Appointment with Stated Term

All instructional appointments that do not carry tenure are made for a specified term. Such appointments may be for full-time or part-time service.

In accordance with Section §71d of the University Statutes, new full-time officers of instruction with stated terms are appointed for only one year. Reappointments may be for one, two, or three years. The various Faculties follow different policies in deciding whether to reappoint full-time, nontenured officers of instruction and for how long. Officers should address any questions about how they are evaluated for reappointment to their chair or dean, who is responsible, insofar as possible, for keeping them informed of the likelihood of their reappointment, promotion, and nomination to tenure or tenure of title.

Faculty in grades of appointment that are exempt from the statutory limits on nontenured service are generally not considered for tenure. Faculty who are subject to those limits will be reviewed for tenure, if they so request, in their fourth, fifth, or sixth years of counted service. Those in other years of service may be reviewed at the discretion of their department or school. The first step in the review consists of a determination of whether the financial and other resources necessary to support a tenured position are available and whether it is desirable to make a tenured appointment in the officer's area of specialization. If the resources do not exist or there is no desire to tenure in the officer's area, the review is deemed to have ended, and there is no subsequent consideration of the individual's academic credentials. In instances where the decision has been made to initiate a review, a department or school is expected to evaluate its internal candidate in comparison with others in the same specialization and to nominate the candidate only if he or she is the best available person in the field. Reviews for tenure are completed before May 31 of the officer's seventh year of counted service, unless the Provost authorizes a ninth-year exception (see below).

Part-time officers of instruction are appointed only for the terms in which they are offering instruction. With the exception of those appointed under the part-time career option (see below), there are no limits on the duration of their service.

Limits on Nontenured Service

Under the University's "Code of Academic Freedom and Tenure" (see Appendix B), officers of instruction in some grades of appointment are limited to a maximum of eight years of full-time continuous service, including service in a visiting capacity, unless they are granted tenure. An exception to the eight-year limit is made only when, by prior and special permission of the Provost, a review for tenure is deferred until the officer's eighth year and the outcome of that review is negative. In that case, the officer is offered reappointment for a ninth and terminal year without being deemed to have received tenure (see below).

These limits apply to full-time, nontenured faculty, with the exception of those with clinical and practice appointments, faculty in the Health Sciences appointed as professor at <affiliated hospital or institute> or associate professor at <affiliated hospital or institute> and members of the special instructional faculty holding the titles of senior lecturer in (discipline), lecturer in (discipline), and associate in (discipline).

Officers of instruction with unmodified titles indicating appointment in an affiliated hospital or institute are also statutorily exempted from the provisions limiting nontenured service. However, it is the policy of the Faculties of Dental and Oral Surgery, Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health not to extend their appointments beyond eight years of full-time continuous service unless they are granted tenure of title or successfully pass a major review for renewable term contracts as professor at <affiliated hospital or institute> or associate professor at <affiliated hospital or institute>. Therefore, those officers are subject to the policies described below.

Faculty in the Health Sciences may be given a clinical or "at hospital" appointment after having served in a full-time rank that is subject to the statutory limits on nontenured service. However, they may not subsequently be nominated for tenure if the total period of full-time instructional appointment exceeds eight years. Full-time faculty in the rest of the University may not be switched between appointments whose duration is limited by the University Statutes and those that are exempt from those limits. They also are not considered for an appointment with tenure. Exceptions to these rules are permitted in only unusual circumstances and require the special permission of the Provost, which the nominating vice president or dean must obtain prior to authorizing the school or department to initiate a review of the faculty member.

Full-time term appointments subject to the limits on nontenured service are usually made in the grades of assistant professor, instructor, lecturer, associate, and assistant. Such appointments may also be made in the grades of professor and associate professor, but the officers are not normally appointed without tenure or tenure of title with those titles for more than three years.

The Office of the Provost calculates the date beyond which each nontenured officer of instruction may no longer serve in a full-time instructional capacity. This "up-or-out" date does not guarantee an individual eight years of appointment; it merely represents the statutory limits on nontenured service. Any full-time appointment may be terminated at the end of its stated term, even if eight years of service have not been completed, as long as the officer is given adequate written notice (see "Termination," below).

