What do you get after working for 6 years at UNC-Chapel Hill? Well, what I got was walking papers! Getting turned down for tenure is not unusual in higher education (The Chronicle of Higher Education has a whole section about the topic). What happened to me is somewhat unusual, though, as I was turned down at the highest administrative level, rather than in my School.
Is this just another chapter in how UNC has screwed me over the years? Is a demonstration of lack of faith in my School's administration? Perhaps it is over-reliance of Chancellor James Moeser on his committees, including appointing a conservative professor, well past retirement age, as chair to an advisory committee suffering an identity crisis.
Before itemizing some of the not-so-happy parts of my tenure experience at UNC, I want to point out some of the good parts:
The bottom line of all this is that people get denied tenure all the time. It's very unusual (based on what I read in the Chronicle and elsewhere) for tenure to be denied by the top administration after the external reviews and home school/department recommends tenure. It's true that people can be turned down for any reason, such as a lack of funding or changing priorities in a University's mission. In my case, though, the reason given in the letters to and from the Chancellor was a lack of research productivity.
Consider:
I sent this letter by email to the Chancellor after my talk with Bernadette Grey-Little in June:
Hello, Bernadette. Thanks for spending time on the phone with me today. This message is to follow up by outlining some of my argument for the Chancellor's decision to be reversed. After our conversation, I understand the major concern of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee has to do with my written scholarly output. My view, from participating in tenure review of colleagues at SILS, is that my scholarly output is at a consistent level and quantity with my peers who received tenure. - I have publications in the leading journals for information science: J. of the Amer. Society for Information Science & Technology Information Processing and Management - The Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Amer. Society for Information Science & Technology has seen my publications very regularly. This refereed forum has a reputation of rigor in the peer refereeing process. - My publication record in TREC (which I hope was not what the committee characterized as a "Web group," since the proceedings are published by the US GPO via NIST) has probably been the most important component of my ability to receive government grants. Through TREC, I've demonstrated my research ideas in the practice of information retrieval. While the conference papers are not refereed, the barrier to entry is quite high. With hundreds of unique participants over the years, I'm in a select group who has been able to participate with new innovations in information retrieval year after year. I would also like to emphasize the faith in my research capabilities demonstrated by the NSF and other funding agencies. It is hard for me to understand why a million-dollar faculty member would not get tenure. I have a $100,000 second supplement for my "TeraScale Retrieval" grant forthcoming, and several other grants under review at the NSF and elsewhere. There is every reason to think that I will continue to be successful in grantsmanship. My publications span a number of topics. The impact of information science on so many diverse areas is what drew me to the field originally. To quote from my personal statement (via http://ils.unc.edu/gbnewby/tenure): "My mission is to bring people and information together: to join human needs, topics and situations with the right information, having the right qualities, in the right format, at the right time. ... The main theme throughout my academic life is this model of pursuing better information systems by drawing on knowledge of human communication. At the same time, I am committed to making information more easily accessible to all people by all available means. This is dominant in my interest in freely available information retrieval systems, my work in the classroom to enable individuals to achieve their own information goals, and my service activities." As an undergraduate seeking a field for an advanced degree, the breadth of information science is what drew me to it. Rather than working within the narrow contraints of a particular theory or method, as I saw faculty in psychology or communication doing, I realized that my work could have a broader impact. I believe I am having that impact, and will continue -- through my research and the practice it inspires. In conclusion I will quote from the SILS promotion and tenure guidelines: "... to be considered for tenure, a faculty member must have demonstrated research ability, be committed to ongoing research, have a strong teaching record, and be recognized as a helpful and valued colleague who has consistently performed needed service within the academic professional community. Only those persons showing promise of continuing achievement in all three areas of research, teaching and service will be tenured" (Section V.B). It it my understanding that the SILS personnel committee, the external reviewers, SILS' dean, and SCOPS all agreed that I met these criteria and was deserving of tenure. In rejecting that support in favor of the advice of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee, the Chancellor has chosen to act on the guidance of those with the least field expertise and fewest qualifications over those better qualified to judge my credentials. I urge the Chancellor to reconsider this decision. By carefully considering the guidelines under which I have sought tenure, and the evaluation of my reviewers at UNC and elsewhere, I believe the case for tenure will be clear. With regards, Greg Newby