Posted on June 1, 2019 by Tabatha Coleman

A. The Changes That Were Made

Starting in 2015, a Plan of Employment Revision Committee, led by former Provost McDonald and including associate provosts and faculty members from FEC and FPC, drafted a revised Plan of Employment that was adopted by the Board of Trustees in June, 2018. As changes were being drafted and considered, this group solicited regular feedback from FEC and FPC and periodic feedback from the faculty at large, most notably in drafts that FEC published in November 2016, May 2017, and May 2018.

The following excerpt from the Plan of Employment shows proposed changes to the Criteria for Tenure and Promotion that were ultimately adopted:

Begin Excerpt

B. Each faculty member, through individual performance, helps determine the weight and importance of various factors relevant to assessing performance and contributions to the College. While other factors may become important in some cases, those generally recognized as relevant are:

1. Formal preparation—the Ph.D. or advanced degree generally considered the terminal degree in the faculty member’s field;
2. Effectiveness in teaching;
3. Effectiveness in advising and counseling mentoring;
4. Productivity in research, creative work, or other evidence of scholarly self-renewal Evidence of scholarly productivity and potential;
5. Contribution to institutional renewal through program initiative and inventiveness;
6. Effectiveness in service, including committee and administrative assignments;
7. Contribution as a person to the total life of the community to the educational mission of the College, including fostering an inclusive learning environment; and
8. Relevance of the individual’s specialties, interests and talents to current and projected programmatic emphases and needs.

Changes in the importance of the above factors or in other expectations as specified in an initial appointment letter or in subsequent performance reviews shall be communicated to the faculty member in a timely manner.”

End Excerpt

B. FPC’s Recognition of the Plan of Employment Changes in the Review Process

1._Change to wording of Criterion #4: scholarly work

a. Deleting “research” and “creative work” and instead using “scholarly” as an umbrella term means no change in what FPC values or how it conducts reviews. FPC had previously been using “scholarly” or “scholarship” as an umbrella term in documents like “Defining Scholarship at Kalamazoo College” and “The Guide to File Preparation.” For example, the Guide to File Preparation enumerates “scholarly products” in the following way: “Copies of scholarly products (e.g., articles, grant proposals – funded and not funded along with reviewers’ comments, conference papers, poetry, fiction, reports, slides, tapes, videos, etc.).”

b. Adding “potential” also means no change in what FPC values or in how it conducts reviews. In the “Philosophy of Review” section of the “Procedures of the Faculty Personnel Committee,” FPC has long stated that “the committee obligates itself to gain the fullest possible sense of a candidate’s abilities, achievements, and potential for further development.”

2. Change to wording of Criterion #7: fostering an inclusive learning environment FPC is in the process of phasing in recognition of the important College value of inclusivity in our review process. We’ve been discussing it with review candidates in our informal information sessions this year, giving feedback and guidance about it at the short file stage for promotion candidates, giving feedback and guidance about it in our spring third-year review recommendation letters, and we’ve been working to incorporate new language into our guiding documents.

We’re aware that any change to the tenure and promotion criteria can cause apprehension, and we want to stress that our implementation of this criterion will be gradual, informed by faculty-wide conversations, and determined by what is reasonable to expect of candidates at different stages of their careers and of the phase-in process.

We’ve been consulting with FEC about the best way to phase-in this criterion, and FEC has expressed interest in using time during a faculty meeting next year to discuss how this criterion might apply to colleagues in different disciplines and how colleagues might best learn to incorporate fostering inclusivity into their teaching and advising and possibly other areas of their work.

During the phase-in, we will begin to apply this criterion to upcoming reviews with the following principles in mind:

For Faculty Coming Up For Review in 2019 – 2020, we will treat this criterion as an optional element colleagues might address in their personal statements, out of a recognition that many faculty are just beginning to think about this.

For Current Faculty Coming Up For Review After 2019 – 2020, we will work next year, through conversations with FEC and all faculty, to determine the best timeline for phasing in the requirement that colleagues address this criterion in their work and personal statements. Until that phase-in process is formalized, FPC will continue to treat this criterion as an optional element.

