A is for Accounting

How the FAC actually works.

We can all read the criteria in the code, but they do not answer the question “How do people actually fail to make tenure?” One erstwhile member of the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] summarized his or her experience in terms of three factors, handled infra in order of diminishing importance.

A is for Absence: Absence or insufficiency of evidence in the evaluee’s tenure file regarding teaching and/or professional growth dooms the application for tenure.

A1. Student evaluations indicate some problem(s) with teaching but the evaluee or letter-writers

A1a. do not recognize or acknowledge problem(s) and/or

A1b. present no cogent analysis of problem(s) and/or

A1c. adduce no evidence of improvement or a convincing plan for remediation of problems.



A2. Evaluee or letter-writers present little evidence of professional growth.


B is for Burden of Proof: The burden of proof on candidates and departments is shirked, leaving the evaluee at the mercy of the FAC or the President. Some evaluees put shockingly little effort into building an adequate file. It is difficult to tell if some candidates’ colleagues simply do not care or are purposely damning with faint praise.


C is for Conflict: Interpersonal factors* related to conflict and/or to management of conflict are squeezed under official criteria. Some candidates do not handle conflict in a politic way. Some departments do not seem to tolerate conflict or handle it in a productive or decent way.

C1. One or more members of the department are hostile to the candidate due to factors not derived from A or B supra.

C2. An administrator is hostile to the candidate due to factors not derived from A or B supra.

C3. The evaluee, often in response to a perceived threat of C1 or C2 or both, makes asinine statements, requests, gestures, or moves at odds with a recommendation for tenure, and these are documented in the file by the evaluee or by detractors in the department or on the FAC.

C4. One or more members of the FAC are or grow hostile to the candidate.


This veteran of the FAC described four tenure-denial scenarios that he or she had personally witnessed:

A1b/c + mild B + C2

A1a + mild A2 + B

A1a/b/c + B

C1 + C2+ C3


* After the faculty and trustees purged the Faculty Code of the “personal and professional characteristics” criterion – the requirement that one be liked or at least not disliked by “the right people” – detractors and deniers, consisting in part of those who at the faculty meetings supported the idea that probationary colleagues be required to be nice to them, have become adept at smuggling “personal and professional characteristics” into the remaining official criteria. Indeed, some adventurers have simply denied that the “personal and professional characteristics” criterion was excised. For them, this "a**hole clause" persists as a double-secret criterion to sink junior faculty.


Next: "B is for Burden of Proof" -- The Faculty Advancement Committee can simulate fidelity to the code under almost any conditions.