Tenure road rough for professors

When Jackie Latina ’08 came to Princeton, her struggle in departmental courses freshman year made her think twice about majoring in chemistry. Stefan Bernhard, who taught Latina in CHM 407: Inorganic Chemistry, changed all of that.

Her experience in Bernhard’s class was “pretty much the reason I decided to be a chemistry major,” she said. It is also the reason Latina was shocked in March when her mentor was denied tenure, a guaranteed lifetime position at the University as an associate and then, possibly, full professor.

“It’s hard for me to comprehend how someone so significant during my time at Princeton could be denied tenure,” Latina said.

Kelly Wagner ’08, another of Bernhard’s students and a chemistry concentrator, felt the same way. “It’s scary to look back and think that your last four years would have been totally different without that person,” she said. “[Bernhard] made you see that you don’t have to fit that stereotypical mold to be a successful scientist.”

Bernhard is not alone. In recent years, 60 to 70 percent of assistant professors who have come to Princeton did not become tenured faculty either because they did not receive an offer of tenure or declined the offer, Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin said in an e-mail.

Bernhard’s case sheds light on a greater debate about the University’s priorities in making tenure decisions and offers a glimpse into the intricacies of the process. The way that the University balances the roles of research and teaching when making decisions, the secrecy of the process and the potential for its reform have sparked disagreement among senior administration officials, professors, and graduate and undergraduate students alike.

How tenure decisions are made

After two years at Princeton, all assistant professors undergo a departmental review to examine their scholarship and teaching. At this point, most are invited to stay for another two years, though some professors are asked to withdraw from the University based on the outcome of the review.

In early autumn of candidates’ fifth academic year — or their sixth if they have a child during their time at the University — a three-person departmental committee begins the professor’s review by consulting outside experts in the field for letters of evaluation and examining the candidate’s published works. The committee presents its recommendations to the candidate’s entire department, which then votes on the candidate.

Regardless of whether candidates receive departmental support, each tenure case proceeds to the Faculty Advisory Committee on Appointments and Promotions, colloquially known as the Committee of Three (C3) because it was originally composed of three elected department chairs.

The C3 currently consists of the president, the provost, the dean of the college, the dean of the faculty and the dean of the graduate school. Additionally, six faculty members — three of whom must be department chairs — are elected to serve one-year terms. These 10 advise the president, who serves as chair of the C3 and makes a final decision that must then be approved by the University’s Board of Trustees.

The C3 meets on the third floor of Nassau Hall for two-hour sessions twice a week during the year to review candidates.

If a department rejects a candidate, and the C3 finds the decision valid, the tenure process stops. If the C3 finds, however, that there were problems with the department’s initial evaluation, it asks the department to reevaluate the candidate.

For those who receive departmental support, the committee again asks outside scholars for their opinions on the professor’s work, this time requesting at least 12 more letters of evaluation.

Candidates not offered tenure must leave the University by June 1 of the following year. Candidates also have the right to appeal the process. Science professors, who may spend years setting up their laboratories, often lose funding for their research if denied tenure, and graduate students in the professor’s research group must find new opportunities as well.

Tenure is “the most important decision we make,” President Tilghman said in an interview, noting the C3 applies the same standards to each candidate.

“We must ask in each case if the department will be stronger once we have made this appointment,” she explained.

The C3’s discussion of a particular candidate can last from 30 minutes to more than two hours, Tilghman said. Though candidates do not ever meet with the committee, a department chair may be called in to help explain confusing or contradictory aspects of a candidate’s record.

“Given that we are essentially giving someone lifetime tenure, you have to be really persuaded ... that this person has not only achieved at a very high level in their profession, but the likelihood they will continue to do so is very high,” Tilghman explained.

“If they’re not in the top half of the department, then promoting them is a very bad idea because it will reduce the overall quality of the department,” she said.

Bernhard was denied tenure despite having the recommendation of his department.