For Faculty Beginning at the College in Fall 2019 and after, we will expect candidates to address this criterion in their work and personal statements during their reviews.

Recent search ads have included language about creating an inclusive learning environment, so we feel that colleagues starting in the fall of 2019 or later are beginning work at the College with this expectation already in place.

In collaboration with the HHMI grant REWARD priority implementation team, FPC is working to revise its guiding documents to reflect this change. In the meantime, we encourage department chairs, especially those who will have colleagues starting in fall 2019, to begin thinking how they might mentor colleagues in this area. This document gives our current guidance to candidates and chairs about fostering an inclusive learning environment. If chairs have questions or concerns, they are welcome to reach out to FPC or to other groups or programs on campus who could help facilitate thinking on this issue.

We want to stress that we are not thinking of inclusivity as a new “fourth leg of the stool.” Rather, we will phase-in the requirement that it be discussed as an element of Teaching and Advising. It may also be appropriate to discuss inclusivity in the areas of service and scholarship/research/creative work, but while we strongly encourage colleagues to think about inclusivity in all aspects of their work, we will not expect a discussion of it in scholarship/creative work and service.

While we expect future faculty conversations to enrich and clarify how this criterion can most productively be understood and applied to our work, we offer some of our current sense of what an inclusive learning environment looks like:

What promotes an inclusive learning environment may vary by department and by course. It may mean representing historically under-represented groups in course content; it may mean taking into account various learning styles, degrees of preparation, and family college history; it may mean thematizing or exploring issues of inclusion in course content; it always means demonstrating sensitivity to all identities in the classroom, including through policies listed on the syllabus and in practices such as finding respectful ways to invite and use individual-identified pronouns. FPC is mindful that content-based inclusivity may be more available for some courses than for others and will take a holistic approach to thinking about the candidate’s work in this area, considering the complete set of courses the candidate offers and all areas of their work that might promote an inclusive learning environment.

FPC is also eager to hear how candidates theorize and exemplify inclusivity in ways not explicitly listed or contemplated here. In every case, candidates should be thoughtful about how issues of inclusivity apply to their discipline and courses, and department mentors should look for ways to discuss the candidate’s approach to inclusivity as part of their mentoring about teaching.

In the areas of service and scholarship/research/creative work, FPC is also eager to hear candidates theorize and exemplify how their work promotes diversity and inclusion on campus and in the various communities in which they participate. Some service work, for example, may actually apply to creating an inclusive learning environment on campus and could be cross-applied to a candidate’s discussion of teaching and advising.

Further (non-exhaustive) examples of work that fosters an inclusive learning environment:

• Expanding coverage of your field to include more work by authors, artists, scholars, and researchers from historically under-represented groups and/or more content areas about historically under-represented or historically disadvantaged groups (e.g. a course on Middle Eastern History).
• Consulting the literature on strategies to promote inclusivity in your discipline and using those practices in your classroom.
• Theorizing and discussing majority/minority power in your courses.
• Theorizing and discussing the differential impact of work produced in your field on different groups.
• Teaching a service learning course.
• Being notably accessible/available/approachable to students.
• Using pedagogical strategies like scaffolding or clickers, which allow professors to see quickly in a learning or assignment process when students might be struggling.
• Putting policies on your syllabus that recognize students who may need accommodations.
• Promoting resources in the Learning Commons (Writing Center, Biology and Chemistry Center, etc.) as useful for students of all abilities.
• When it seems as if it would be helpful, using continual check-ins with advisees throughout the term, as opposed to meeting once just before picking classes
• Attending Inter-Cultural Center events.
• Finding a respectful way to learn and use individual-identified pronouns.
• Being a Posse mentor and/or attending a Posse + retreat.
• Attending workshops offered by, or seeking advice from, the Office of Advising, the Counseling Center, TLC, ARCUS, and the Center for Civic Engagement regarding ways to promote an inclusive learning environment or to help students from historically underrepresented groups and applying those concepts to your teaching and advising.
• Serving as faculty mentor to groups like SUKUMA.