaching, Integration and Application offers an alternative view of the work of BSW faculty particularly anchoring community engagement as legitimate efforts within promotion and tenure.    Articulating multiple measures of dissemination (Glassick, Huber,& Maeroff, 1997)  provides the recognition of contributions from discipline expertise to  social issue, service is elevated to scholarship (i.e.,  “scholarships within service”)    from which faculty reward systems can be transformed to support equity of workload and faculty sustainability.   
The workshop will be conducted as a case study –comparison strategy in which the presenters share their institution’s path toward implementing Boyer followed immediately by participant reflection on the applicability of similar concepts to their home institution. 
The case is divided into three foci:  First, the workshop will focus on context specific demographics and the transition as a progression of activities.  The case study will focus on four major milestones of our program’s adoption of Boyer’s model:  1.Recognizing competing demands as inequitable demands among faculty, 2.  Identifying the scholarship of BSW social work within definitive qualities , 3. Articulating Boyer’s model in the P&T handbook, including standards of dissemination and assessment and 4. Creating a community of scholars based on a culture of multiple scholarships. 
The second focus is on the practical aspects of how to move a program toward Boyer’s multiple scholarships, and the case study will include examination of two aspects of the program:  the P&T handbook which emphasizes the practical applications of Boyer to various stages of the P&T process, and culture building strategies such as “the Wednesday morning research group” and “formalize collaborative writing assignments.”
The third focus is on the implications of the transition to the workload of faculty as scholarship was recognized across teaching, research and service. The case study will report on impact on four populations:  tenure track junior faculty, students, agencies and staff in a high poverty high need community, and the university as a whole.

This article examines how Latina/o professors perceive, experience, and reflect on the tenure and promotion process. Findings for this longitudinal study are drawn from a purposive sample of nine female and seven male, Latina/o tenuretrack faculty participants. Using a Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical (LatCrit) Race Theory, and Chicana Feminist framework, this article documents fundamental inequities in the tenure and promotion policies and practices that affected the Latina/o faculty in this study. Using narrative data, educational biographies, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and unstructured ethnographic interviews, this study found four common themes: (1) tenure and promotion processes functioned as a "tool of fear," (2) the tenure and promotion process was like a "moving target," (3) tenure provided limited forms of respect but not full membership, and (4) Latina/o supervivencia enabled the professors to thrive despite unsupportive and sometimes hostile campus and departmental climates.

The tenure debate is no longer academic. For years impervious to pointed critique, tenure has increasingly become vulnerable to its growing list of detractors. In a 2011 survey, most college presidents admitted to preferring long-term or annual contracts -and not tenure -for their faculty. While universities rarely seek a complete revocation of this benefit from their faculty, new or existing lines are often reclassified as tenure ineligible. Nor have the numbers of tenure stream faculty risen proportionately to the increased student enrollment of the past decades. The percentage of tenured appointments appears to be on the decline, and news last week seems to confirm this trend. The Wisconsin legislature passed a vote to eliminate tenure from state law.

Objective: Bibliometrics is a method of examining scholarly communications. Concerns regarding the use of bibliometrics
in general, and the impact factor score (IFS) in particular, have been discussed across disciplines including
social work. Although there are frequent mentions in the literature of the IFS as an indicator of the impact or quality
of scholars’ work, little empirical work has been published regarding the validity of such use. Method: A proportionate,
stratified, random sample, of n = 323 articles was selected from 17 Web of Science listed social work journals
published during the 1992 to 1994 period. Results: The relationship between journals’ IFSs and the actual impact of
articles published in those journals (predictive validity) was r = .41 (short term) and r = .42 (long term). Conclusion:
The practice of using the IFS as a proxy indicator of article impact merits significant concern as well as further
empirical investigation.

Keywords: scientific communication; decision making; personnel promotion; personnel selection; teacher
tenure; educational personnel; occupational tenure; career development; higher education; citation
analysis; impact factor scores; validity; faculty; hiring; reappointment; social work education