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STANDARD 5: FACULTY
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IntroductionFAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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IntroductionThe University’s FacultiesThe combined faculties of Yale University include over 2,800 full time equivalent (FTE) members, divided among the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (which serves both Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) and ten separate professional schools: Architecture, Art, Divinity, Drama, Forestry and Environmental Studies, Law, Management, Medicine, Music, and Nursing. Within this array, faculty in the Institute of Sacred Music are appointed jointly with either Divinity or Music, and the School of Public Health constitutes a department of the School of Medicine. The largest of these faculties, in the School of Medicine, consists of 1,580 FTE’s, composed of 824 “ladder” faculty (which at Yale signifies instructors and assistant, associate, and full professors), 111 non-ladder, and 645 research faculty. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences totals 887 FTE’s, made up of 547 ladder faculty, 165 non-ladder, and 175 research faculty. The approximate sizes of the other faculties are indicated by the total faculty FTE’s in each: Law (seventy-one), Nursing (fifty-nine), Management (forty-four), Music (forty-three), Forestry (thirty-two), Drama (twenty-nine), Divinity (twenty-seven), Architecture (twenty-four), and Art (twenty-two). The composition of each of these faculties, by type and rank, can be found in Attachment 1 to this Standard. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will be described in more detail below. With the exception of Medicine, the size of Yale’s faculties has changed very little over the last decade. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has grown slightly (about 6 percent all in non-ladder and research faculty). Modest growth can also be seen in Forestry and Nursing; modest reduction is evident in Divinity. Significant growth occurred in Law (from fifty-four to seventy-one FTE’s–more shown in adjunct and research than in ladder faculty), but the most striking growth (more than 50 percent) has taken place in the School of Medicine. The largest increase in that school occurred in the research faculty (77 percent); the smallest in the ladder faculty (36 percent). Growth in sponsored research and clinical income made these increases possible. Yale has devoted considerable energy over two decades to increase the diversity of its faculties, with inconsistent success (see Attachment 2 to this Standard). For all but a few of the smallest schools, such as Art, Architecture, and Drama (where the faculty is largely adjunct rather than ladder) the most appropriate measure of diversity is in the ladder ranks, both tenured and term. University-wide, the percentage of women in the tenured faculty is 15.3 percent the percentage of members of minority groups is 7.7 percent. These percentages represent increases over the last decade from 8.5 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively. The percentage of women in the term faculty is 32.8 percent– only a slight increase from 30.1 percent a decade ago. The percentage of members of minority groups is 15.4 percent–significantly higher than 8.5 percent a decade ago. With respect to different minority groups, the number of Asian faculty has increased most significantly, but, with the exception of the number of Native Americans, there have been percentage increases in each of the other groups. Perhaps the most significant achievement has occurred in the School of Medicine, where the percentage of tenured women has increased from 7.8 percent to 14.7 percent over the decade. This increase was in part the result of a conscious and public effort initiated by the dean early in that period. In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences the percentages of both women and members of minority groups have increased steadily over the decade. The percentage of tenured women rose from 8.3 percent to 12.3 percent and, as a result of a particularly good year of promotions and appointments, have reached approximately 14 percent in 1999-2000. Tenured minorities rose from 7.1 percent to 9 percent. Nontenured women dropped slightly, from 32 percent to 30.5 percent, but minority faculty increased from 9.8 percent to 15 percent. Given the relatively large pools of women available for term and tenured positions in most disciplines, these small increases are a matter of concern. Although the pools are generally much smaller for members of minority groups, students, faculty, and administrators share a commitment to diversity that will require an even more concerted effort to recruit and retain both women and members of minority groups. Breakdowns of these numbers can be found in the pages appended to this selection. It is clear from the more detailed tables that there are dramatic differences among divisions. For example, the percentage of tenured women in the humanities is 22.6 percent, whereas the percentage in the social sciences is only 7.1 percent, and in the physical sciences only 3.6 percent. The lack of women in these divisions remains a matter of significant concern.
