by Zarana Sanghani
Staff Writer
The Texas Legislature may pass a bill requiring higher education institutions to adopt a post-tenure review policy, but the session ends today, and the bill will expire if not passed.
Faculty Senate President Angi Patton said, "Regardless of what happens in the Legislature, it seems that the University of Houston will pass a post-tenure review policy."
A post-tenure review policy would evaluate tenured members' teaching, research and fulfillment of other duties, Patton said.
Although processes to remediate or terminate tenured faculty do exist, it is often difficult to do so, said Chairman of the Senate's Faculty Affairs Committee Karl Ittmann. Post-tenure review would facilitate those processes, he said.
Some faculty at UH said they do not favor post-tenure review, an opinion expressed at the last Faculty Senate meeting on May 7.
Former Faculty Senate President George Reiter said he believes post-tenure review may produce a bad environment for tenured professors.
"The whole point to the thing is to threaten people's jobs," Reiter said. "People who are for it say unless you can fire people, they won't work well. Evidence to the contrary shows that people work better when they have job security and they can be honest to their boss."
Post-tenure review may place requirements on the teaching or research methods of faculty, Reiter said, adding that he fears such pressure "makes (tenured faculty) work only hard enough to cover their ass."
Reiter said he believes that most faculty members perform their duties well, and better communication within and among departments would solve teaching problems that post-tenure review tries to address.
However, Faculty Senate President-Elect Robert Palmer said some tenured professors do not perform their job correctly.
"Our current tenure system excludes (review of) negligence and incompetence, which is detrimental to students," Palmer said. He added a post-tenure review policy is needed to remediate or terminate those tenured professors.
A post-tenure review policy would define the circumstances and procedures for faculty needing improvement or removing, Palmer added. The annual review system in place now does not, he said.
But post-tenure review may impede on the faculty's freedoms, Ittmann said. "Tenure gives freedom of speech and due process before firing, which is hard to come by. Post-tenure review might give too much power to administrators (with little teaching knowledge)."
Also, the nature of post-tenure review is punitive, and the UH administration seldom gives rewards, Ittmann said. Recognition and rewards may encourage faculty members who feel under-appreciated, he said.
The Faculty Affairs Committee will propose a post-tenure review policy to the Faculty Senate, Patton said. She said the UH administration may not accept this policy, but will consider it when creating a policy.
The Texas House and Senate each passed a bill requiring higher education institutions to adopt post-tenure review policies.
Once the differences are resolved, the revised bill must be repassed by both Houses. The revised bill had not been presented to either House by Friday afternoon.