CURRY CHANDLER
Assistant News Editor
While university administrators are gearing up to fundraise for future building projects, there is also talk of finding funds to create a new rank for faculty members.
The proposed “University Professor” rank, which has been introduced into discussion by Provost Darryl Tippens, was the subject of a meeting between faculty members and the Provost on the 13th.
The question of funding is crucial because the rank would be a high-paying position.
“Its an idea that comes from a number of other universities where this rank exists,” said Dr. Robert Williams, social science professor and president of the Seaver Faculty Association. “It is generally used to bring in and to recognize faculty members with particularly impressive scholarly accomplishments.”
Several universities already have the rank, including Harvard, USC and UC Berkeley.
“It’s of an internal value as well as an external recruiting value,” said Tippens. “The message that I’m getting from faculty, at least those who have spoken up, is that they see value in it being used in either direction.”
An issue of concern, he said, would be the process of selecting faculty as deserving of the title. Currently each school at Pepperdine has its own committee for rank, tenure and promotions, operating independently from each other. This may be revised to allow for the implementation of the University professor rank, which would be applied on a university-wide basis, across school boundaries.
“You earn your tenure within a specific school and you’re reviewed by the committee for a specific school,” Tippens said. “What if we now want to hire someone who can teach at two different schools?”
“I think from the faculty’s standpoint there is an interest in ensuring that there is a good process in place so that this isn’t a rank that is completely outside the normal means of deciding ranks among the faculty,” Williams said.
The precedent set by other universities may provide a model for Pepperdine to follow. At some institutions, a faculty member must be teaching at more than one of the university’s schools (i.e. teaching an English course at Seaver as well as a legal course in the law school) to achieve “University Professor” status.
There are other questions to be resolved before the rank could be introduced. For example, Seaver College offers the rank of Distinguished Professor, and faculty members are wondering where the new title would fit in to the current paradigm if introduced.
Williams said that the faculty’s reception to Tippens’ proposal was generally positive, but all consideration is still preliminary at this point.
“I think there have been some questions as to what exactly this would be and how it would work, and I think many of those questions have been answered,” he said. “The Provost has done a good job of listening to the concerns that were raised [in the meeting].”
Tippens said the process of comment and review would be continued over the next several months. The process began with faculty representatives from all five of the university’s schools, and it will again be brought before the University Faculty Committee following the meeting with Seaver faculty.
“Faculty processes tend to run slowly, and I will be surprised if we get this all settled in one session,” Tippens said. “I do think that we don’t have that many questions to answer, actually.”
Williams said he would be surprised if the title were to be instituted during the current academic year, speculating that the push for the rank would find a place beside the proposed developments in the university’s coming fundraising campaign.
“This probably will be something that affects the new campaign, the development campaign,” he said. “In all likelihood when this campaign gets kicked off, this will be one of the things that we try to raise money for.”
09-21-2006