The Faculty of Arts and SciencesThis self-study report will focus on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, but it is important to recognize that (as is made evident in the Faculty Handbook), with some exceptions, the ranks, standards, regulations, benefits, and procedures of that faculty provide the model for all other faculties. |
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Introduction FAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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CompositionDescriptionGrowth and Change. As indicated above, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has grown modestly over the past decade, but the most important features of this growth can be seen in changes in composition. The ladder faculty has been reduced by about 7 percent. Most of this resulted from a process known as “restructuring,” in which a faculty committee, chaired by the provost, recommended a reduction in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of about 6 percent, with target reductions (and a few increases) assigned to each department. This reduction has occurred, according to plan, over a five-year period, entirely by attrition, normally on the occasions of retirement. Significantly, however, despite this reduction in ladder faculty, the number of tenured faculty has remained virtually the same, while the number of non-tenured faculty has decreased by 16 percent. This movement toward tenure most likely has been caused by the number of professors (about thirty) still actively on the faculty beyond the age of seventy (a topic that is discussed below). This has led some departments to seek additional slots or to convert two nontenured positions into one tenured position, in order to provide a tenure slot for an outstanding nontenured faculty member or an important outside recruitment. This change has implications for the undergraduate teaching burden that will be addressed later. Approximately 60 percent of the FAS ladder faculty are now tenured, though the percentage differs significantly from department to department, and the percentage in the physical sciences and engineering is somewhat higher (62 percent). There is also a significant increase in research faculty (23 percent), which does not represent a reallocation of Yale funds but rather an increase in research sponsored by various outside sources. A significant increase in non-ladder faculty (67 percent, or from 99 to 165 FTE’s) has been caused largely by planned increases in several kinds of introductory courses, primarily foreign language instruction and expository writing.
Appraisal and ProjectionTeaching Capacity. Yale’s ratio of faculty to students is extremely favorable, by whatever measure one uses–e.g., by taking into account all teaching faculty or just ladder faculty. Looking at the core teaching responsibilities, one can observe that there are approximately 650 budgeted full-time ladder faculty to teach 5200 undergraduates and 860 full-time graduate students in the first and second years. That is about a 9 to 1 ratio for those groups. Obviously faculty bear additional teaching responsibilities for graduate students who are no longer taking courses, but there are also a significant number of non-ladder faculty and even some graduate students engaged in teaching. The use of graduate students in undergraduate teaching is discussed in Standard 2. Taking all of the teaching and all of the students into consideration, the ratios remain favorable. Important questions have recently been raised about the increasing fraction of teaching being done by non-ladder faculty. Furthermore, neither undergraduate students nor faculty are distributed across the four divisions evenly. Some departments and programs in the humanities and social sciences are often challenged to meet enrollment demands, while there appears to be additional teaching capacity for undergraduates in most of the physical sciences. Yale is seeking ways to address this disparity, by working to improve the accessibility of introductory science courses and by intensifying efforts to increase the pool of science-oriented applicants and the yield of the potential science majors who are accepted. Looking forward, it is likely that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will see some modest growth, reflecting initiatives represented by the creation of a new biology department (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) and modest expansion in Political Science and Engineering. The School of Management has embarked on a significant increase in its faculty, which will take place over the next five years. Medicine is planning increases in faculty as it improves and expands its laboratory facilities and implements new faculty tracks in both research and clinical instruction. In addition to the instruction provided by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, undergraduates are well served by several of the professional schools. In particular, the Schools of Art and Architecture provide courses for many undergraduates as well as popular majors in both studio art and architecture. Faculty in the School or Music offer performance lessons for credit to those undergraduates with the capacity to work at the graduate level. A faculty member jointly appointed in the School of Drama serves as the director of the undergraduate Theater Studies Major. One perennially difficult area at Yale is the tension between departments, where most faculty are appointed, and the many interdisciplinary programs and majors that serve undergraduates. Some programs have endowment or current funds that either provide positions for those programs or enable directors to “purchase” teaching from departments. The FAS Steering and Expanded Executive Committees have studied this problem and have begun to address it in two ways. First, they have taken a small number of budgeted ladder positions from departments and allocated them to interdisciplinary programs. Second, they have provided some additional instructional funds for the appointment of non-ladder faculty where that is appropriate–or example, in Film Studies and Theater Studies. Use of Non-ladder Faculty. Despite this richness of faculty resources, the concerns about the quality and quantity