Tilghman and Dobkin declined to discuss Bernhard’s case, and both Bernhard and chemistry department chair Robert Cava declined to comment for this story.

Chemistry’s tenure troubles

Bernhard’s denial continues a decade-long trend: No assistant chemistry professor has been granted tenure since 1996.

Though Tilghman expressed concern, said she said she was not familiar enough with the history and inner workings of the department to explain the trend.

Bernhard’s colleagues, however, said they thought he would end the 12-year drought and were surprised by the C3’s decision.

“He is a great scientist, a great teacher and a wonderful colleague,” said Michael Hecht, the last assistant professor in the department to be granted tenure.

“There are quite a few people who were upset by this,” he noted, adding that many of his colleagues in the department “were disappointed by the decision.”

Assistant chemistry professor Chulbom Lee, who was denied tenure last spring, also noted his opposition to the decision.

“Stefan is a first-rate scholar, beloved teacher and colleague and a great friend, and I believe he deserves tenure,” he said.

The department has drawn fire for its tenure track record.

“My own recollection is that the Princeton chemistry department has an abysmal record of granting tenure to people who come up through the ranks,” said Eli Zysman-Colman, who worked with Bernhard as a fellow at the Princeton Center for Complex Materials from May 2006 to May 2007.

Now an assistant chemistry professor at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Zysman-Colman said he was particularly surprised to hear that the C3 reversed the department’s decision to support Bernhard.

“In Canada, this would be unheard of,” he said. “If the department is ok with the person, then it flies through unless there is something egregious.”

Several students and a faculty member in the chemistry department said that certain senior faculty members, including professor and associate department chair David MacMillan, were opposed to Bernhard’s receiving tenure and may have expressed their disapproval to members of the C3. MacMillan came to Princeton as a tenured professor in 2006. The individuals were granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic.

MacMillan countered the allegations that he influenced the C3’s decision to deny Bernhard tenure.

“The information you have received concerning myself is not correct and someone has been feeding you misinformation,” he said in an e-mail.

“I can only say that it is university policy that the process that underlies all tenure decisions must be confidential, and that breaches of that confidentiality are unethical,” he added.

“I cannot comment on any tenure process that takes place in my department and neither should anyone else,” MacMillan explained. “It would be entirely unprofessional and unethical to do so.”

But some of the individuals also noted serious concerns about the lack of nurturing of junior faculty members within the department, explaining that the University is overly concerned with bringing in grant money and big names.

“It’s almost as if Princeton is building up a Yankees-like roster,” Zysman-Colman said. “They’re buying up talent.”

Chemistry graduate student Eric Cline echoed this concern. “I just wonder whether the department can continue to recruit all of their talent without developing anyone from within their own ranks,” he said.

The Bernhard decision may compound other problems plaguing the department. According to University records, roughly a dozen tenured chemistry professors have retired or resigned from the department in the last four years.

In addition, three more tenured chemistry professors are likely to leave within the next year, several of the individuals in the chemistry department said.

“The present faculty have had to suffer from [a lack of] support from the University,” one chemistry professor said. “While being extremely skimpy about [supporting existing faculty], the University is offering millions of dollars to external candidates. Given the atmosphere of the chemistry department, it is not surprising that several current faculty members are actively searching for outside opportunities."

Scholarship versus teaching

Members of the faculty were clear about which factor was most important in tenure decisions.

“Research is it,” molecular biology and Wilson School professor Lee Silver said. “Teaching is a tiny little bit. A brilliant teacher who’s just ok would never get tenure. And ... a brilliant researcher who’s just a mediocre teacher could get tenure. Unless you’re on the edge, teaching’s irrelevant.”

Tilghman defended the focus on research over performance in the classroom.

“We are one of the most distinguished research universities in the world,” Tilghman said. “And we got there by setting very, very high standards for the quality of research and scholarship that is conducted by our faculty.”

