
Amidst the alarming news on higher education, something positive has happened in the expanding ranks of contingent faculty in colleges and universities in the past decade: some higher educational institutions have sought to “stabilize” faculty ranks through the establishment of the “Teaching Professor.” This position (also called a “Professor of Practice”) is a fixed-term one. Although the employment conditions vary, it tends to involve a standard workload of courses and administrative work spelled out in an appointment letter, an assessment scheme for re-appointment and promotion, and the requirement of committee service and student advising. Some teaching professors may vote on many–if not all–matters that come before faculty bodies. Most schools guarantee academic freedom for their teaching professors.
The AAUP was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the teaching professor model as a way to “stabilize” an essential academic workforce that faced low pay, last-minute course cancellations, and weak academic freedom guarantees.
We should not overstate the prevalence of these non-tenure-track teaching professor positions. In fact, there is no precise data on this type of position. In 2021 the AAUP reported that 48 percent of the academic workforce were part-time instructors; 24 percent held full-time tenured appointments while 9 percent were full-time tenure track appointments. A mere thirteen percent hold full-time non-tenure-track appointments. It is unknown how many of those in the 13 percent constitute bona fide teaching professor positions. (The remaining teaching force—seven percent—work in “full-time, no tenure system” positions.) [Glenn Colby, “Data Snapshot: Tenure and Contingency in US Higher Education” (March 2023) https://www.aaup.org/article/data-snapshot-tenure-and-contingency-us-higher-education ]
There are weaknesses to this model. In 2010, the AAUP’s Committee on Contingent Faculty and the Profession noted that teaching professors frequently faced hiring, evaluative, and promotion practices that often bypassed the faculty entirely and were either less rigorous or faced idiosyncratic review systems. [AAUP, Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments (2010) https://www.aaup.org/report/tenure-and-teaching-intensive-appointments ]
While accorded academic freedom, the fact is that non-tenure teaching professors are still susceptible to the non-renewal of their contracts, thus leaving open the possibility that they may be punished for unwelcomed speech or actions. In addition, some teaching professor positions are hybrid in nature, i.e., involve administrative work alongside teaching responsibilities, and, as such, are appointed as administrators, not professors. They must receive pre-approval from senior administrators before providing public comments or media opinion pieces. The AAUP has promoted the conversion of such positions into tenure-track ones on the grounds that, “Full and meaningful integration of faculty in shared governance is possible only where academic freedom is protected by tenure or tenure- like terms and conditions of employment.” [AAUP, The Inclusion in Governance of Faculty Members Holding Contingent Appointments (2012; 2014), https://www.aaup.org/report/inclusion-governance-faculty-members-holding-contingent-appointments ]
The ”conversion” model has garnered support in the past decade. St. John’s University and San Francisco Art Institute, for example, established such positions. Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth proposed converting non-tenure-track professor jobs to teaching-based tenure-track lines in their 2015 book, The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments. There are, however, only a few schools that have moved to this new model. Faculty at institutions such as Portland State considered, but were unsuccessful in, instituting the conversion model. [Patricia Schechter, “Tenure for Teaching-Intensive Appointments at Portland State University” (2013) https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/hist_fac/20/ ]
The most successful of this emerging tenure-track teaching professor model is the one at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Launched in 2021, it set an institutional goal to place fully 40 percent of its current nontenure-track (NTT) teaching faculty on the tenure track within three years beginning in August 2021. The process of establishing a tenure process involved careful work with WPI’s board of trustees, administrators and relevant faculty governance bodies. The reasons provided for this new model were a mix of practical factors—e.g., WPI has a large number of internships, sponsored projects, and project advising. Newly-“converted” faculty reflected on their changed status in terms of respect. “Even though the majority of the faculty has always been inclusive and appreciative, there was always that feeling of not being a first-class citizen,” one said. Now, “I feel not that I’m accepted but rather that I belong.” [Colleen Flaherty, “Tenure for Teachers,” (Aug. 10, 2021), Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/08/11/wpi-creates-45-new-teaching-intensive-tenure-lines ]
The resulting criteria for this new tenure-track faculty type is a finely-grained one that considers a number of factors for hiring, tenure, and promotion. In the scholarly realm these include peer-reviewed publications, juried prizes, patents, commissioned reports and projects, non-scholarly media output, fellowships and other forms of funding, and organizational leadership and initiatives: “The tenure criteria are realistic, based on current teaching-related expectations for teaching faculty with heavier teaching loads than TTT faculty, rather than on unfair new expectations. They are also rigorous, reflecting clearer and more exacting standards for teaching excellence in practice and in professional growth. And finally, they are aspirational, driving teaching faculty to reach higher than they might have done without the expectation and support of an ongoing peer-review process and a community of peers.” [https://www.wpi.edu/sites/default/files/faculty-governance/SummaryofOurWork-September12021.pdf ]
While the non-tenure-track teaching professor position is well-established on some large campuses such as Penn State as well as four-year liberal arts colleges, there scant evidence of the tenure-track model in Pennsylvania. The reasons for resistance lie not only in administration and governing board resistance. At one liberal arts college, for example, a faculty professional standards committee balked at a proposal for a tenure-track teaching professor position on the grounds that it might threaten the predominance of traditional teaching-scholarship tenure-track lines.