The limits on nontenured service govern full-time instructional appointments in the University as a whole and not in an individual Faculty and department. Therefore, prior periods of full-time service are counted when an officer moves from one part of the University to another without a break in appointment. This provision applies to service at Barnard College and Teachers College as well as other Faculties. Thus, if an officer is initially appointed in one of those colleges and, without an interruption in service, becomes a member of another Faculty of the University, the statutory limits on nontenured service are calculated from the date of the first full-time appointment at Barnard or Teachers College.

Occasionally, an interruption in full-time service will occur that has a bearing on the limits on nontenured service. Such a break may result from the following:

• nonrenewal of a full-time instructional appointment;
• resignation;
• appointment as a full-time officer of research or administration of the University;
• appointment in a clinical or practice rank;
• appointment with an unmodified title at an affiliated hospital or institute;
• appointment to the special instructional faculty with a title containing the modifier "in (discipline)"; or
• a change from full-time to part-time instructional service (except in the case of the part-time career appointment for parents, as described below).

Some periods of instructional appointment are not counted toward the eight-year limit, and in some instances this will cause the up-or-out date of an officer to change. Except as noted below for officers who are primarily responsible for children under the age of one, the officer does not need to apply for those exclusions. The Office of the Provost will automatically make the appropriate adjustment and inform the officer.

Up to one full year of appointment in a nonprofessorial rank (i.e., instructor, senior lecturer, lecturer, associate, or assistant) or one year of a leave of absence is routinely excluded from the eight-year limit. Semesters of partial leave in which the officer performs 50 percent or less of normal service are treated as if they were half semesters of full leave. A single such partial leave does not affect the limits on nontenured service. Two or three are treated as a one-semester leave and four as one year of leave. Semesters of partial leave in which the officer performs more than 50 percent of normal service are counted toward the eight-year limit.

Ordinarily, no more than one year of appointment may be excluded in determining the limits on nontenured service. However, when a leave of absence is granted for medical reasons, child care (including exemptions from teaching duties under the workload relief plan; see below, "Leaves of Absence"), military service, or personal hardship, the Provost may rule that it will not be counted in calculating the up-or-out date, regardless of whether periods of service have been excluded for other reasons. When leaves for these purposes cover portions of a semester, the Office of the Provost applies the rules described above for partial leaves of absence in determining how they affect the officers' up-or-out dates.

At the sole discretion of the Provost, an additional year may also be excluded when a faculty member has been denied tenure after an ad hoc review and grieves the decision to the Faculty Affairs Committee of the University Senate if the Committee needs additional time in order to complete its investigation.

Under Section §71c(2) of the University Statutes, the Provost will stop the tenure clock of nontenured faculty if they are primarily responsible for the care of a child less than a year old, irrespective of whether they take a leave of absence. Eligible faculty may have one year of appointment excluded in this manner for each of two children. An officer is considered the "primary parent" if she or he is a single parent or, where there are two parents, if the other is working full-time or is enrolled as a full-time student. Faculty may employ a day-care provider and still qualify for this exclusion. When both parents work at the University, only one may be considered primary at any given time.

Since the Office of the Provost does not have access to information on when faculty become new parents, it is incumbent upon them to request as early as possible the exclusion by submitting a letter that affirms that they are the primary caregiver for a child under the age of one. The amount of time excluded will depend upon the portion of the child's first year of life during which the faculty member is the primary caregiver. The tenure clock is stopped for one full year only if the officer is primarily responsible for the child for the entire period. Otherwise, the Office of the Provost applies the rules described above for partial leaves of absence in determining how the provisions of Section §71c(2) of the University Statutes affect the officer's up-or-out date.

Since it is in the interest of neither the individual nor the University for an appointment to end in mid-year, every up-or-out date is set at June 30. Applying the principles set forth above, most individuals will have completed eight years of counted service on that date. Some, however, will have served for eight-and-one-half years, given the manner in which the limits on nontenured service are calculated. In such cases, the officer does not receive tenure as a result of the additional half year of appointment.