Tilghman said she has rejected “very fine and very dedicated teachers” because “the evidence of sustained excellence in scholarship definitely wasn’t there.” She added that candidates with impressive scholarship have also been turned down for a poor teaching record.

Dobkin agreed.

“We believe the best predictor of long-term success on our faculty in research and teaching is measured by the quality of the faculty member’s research at tenure time,” he explained.

Warren Warren, who left the University in 2005 after 23 years in the chemistry department and now serves as the department chair at Duke, explained this weighting of criteria.

“We expect (and almost always find) that average teachers become much better with time,” he said in an e-mail. “Average researchers become worse with time.”

Yet many could not understand how Bernhard, acclaimed as a great teacher, failed to meet the expectations for research.

“I’m not in [Stefan’s] sub-discipline, but ... what I heard from the people who do know his research is that he is a great scientist,” Hecht said.

Other faculty and students in the department noted that Bernhard had conducted outstanding research and that the University has “unfair” and “unrealistic” standards for research.

“On all levels for what’s important as a career in academia, he was a shoo-in,” Zysman-Colman said. “When you look at Stefan’s publication record since his arrival, it’s hard to imagine that you need more,” he said.

There is an important difference, however, between quality and quantity of scientific research, former chemistry department chair and emeritus professor Edward Taylor said.

“There is a lot of froth that is produced, and unfortunately also published, in an effort to appear very productive,” Taylor explained. “We can’t just count publications; we have to look at their quality.”

Research must be of high quality and widely recognized.

“One of the criteria of tenure is that a person be acknowledged as a scholar not only within the University, but outside as well,” ecology and evolutionary biology professor Henry Horn said.

“Scholarship is the thing you can find out about,” Horn said, but “there’s precious little way for excellence in teaching to show in the [tenure] process.”

That’s a problem the University needs to fix, Wilson School professor Stanley Katz said.

“We don’t have good ways of evaluating teaching,” he said, adding that the growth of the University will further decrease interaction between C3 members and assistant professors, leading the committee to give even less weight to teaching and instead to focus on higher-profile criteria.

“My fear is that teaching will become less and less important as we judge professors by international standards of scholarship,” he said.

Is secrecy necessary?

Assistant professors who go through the tenure process know little about what University administrators and fellow scholars say about them behind closed doors.

Likewise, candidates never see any of the more than a dozen letters of evaluation solicited by the C3 during their discussions.

Tilghman explained that the process is confidential to guarantee the privacy of those outside individuals who are asked to write letters on the quality of the candidate’s work.

“In order to get accurate information, we need to promise confidentiality to the reviewers who are providing the information,” Dobkin said.

English professor William Howarth reinforced the importance of confidentiality.

“The academic profession is a small town; we all know each other far too well,” he said in an e-mail.

Tilghman explained, however, that the C3 involves six faculty members elected by the faculty specifically because it is so secret.

“The fact that we have elected members of the committee helps mitigate that it has to be done in confidence,” she said, adding that there is no faculty input at other institutions, citing Harvard as an example.

At some other institutions, especially state universities, candidates are allowed to read the outside letters analyzing their scholarship and write rebuttal letters.

But Taylor said that allowing candidates to object at every turn is “an immature response to a process that is designed to be objective and fair.”

Horn noted that when choosing scholars for letters analyzing a candidate’s work, the C3 asks candidates and departments both to recommend appropriate scholars and to list “anyone who is inappropriate to write to because they have some beef ... that might affect their evaluation of scholarship.”

Though the C3 keeps the identities of letter writers a closely guarded secret, the departmental review process is much more transparent, Katz explained, noting that all faculty members in a given department can read the first round of letters and thus “people are frequently reluctant to write critical letters” for the departmental review.

Reforming the system?

The University’s tenure process last came under broad scrutiny in 2003 when the C3 denied tenure to popular history professor Andrew Isenberg, who had received the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award two years earlier. Isenberg unsuccessfully appealed the decision and later moved to a tenured position at Temple University.