of the non-ladder faculty and, for different reasons, about the number of graduate students who assist in the teaching of undergraduates, must be taken seriously. Yale is currently engaged in several efforts to determine the extent and quality of this teaching and to find ways of eliminating all that cannot be justified by the needs of programs and the quality of the instructors. The outlines of the use of non-ladder faculty can be described here briefly. A large fraction is composed of lectors and senior lectors, who carry the bulk of foreign language instruction, an area of the curriculum which has grown dramatically over the past decade in response to several factors, including a language competency requirement voted by the Yale College Faculty. These individuals are increasingly selected from national searches and most are effective, highly professional teachers. They generally hold full-time, multi-year, benefited positions. Similarly, highly qualified, full-time lecturers can be found in such other such areas as the teaching of expository writing and laboratory instruction in introductory science courses. Some programs, the creative writing track in the English Department and the Theater Studies program, make strong appointments of adjunct faculty. The working hypothesis is that these are appropriate uses of non-ladder faculty, and Yale’s efforts should continue to be directed to ensuring that all such instructors are well qualified, carefully monitored, and adequately paid and supported. A standing committee, the Language Study Committee, has this important issue at the top of its agenda. Among that committee’s goals are to find ways to support the professional development of these important teachers in ways that have traditionally been provided for ladder faculty. Another category of non-ladder faculty is visitors from other universities, brought to Yale for two reasons, either to fill temporary gaps in the curriculum created by vacancies or for recruitment to permanent positions. Finally, there are a large number of part-time appointees who serve the teaching program in diverse ways, and this category requires special scrutiny. An experienced member of the senior administrative staff has been given direct responsibility for monitoring the use of non-ladder faculty, especially one- year appointments. She has nearly completed collecting the necessary data, and with colleagues from the College, the Graduate School, and the Provost’s Office, she plans to lead a thorough analysis, with the goal of reducing the number of non-ladder and one- year appointees and ensuring that those who remain a part of the teaching body are well qualified and appropriately monitored. Diversity Efforts. As the statistical trends show, Yale has made slow but steady progress in diversifying its faculty. From the strongest possible commitments from the president and provost (including a recent statement announcing new initiatives in the recruitment of women and minority group faculty) to the everyday procedures that implement those commitments, the University works hard to make its faculty more representative of the nation, and indeed Yale’s very diverse student body. The key policies are aimed at lowering the field and budgetary barriers when to do so would result in the recruitment or retention of an outstanding woman or member of an underrepresented minority group. In the last two years, the number of appointments that further Yale’s diversity goals have been encouraging: the number of tenured and nontenured minority faculty has increased and the number of tenured women has increased significantly. There remain areas of real concern, however, such as the very low number of tenured women in the social sciences, the low number of women at any rank in the physical sciences and engineering, and a drop in the percentage of nontenured women across the FAS. In order to accelerate progress in these areas, the president and provost announced a special initiative (see Attachment 3) which, among other things, offers to provide to departments fully incremental resources, including faculty slots, whenever they can identify a minority candidate or a woman candidate in fields where they are underrepresented. Such candidates, in every case, satisfy Yale’s rigorous standards for appointment; quality standards are not relaxed, only limitations on the size of departments and the fields represented. The provost has also indicated that she intends to identify a member of her office to take special initiatives in the identification and recruitment of women and members of minority groups to Yale’s faculties. (See Attachment 3 to this Standard.) Changing Retirement Patterns. Since 1993 Yale has been responding to the effects of the end of mandatory retirement. As was expected, Yale was among those research universities where the aspirations of the faculty and the favorable working conditions encourage many to remain active long after the traditional retirement age. Just before the law changed, Yale made some significant changes in the retirement policies and options, not so much to encourage retirement as to remove real and perceived barriers, so that faculty would feel free to retire at the time that seemed best for them personally and professionally. The Yale University Retirement Annuity Plan is an excellent one, and on a regular basis Yale examines the effects of the contribution rates. It appears that the current rates are more than sufficient to meet the goals of the plan. The policies and programs are summarized in Attachment 4 to this Standard, and they include an Early Retirement Salary Supplement; programs in Planned and Phased (half-time) retirement, and various policies that provide support and the opportunity to teach and conduct research after retirement. These programs have been welcomed, but a significant number of faculty have chosen to remain active well past the traditional retirement age. As anticipated, this pattern tends to constrain the number of opportunities for tenured positions for Yale’s own nontenured faculty and the number of new areas departments can seek to develop. Approximately 10 percent of the tenured faculty is currently composed of individuals who are seventy or older. This percentage has leveled off in the last