There might well be no aspect of collegial governance that matters more to faculty members than our ability to participate as experts in the appointing, reappointing, tenuring, and promoting (henceforth, ARPT processes) of our colleagues. The Faculty Association has tendered four proposals that are directly concerned with ARPT processes.
We have a number of specific issues pertaining to promotion and tenure procedures, some of which are technical and not contentious, but two are quite substantive, and we have not yet been able to reach agreement on any changes to the current language. This has been disappointing.
The University proposed (UBC Proposal #6c) that the President should have the right to consult with the Provosts or Deputy Vice Chancellor regarding tenure and/or promotion decisions. (To explain, members should know that UBC has two different positions called “Provost”, one for each campus, and one position called “Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal” in the Okanagan).
Article 5 in Part 4 of the Collective Agreement, concerning procedures for appointment, reappointment, tenure and promotion, requires that all departmental recommendations are to be made by standing committees of eligible members. However the members eligible to serve on these standing committees, and the procedures used, depend on which type of recommendation is being made.
In the round of negotiations leading to the 2010-2012 Collective Agreement the University made a proposal to transform the Instructor classification into a full three-rank Educational Leadership classification. At the time the instructor classification had no ranks (Senior Instructor was simply the name given to post-probationary instructors, no actual promotion procedures were involved), the classification was regarded (and described in the Agreement) as a “teaching stream,” and several articles in the Collective Agreement implied that Senior Instructors were analogous to a rank below Assistant Professors. The University proposed to change all of that during that round.
Just before midnight on Friday, November 19th the bargaining teams for UBC and the Faculty Association reached a tentative agreement to conclude a new Collective Agreement for the period July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2012.
Our bargaining Proposal 2 flows from the premise that UBC faculty members have the right to promotion and tenure processes that are fair. We should be able to trust that the evidence is appropriate, that the processes are iterative and responsive, that there are safeguards and mechanisms to ensure accountability.