In the aftermath of the Isenberg controversy, Tilghman announced in March 2004 that she recognized that problems may exist and pledged an exhaustive review of the system the following year. At the time, Tilghman said she had been planning such a review since taking office in 2001.

Seven months later, Tilghman announced that she was putting the project on indefinite hold in favor of other, more “urgent” priorities, adding that it did not make sense to evaluate the tenure process having just appointed a new dean of the faculty and a new provost.

Four years later, Tilghman said she no longer believes that a review is necessary.

“I have become less and less persuaded that there is a better way to do [tenure],” she said, noting that she does not believe the system had any major flaws. “I actually think our system is as good as any,” she said.

Dobkin said he is in no rush to conduct an in-depth study, either.

“I have watched some of our peer [institutions] go through reviews of their tenure processes and have had a number of conversations with people here and elsewhere and have concluded that our process works well for us,” Dobkin said.

Taylor joined members of the administration in saying he didn’t think any review was necessary.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with the system, frankly,” Taylor said. “I’m not sure what goes on today, but when I was chair I think we did a very fair and conscientious job.” Taylor was chair of the chemistry department during the mid-1970s.

Other faculty, however, are not as quick to dismiss the idea.

“I think there are enough questions certainly to justify a thorough review,” English professor Michael Wood, who was chair of the English department from 1998 to 2004, said in an interview.

The current system “creates a horrible moment in an assistant professor’s life,” he said, explaining that junior faculty spend five years waiting in anticipation of a decision on their future.

Likewise, some fault the system for a lack of mentorship for assistant professors during the five years leading up to tenure review.

“A good chair will tell an assistant professor how they are doing,” Silver said. “Does every chair at this University do it? I don’t know ... I’ve heard rumors that some chairs gave false positive guidance to some assistant professors for whatever reason that got rejected later on.”

Howarth linked the impersonal nature of the tenure track to the University’s growth. “In my day, a junior professor was assigned a senior mentor who gave professional counsel on teaching and publishing,” Howarth said. “We don’t do much of that anymore. The University is larger and far more impersonal today.”

Warren said he knew of and personally received no official mentoring while he was at Princeton and welcomed the change he found at Duke. He explained that during their three-year review at Duke, assistant professors write a summary of research accomplishments and grant funding. The candidates discuss their progress with other faculty in the department, and finally, the chair writes and the deans approve a letter to the candidate, making suggestions on the appropriate steps to take as they progress toward tenure.

Despite faculty criticism of the process, Howarth said that he would not expect a review anytime soon. “Administrators listen to trustees and alumni, and tenure is not one of their concerns,” he said.

Even if a review did happen, Katz said he doubts that the administration would seek faculty input.

“It’s not [the University’s] style to ask the faculty to think hard about serious questions of process,” Katz said. “I think we’ll never be asked about tenure.”

Avoiding mistakes

Katz said he supports the tenure system despite its imperfections.

“I defend tenure because it protects professors who take controversial positions and do controversial research,” Katz said. “And so the price we pay is that we make mistakes. The unspoken rule is it’s better to be wrong than to be sorry because your mistakes are locked in perpetuity. The tiebreaker is ‘no.’ ”

For Silver, the obvious choice is to err on the side of caution and to deny borderline professors tenure.

“If the person is good and they’ve been rejected unfairly, they’ll make it somewhere else,” he said.

But Hecht isn’t so sure. “You’re balancing the interests of the institution versus the interests of the individual,” he said. “In black-and-white cases, the decision is easy. But in borderline cases, I would always try to side with the individual.”

Tilghman said the C3 knows it makes mistakes and works hard to avoid them.

“This is a human process,” Tilghman said. “It is fallible. It is inevitable that we will make mistakes. We work very hard and very diligently to keep the mistakes to a bare minimum, but we would be delusional to think that we can never make a mistake.”

And many in the chemistry department believe that just such a mistake was made when the University denied tenure to Stefan Bernhard.