two years and is expected to increase very slightly over the next few years and then decline somewhat. The administration has found ways to provide opportunities for tenure by permitting temporary or “mortgaged” slots, and the budget has been able to absorb the changes in mix, so the aging of the faculty has not created a serious problem at Yale, though for various reasons there are real concerns about this phenomenon in the Medical School. Since 1993 there has been a standing faculty Committee on Retirement that monitors these issues and proposes ways of removing barriers to retirement. The most recent report of that committee is appended to this section of the self-study. One of the most serious issues facing Yale is to provide offices for emeritus faculty who wish to have them. A census of living emeritus FAS faculty shows 141 individuals, 64 percent of whom have offices of some kind on campus. More than half of them have held those offices for ten or more years. Given the general space constraints faced on the central campus, a solution to this problem must be found if we are to remove an important barrier to retirement. Looking Forward. As must be clear from this section of the self-study, the Yale faculty, and particularly the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, holds a place of very high esteem in the institution. Over the next decade we will work toward improvements in three areas: diversity, non-ladder appointments, and retirement. Of these, we anticipate that the goals of diversity will be the most challenging, in part because success in that area depends on some factors that lie beyond Yale’s control. Nevertheless, Yale intends to make improvements in all of these areas and fully expects to begin its fourth century with one of the strongest bodies of faculty in the world. |
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Introduction FAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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Administrative StructureDescriptionThe Faculty of Arts and Sciences is organized into about forty departments, most of which are disciplinary, but some are interdisciplinary programs with limited powers of appointment but some faculty slots. Each department and most programs are assigned to one of four divisions: Humanities, Social Sciences, Biological Sciences, and Physical Sciences and Engineering. For each division the president appoints a director, who serves as chair of one of the four Divisional Advisory Committees. These committees have two related functions. They meet regularly with chairs of departments and programs or among themselves in order to provide advice to the deans and provost about the quality and effectiveness, as well as the appointments needs, of the departments in their division. The divisional committees maintain advisory jurisdiction over certain faculty slots that reside in divisional pools, until assigned to a department or program for a particular position by the FAS Steering Committee, chaired by the provost and including the deans of Yale College and the Graduate School. From time to time, each Divisional Advisory Committee is joined by a tenured faculty member from another division and becomes the Tenure Appointments Committee for that division, chaired by one of the two deans. These committees review recommendations made by departments to appoint individuals to tenured positions. If the appropriate divisional committee approves the recommendation, it is carried forward to the Joint Boards of Permanent Officers (all the full professors) of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for a further vote. Occasionally (at least once or twice a year) a Tenure Appointments Committee turns down a recommendation for tenure, and unless a flaw can be found in the process, there is no appeal from that decision. Very occasionally, the members of the Joint Boards vote against a recommendation, in which case the Tenure Appointments Committee is given the opportunity to reconsider and again present the case. If the recommendation is tuned down again, there is no appeal. There is no dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale, and many of the responsibilities elsewhere carried out by such a dean are divided among the dean of Yale College, the dean of the Graduate School, and the provost. The governance of the Faculty of Arts and Science is formally in the hands of the FAS Executive Committee, composed of the president, the provost, and the two deans. Major policies, cross- divisional matters, and long-term strategy issues are discussed in a group called the Expanded Executive Committee, which also includes the four divisional directors. More routine business of the faculty, including the assignment of faculty slots to departments, is conducted in weekly meetings of the FAS Steering Committee, composed of the two deans, the provost and the associate and deputy provosts, who oversee the budgets and management of the departments and ensure that University policies are effectively implemented. The provost and her staff also maintain control over the number of faculty positions allocated to the departments and programs. With respect to the appointments process, each of the deans accepts responsibility for half of the departments and monitors the complex search process by which faculty positions in those departments are filled, from advertisement to final approval of the successful candidate. Recommendations for all faculty appointments are made by a department or program, reviewed by either the FAS-wide Term Appointments Committee or the appropriate Divisional Appointments Committee. In rotation, the deans chair these appointments committees. Appraisal and ProjectionThe structure of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences is an unusual one in many ways, lacking an FAS dean, locating significant appointments responsibilities in the offices of the deans of the College and Graduate School, having a Joint Board of Permanent Officers, but no Senate. Nevertheless, the structure seems to have been successful, and the periodic reviews of the governance of the FAS and the University repeatedly affirm confidence in it. (See Standard 3 for discussion of the most recent committees studying FAS governance.)