Each spring, the Office of the Provost sends the vice presidents, deans, and department chairs a summary report of the appointment histories of the full-time officers of instruction in their respective units whose appointments are subject to the limits on nontenured service. For each officer listed, the report includes the up-or-out date. It is the responsibility of the deans and department chairs to convey this information to their junior faculty. It is also their responsibility to provide nontenured faculty whose appointments will be terminated with written notice of nonrenewal that is clear, unambiguous, and timely. (See "Termination," below.) Officers with questions about the limits on nontenured service should consult their dean or chair. They may also contact the Assistant Provost for Academic Appointments.

Ninth-Year Exception

An officer of instruction is normally considered for tenure by an ad hoc committee no later than May 31 of the seventh year of counted service and given an eighth year of appointment if the outcome is negative, as required by the Statutes of the University. In unusual circumstances, however, the departmental review or the ad hoc review itself may be postponed until the officer's eighth year. If the outcome of the evaluation is unfavorable, or if the Provost, President, or Trustees do not accept a favorable recommendation, the individual is offered an appointment for a ninth and terminal year. Reappointment in these cases does not result in tenure.

The Ninth-Year Exception requires the prior, special permission of the Provost. Requests for the exception should be made by the executive committee of the department or school before the end of the officer's sixth year of counted service, have the support of the appropriate dean or vice president, and meet the following conditions:

• There is already substantial evidence of the candidate's excellence.
• There are specific, compelling reasons for deferring the tenure review. Generally, the only acceptable grounds for deferral are that the candidate is expected to produce scholarly work during the forthcoming year that will have a material effect on the outcome of an ad hoc review. The research should be completed, and the results should already be written up in a form that has been accepted for publication, will be presented at a conference, or are scheduled for release in another scholarly forum. More importantly, the expected scholarship should be qualitatively different from the candidate's earlier work and of such significance that it does not make sense to proceed with the tenure review until it is available to the candidate's discipline and the ad hoc committee.
• The tenured faculty of the department have, by a formal vote, affirmed both their support for the exception and their expectation that their internal review of the candidate in the following year will result in a positive recommendation. (The granting of the Ninth-Year Exception does not, however, guarantee that an ad hoc review will be held, merely that the candidacy will be considered by the department or school during the eighth year of counted service.)

In addition to situations in which the Provost decides to defer an ad hoc review for the reasons described above, there may be instances in which a review that is scheduled for an officer's seventh year of service is not completed until the eighth, owing to administrative delays. In these cases, the officer will also be entitled to a ninth year of appointment without being deemed to have received tenure, in the event that the outcome of the ad hoc review is negative.

Part-Time Career Appointment for Parents

To assist full-time officers of instruction who must prepare for a tenure review while raising a family, the University allows those who are subject to the limits on nontenured service and have young children to retain their full-time status, and its associated benefits and privileges, while providing part-time service. To be eligible for the part-time career appointment, the faculty member must be primarily responsible for the care of a child under the age of nine and plan to devote the time freed up by the appointment to that responsibility. Because of the purpose for which it was created, faculty with tenure and those who are exempt from the limits on nontenured service may not hold this type of appointment.

Each year of a part-time career appointment is treated as a half-year in determining the officer's up-or-out date, thereby providing additional time before the officer must be reviewed for tenure. Full-time service, either before or after holding such an appointment, is counted in the normal manner.

While they are on a part-time career appointment, faculty perform half of their normal responsibilities and are paid half of their normal salary but remain eligible to participate in the University's fringe benefits programs. Faculty on such an appointment may not work for compensation outside of the University.

A part-time career appointment is authorized by the Provost on the recommendation of the department chair and dean or vice president. Faculty may hold such an appointment as long as they meet the eligibility requirements for it and annually inform their chair and dean or vice president of their intention to continue to serve in a part-time capacity. They may return to full-time service upon providing timely written notice to their chair and dean or vice president.