fsfaculty: Report From Mark Goodman

Faculty Senate President’s Report

March 11, 2005

Despite a lot of hard work on the part of senators on promotion and tenure, one major inconsistency stands out to me.

The promotion and tenure document clearly states an associate professor has to be establishing a national reputation in a field of expertise. One way of proving that national reputation is through external peer reviews.

Recently, the Provost and I sent out guidelines for external peer reviews. Put simply, our advice was to use full professors from peer institutions. The presumption is that such peers can review your work and hold you to the standards of your discipline.

Here is where the inconsistency occurs. Probably, that peer reviewer is teaching 2 or 3 classes per year compared to the 3-course/semester load of many MSU professors. Plus, the peer reviewer is earning $10,000 more a year than the MSU faculty member.

MSU professors are expected to perform at the national level, but teach a load consistent with a four-year institution and earn the income of a community college faculty member.

Now, the university is preparing for a 5% cut in state revenues. As an institution, we have survived the last eight years by reducing the cost of teaching students. Professors are teaching larger and larger sections while instructors and lecturers are teaching more and more classes.

The end result is that tuition not only covers the cost of educating the student, the tuition dollars provide a little profit for the university. That profit helps covers the release time so professors are only teaching three classes a semester.

Under the 100% work load concept of the university, that means the average person of professor-rank would teach--or prepare to teach--30 hours a week and produce national publications during the 10 hours of time remaining in a 40-hour work week. Advising, committee work, et al., can be fitted in around our coffee breaks.

As departments write their promotion and tenure documents, they need to keep many factors in mind in defining what research means in the department and what constitutes a peer institution.

Maybe we should define “peer institution” as one with comparable pay, comparable class size, and comparable release time?

Ultimately, the quality of the research and the quality of the teaching at Mississippi State is not going to be the result of actions taken by the state legislation, IHL, the president, or the provost. It is going to depend on us.

mgoodman@comm.msstate.edu

Mark Goodman

Robert Holland Faculty Senate