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Introduction FAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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Appointments Standards and ProceduresDescriptionStandard of Appointments. Both by policy and practice, Yale strives to appoint to its faculties the most highly qualified individuals as demonstrated by national searches through a process that is based on open access and comparative evaluations sought from scholars at other institutions. This is particularly true for searches at the tenured level, which are international in scope, even when one of the candidates might be a member of the Yale faculty. The standards for tenure were codified in 1965 by an ad hoc faculty committee chaired by Professor Robert Dahl, which said, inter alia: “Candidates for the rank of professor are expected to stand in competition with the foremost leaders in their fields in the world.” The committee also said that at either tenured rank, candidates “must have attained scholarly and creative distinction of a high quality as demonstrated by both written work and teaching. The candidate’s contributions to the intellectual life and the well-being of the community will also be considered.” This standard has twice been reviewed and affirmed by faculty committees, once in 1981 in a committee chaired by Professor James Tobin and again in 1996 by a committee chaired by Professor John Hartigan. Appointments Procedures. To ensure that these very high standards are met in every search, the Tobin Committee developed a set of appointments procedures, involving several stages of letters requesting nominations and then comparative evaluations of a lists of the top several candidates. The Hartigan Committee, responding in part to complaints that the process was unnecessarily burdensome for both the appointing department and the scholars solicited for letters, recommended some modifications that lightened that burden somewhat. However, the committee left intact the basic principles and structure of the process. The memorandum, “Procedures for Faculty Searches, Appointments, Leaves, Terminations in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences” (available in the Workroom) explains these procedures in detail and includes sample letters soliciting evaluations at each stage of the process. This document makes very clear how different Yale’s system is from the one normally called “tenure-track,” in which assistant professors occupy slots that can be converted to permanent ones, provided the incumbent meets the standards for promotion to tenure. Yale’s procedures–which are still perceived by some as time- consuming and insufficiently supportive of promotion to tenure from within the ranks of Yale’s nontenured faculty–are seen by most as necessary to the achievement of the very high standards espoused by the faculty. It is important to note that the committees that established both the standards and the procedures were entirely composed of faculty members. Furthermore, with the exception of the process by which slots are allocated to departments, where the provost plays an important role, the entire process of appointment, from the department to the Joint Boards of Permanent Officers, is in the hands of the faculty. The procedures described above are well known and understood among the faculty. The Faculty Handbook sets forth the general standards and policies. Several copies of the “Procedures” memorandum are sent to all chairs, who are asked to circulate them to interested faculty, especially those in the nontenure ranks. This memorandum also includes sample copies of the letters sent to those offered appointments to the Yale faculty. The Handbook is currently being revised, and when it is completed it will be published on-line and revisions will be made and announced as appropriate. As is described in another section of the self-study, nontenured faculty are regularly reviewed, and departmental chairs have the responsibility for keeping them informed as to their progress and prospects. Each search is also reviewed by both the Equal Opportunity Office and a member of the Provost’s Office to be certain that it conforms to state and Federal regulations and to the University’s policies regarding open access and affirmative action. All actions of the departments are monitored closely by the Provost’s Office, especially during the periodic reviews that result in reappointment, promotion, or termination. The Faculty Handbook contains a clear description of the grievance procedures available to faculty of all ranks who believe that they have been treated in a way that violates University policy or is in some other way unfair. These procedures provide safeguards for both tenured and nontenured faculty against arbitrary treatment within and outside the appointments process that might inhibit academic freedom. These procedures are also published each year along with many other policies and grievance procedures in a special edition of the Yale Weekly Bulletin and Calendar. Appraisal and ProjectionQuality of the Faculty. Although there are differences among departments and among the divisions of Yale, it is widely recognized that members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at all ranks, represent an extraordinarily high level of quality. It is also consensus that on average they take their teaching responsibilities very seriously. Yale’s goal is to be a