Admin refutes FS post-tenure policy - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Feb 5, 2005

RE: Admin refutes FS post-tenure policy

Date: Feb 6, 2005

This sounds like a sane and fair process at Clemson-summative and developmental across six years by a personnel authority committee, and everyone needs to go through it. As I said in a previous post, the "trigger" method to identify a "case" is psychometrically unsound, even if based on weighted ratings and some mean cutoff. Cut scores are affected by base rates of the construct of interest, which I bet vary across campus. Its validity has not established using reasonable outcome criteria. It's a worse selection process than admitting grad students via GRE scores alone, or not hiring someone based on their MMPI profile alone. If it ever came to pass that someone was canned based on a non-empirically derived or supported selection formula, whether the FS or admin's, that process would be difficult to defend. Although on face I can see why the FS and admin thinks a set formula is an improvement over your and Ole Miss's process, as a social scientist who has done test development, I find that this is all a bit scary. I don't believe that many people will see my concern here, but please believe me when I say that this can be a big problem down the road.

Mitch,

Thanks for your continued, reasoned input.

If the formula going forward to IHL is indeed psychometrically flawed, I hope that you and anyone else with similar expertise will tell them so via certified letter, return receipt requested, with copies also going to the administration and Lee Gore. Tell them what an expert witness could say on the stand if any faculty member went to court about this, and how deviation from reasonable and customary policies elsewhere could be highlighted. The university is exposed enough to liability without the IHL rubber stamping a flawed policy that they will later regret. If the IHL insists on pursuing a flawed policy, then there at least should be a paper trail indicating that they were warned about it.

Jameela

Date: Feb 6, 2005

Jameela, I suspect this U gets exposed to as much liability as it does because it routinely ignores advice like what Mitch would be giving them if he spoke with them. Kim Chaze's ubiquitous comment about USM -- how it treats people -- is so true.

Date: Feb 6, 2005

Let me mention a couple of other features of the Clemson post-tenure review procedure. (I've mentioned them before, but well before the current discussion got under way.)

Post-tenure review is done by a department committee, and, independently, by the department chair. Both the department committee and the department chair have to rate the faculty member as unsatisfactory, or the dean and the provost are not allowed to do so.

(I should also mention that a faculty member who is deemed unsatisfactory is given a three-year plan, with checkpoints annually, to remedy deficiencies and get up to speed. An unsatisfactory cannot trigger immediate firing for cause.)

This is an important safeguard for faculty members who have displeased a dean, most often for reasons unconnected with their productivity. However, it does mean that the standards for satisfactory performance are set by the departments, and that has a downside as well as an upside.

You will not be surprised to learn that the academic deans have been bugging the provost to get the two-unsatisfactories requirement removed, since a couple of months after the Clemson Faculty Senate enacted post-tenure review. (The CU Senate has not stood firm on a lot of other things, but it has on this issue, so the requirement is still in place after 7+ years.)

And there has been some tampering with post-tenure review. In a college with a weak dean, the provost can pressure department chairs for an unsatisfactory review that they would otherwise not be inclined to give. It's harder to tamper with committee reviews, but we have a few dysfunctional departments where the department chair has taken control of departmental elections.

Obviously, any system of post-tenure review is vulnerable to tampering by unscrupulous upper administrators. I just want to make sure that everything is on the table here.

Robert Campbell

Date: Feb 6, 2005

Myers-Briggs,

Unfortunately, Invictus may be right about exposing the IHL Board to legal liability. The Board doesn't have to pay for its defense; the taxpayers of Mississippi do. The Board's attitude, at least recently, has been "bring 'em on."

The bad publicity that accompanies the lawsuits is another matter. I don't get the feeling that the Board likes being in the newspapers all the time.

Robert Campbell