great research University that incorporates a great undergraduate college. This could not be achieved unless the faculty understood its dual responsibility to conduct a high level of research while regularly teaching courses for undergraduates. From time to time the University faces difficulty in recruiting because Yale will not allow any reduction from the normal teaching load. Faculty who come to Yale understand and for the most part appreciate its commitment to undergraduate instruction. Many of Yale’s departments achieve very high national rankings, and several, particularly in the humanities, are consistently ranked among the top two or three. Where departments are not so highly ranked, the most plausible explanation usually lies in their small size relative to their peers, rather than in the individual quality of the faculty members in the department. Obviously it is easier to attract the very best scholars to departments with the highest ranking, but faculty in all departments strive to make appointments that will maintain or even increase the national reputation of the department. In order to serve these ends, the administration engages in complicated, tailor-made recruiting strategies, including mortgage assistance and placement for partners. An important indication that Yale is successful in this endeavor is that each year Yale is able to recruit ten or fifteen faculty members from tenured positions at other institutions, while only two or three tenured members of the Yale faculty leave for positions at other institutions. Attached to this section of the report are three annual memoranda listing the annual tenured appointments made, the institutions (including Yale) from which each candidate was being recruited, and whether or not the recruitment was successful. Effectiveness of Appointments Procedures. Yale’s appointment procedures, as indicated earlier in this section, regularly receive some criticism, either because they appear burdensome or slow or because the principle that underlies them–namely that every tenured position is filled with an open, international search–make recruitment of young faculty members difficult. From this latter point of view, most widely held in the sciences, a tenure track system would be preferred, as it would make the achievement of tenure at Yale seem easier. The historical overview shows that the success rate from assistant professor to tenure is greater than many faculty believe. Over any five-year period, these rates differ widely from department to department and less widely from division to division, with the lowest rate of promotion to tenure in the humanities and the highest in the biological sciences. A study of two recent five-year cohorts showed that the percentages of assistant professors who were eventually promoted to tenure were: Humanities: 14 percent; Social Sciences: 15 percent; Physical Sciences: 22 percent, and Biological Sciences: 39 percent. The tenure-track issue was raised most recently raised in the ad hoc Committee on Appointments Procedures chaired by John Hartigan. In the end, the committee recommended that the current system remain in place, though with some modifications that made improvements in other areas of the process. It is clear that, especially in the physical sciences and engineering, this will remain an issue, and it is essential to find ways to allay the anxieties of young faculty considering offers from Yale and those moving through the nontenure ranks. |
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Introduction FAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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Faculty Responsibilities and SupportDescriptionCompensation. Yale has a reputation for expecting its faculty to carry a relatively high level of teaching responsibility. Course loads are typically dictated by discipline, but all Yale ladder faculty teach, and virtually all FAS ladder faculty teach undergraduates. Faculty are also heavily engaged in the management of the institution, serving on many key FAS and University-wide committees, a daunting list of which is included in this self-study. Yale faculty members also meet very high standards of academic and administrative conduct, with mechanisms and procedures in place to investigate possible instances of academic misconduct or conflict of interest or commitment. Yale’s salaries, retirement and health benefits, leaves of absence, and other support for research and teaching are designed to achieve the goal of recruiting and retaining an outstanding faculty. The administration monitors faculty salaries carefully, both in comparison to the cost of living and to peer institutions. Although the sharing of salary information from one institution to another is possible only under legal and ethical constraints, and although the different mix of departments and schools at various institutions makes published salary comparisons difficult, Yale goes to great lengths to ensure that salaries at all ranks are competitive. The administration has a regular opportunity to learn whether it has succeeded in this effort when Yale makes offers to candidates and when other institutions make offers to Yale faculty. Salary increases are made each July 1, following a careful review of the contributions and productivity of each individual faculty member. The process begins with annual Activity Reports submitted by each member of the faculty, including publications, research activities, lectures, teaching, and University service. These are reviewed by department chairs, who are invited to make recommendations to the FAS Steering Committee for special structural recognition increases. The Steering Committee reviews these recommendations as well as the Activity Reports and awards special increases, including some that are proposed within the committee by the provost or one of the deans. Chairs are then given a list of their faculty members with current salaries– including any special increases–and a pool from which they are expected to recommend individual raises, which receive final approval of the provost. As an example of this process, this spring the FAS Steering Committee approved structural increases that represented about 1 percent of the total salary base and distributed to chairs additional pools of 3.25 percent for tenured faculty and 5.5 percent for nontenured faculty. Leaves of Absence. Yale’s system of leaves appears to be among the most generous of our peers. All associate and full professors are eligible for a semester of fully-paid leave after every five semesters of teaching. In addition, there are opportunities to take a full year off on the same schedule–though with less salary support from Yale–if one wins a national award such as a Guggenheim Fellowship. Assistant professors are eligible to compete for a year’s leave at full pay after three years of teaching at Yale. Most are successful. Others are eligible for a semester at full pay. Promotion to a senior rank (associate professor, whether term or tenure, and professor) makes the faculty member eligible for a Senior Faculty Fellowship: a full year at nearly full pay. Because Yale promotes some of its assistant professors to the rank of term associate professor on term, faculty may remain in the nontenured ranks up to ten years. This length of time in the nontenured ranks has been criticized, but the leaves provide an important counterbalance. It is not uncommon for individuals who have been promoted to the nontenured associate professor rank to teach at Yale for nine or ten years, including two full years of paid research leave. Research and Teaching Support. Apart from outside sponsored research, which constitutes the primary source of support for scientists and some social scientists, Yale offers other kinds of research support. The most significant of these is from the Science Development Fund, which provides initial set-up funding and equipment for newly appointed FAS science faculty. Approximately $6 million is spent for this purpose annually. Yale also offers individual research awards from $2,500 to $5,000 to certain faculty, usually on a three-year, renewable basis. There are also centrally-held research funds in the humanities and social sciences, either distributed by faculty committees for specific projects, or by academic support units such as the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, the Cowles Foundations, and the Economic Growth Center. In addition, tenured faculty are allowed up to $600 per year and nontenured faculty are allowed up to $1,200 to attend professional meetings at which they read papers or chair sessions. All faculty are provided with computers at the time of appointment, and, as part of a recently implemented program of computer support, all are given network connections, departmentally-based information technology support, and computer replacement on a set schedule. There are also some numerous sources of support for faculty who wish to develop new courses or new techniques of teaching, such as the Moore Fund, allocated by the Yale College Dean’s Office. As the result of recent initiatives, course and personal development grants in the area of teaching foreign languages are made available through the Language Study Center, and there are funds to support the use of new technologies in research or teaching awarded through the University Library, the Digital Media Center, and the Center for Media Initiatives. Many of these sources are available to non-ladder teaching faculty as well as those appointed to ladder positions. Appraisal and ProjectionSalary and Research Support. Based on all of the information available, the amounts allocated for salaries, and the procedures used for making individual salary increases, have been effective in maintaining the competitiveness of Yale faculty salaries and in distributing them in an equitable and effective way. From time to time, often as the result of an unusually high outside offer, the provost must add even more to an individual’s salary, but this desire to be competitive on an individual basis does not take precedent over the long-standing commitment to distribute salaries in a way that maintains internal equity. The salaries of Yale faculty members with similar years of experience and productivity are expected to remain relatively close. Yale has avoided a star system, whereby a few highly productive faculty members are paid on a much higher scale than the average. One area in which Yale seems recently to be behind some other institutions is in the size of personal research accounts, particularly in comparison to those that provide research support to their faculty very differentially. Often, however, Yale’s leave policies are more generous, so in most cases, the combination of salary, research support, leaves, and other professional opportunities are sufficient to overcome this deficiency. This is, however, an area that the administration is watching carefully. One feature of Yale’s faculty governance structure relevant here is the Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty, appointed each year by the dean of Yale College and composed of tenured and nontenured members of the faculty. This committee is given access to non-public data about Yale’s salaries and how they compare to other institutions in order to help that watchdog committee to assess the effects of the salary and benefits policies and practices. The recommendations of this committee are taken seriously by the provost, and generally reflect the same priorities and goals as those of the administration–namely to keep Yale’s salaries competitive with key institutional peers. Two years ago, both the CESOF and the FAS Steering Committee noticed in the data some indication that a few of Yale’s peer institutions seemed to be creating a gap between their own and Yale’s average salaries, particularly among assistant professors. The Steering Committee responded by increasing the pool available for faculty salary increases and earmarking a large share of this pool to nontenured faculty. That has been done for a second year, and when the next comparative salary data are available, the administration expects to find that the gap has been closed. Looking forward, the administration intends to continue this policy to be certain that Yale’s entry salaries, median salaries, and the salaries paid to the most distinguished faculty remain fully competitive. |
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Introduction FAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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Faculty Slots AllocationDescriptionThe size of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the relative sizes of the departments and programs that compose it are managed within a system of slots, both tenure and nontenure, and measured by a unit called a Junior Faculty Equivalent (JFE), in which one tenured faculty position is equal to two nontenured positions (associate professors being either term or tenured). Thus a department of eighteen JFE’s could be composed of six tenured and six nontenured positions or eight tenured positions and two nontenured positions. A department with the latter configuration might support an ambitious research and graduate program, but, with two fewer members of the faculty, might be hard pressed to meet its undergraduate teaching responsibilities. In the steady state maintained in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences since the period of restructuring, changes in the relative strengths of departments have come about through a policy which states that, whenever a tenured position is vacated for any reason, usually a resignation or retirement, one Junior Faculty Equivalent remains with the department and one reverts to a divisional pool, where it is held available for the highest priority use in that division. Frequently the department losing a slot as the result of a retirement makes a successful bid for an immediate return of that slot. In other cases, the slot is used to support a position in another department. The decisions in these cases are made by the FAS Steering Committee, but that committee is guided by the recommendations of the appropriate Divisional Committee, which is asked to set priorities in its division. Appraisal and ProjectionThis “one-for-two” policy was created a number of years ago, in anticipation of the potential effects of the end of mandatory retirement, essentially to establish a “time bank” for some slots that had traditionally remained in departments without challenge. It was clear that if all slots were bound in departments, they would not be available to respond the need for tenured positions in departments that lacked timely resignations or retirements. This could have disenfranchised a generation of scholars, particularly in an institution like Yale, which constrains the number of tenured positions available. The policy has proved valuable both for that original purpose and as a way to make some slots available to respond to dramatic shifts in student interest and to the emergence of exciting new fields. The document “FAS Trends,” which contains a detailed account of faculty positions and student enrollments over time, shows some of the effects of this policy. See particularly, “Total Budgeted JFE Positions,” (Attachment 5 to this Standard), which shows the small marginal shifts among departments. As might be expected, there is some opposition from departments to this system, which has the potential for shrinking departments and for reducing their capacity for planning. To respond to the latter concern, departments are expected to engage in long-range planning and to discuss those plans with the appropriate Divisional Advisory Committee on a periodic basis. In the context of those plans departments can be given assurances of faculty resources in advance of retirements. LINKS TO STANDARDS: | S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | S5 | S6 | S7 | S8 | S9 | S10 | S11 | Links to S5 Attachments: | Attachment 1 | Attachment 2 | Attachment 3 | Attachment 4 | Attachment 5 | |
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Introduction FAS Composition Administrative Structure Appointments Faculty Responsiibilities Faculty Slots Attachments
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