Shortly after the nation’s high school seniors learn the colleges into which they were accepted, the ranks of Stanford junior faculty start receiving their own highly anticipated news: whether they have earned tenure.

Stanford has a rigorous tenure process. In the most typical case, Stanford evaluates a junior faculty member for a tenured position in his or her seventh year at Stanford, with the candidate usually at the rank of assistant professor. In the years leading up to the seventh year tenure review, a number of candidates, who may have ultimately been unsuccessful in receiving tenure, leave Stanford.

Out of all assistant professors hired between 1995-2000 who were on the tenure track, 51 percent earned tenure at Stanford, compared with 44 percent of those hired out of the past 25 years. But for those faculty members hired between 1995-2000 who actually reached the tenure review year, 84 percent received tenure, compared with 77 percent over the past 25 years.

The tenure review process generally involves the same basic evaluative steps across departments. A candidate must pass through an initial tenure committee and a vote of tenured department faculty. Subsequently, the candidate must pass through evaluations and recommendations by the department chair, an executive committee at the school level, the dean of the school, a seven-member advisory board at the level of the provost’s office, the provost himself and finally the University president.

“At all levels, there is a chance of tenure being denied,” Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82 told The Daily.

Faculty and department chairs said that the total process, though long and rigorous, is straightforward.

“Tenure is a very deliberate process that follows a very laid-out process,” said English Chair Prof. Ramon Saldivar. “There are no surprises, and everyone knows exactly what’s coming.”

Given the rigors of the process, Stanford makes efforts to recruit and retain faculty who they feel confident about enduring the evaluative process.

“We’re very, very careful about hiring,” Etchemendy said. “We only hire people we think really have a chance to make tenure.”

CRITERIA

The tenure review process examines, at the most basic level, two components of an applicant’s qualifications: research and teaching. Research is considered significantly more important than teaching in evaluating a candidate.

Etchemendy explained that valuing quality in research ensures that tenured faculty will continue to interact with and contribute to cutting-edge scholarship, rather than providing entertaining but potentially outdated classes.

“I view the research criterion as an important part of the evidence of whether they’re going to be a good teacher,” Etchemendy said. “At the time of tenure, someone might be able to teach a great class, but twenty years later they might be teaching the same class.”

“Our research criterion is partly to ensure a long-term, career-long quality of teaching,” Etchemendy added. “Part of what you get at Stanford is that when a faculty members says, ‘that’s special’ [or] ‘that’s new,’ you know that person knows what he or she is talking about. There’s a kind of access to the forefront of knowledge that you get that you won’t get without the high quality of research.”

Nonetheless, a scholar without the right teaching skills could still be considered an inappropriate candidate for tenure.

“There are cases where we’ve denied an application because the teaching wasn’t good, but they [the faculty members being considered] are MacArthur Fellows,” Etchemendy said, referencing distinguished MacArthur “genius grants.”

If a professor is denied tenure, he or she can appeal, although steps are in place to ensure that the denial was made for proper reasons.

“People can always appeal the decision,” Etchemendy said. “But we have various checks to make sure the decision was indeed a reasonable one and wasn’t made frivolously.”

THE PROCESS

The most crucial step in the process comes at the beginning, when a candidate undergoes the review of a specially appointed tenure committee, usually consisting of four peers and occasionally one member from an outside, related field. This committee compiles materials relevant for evaluating the tenure candidate. The materials are both diverse and thorough, ranging from personal statements from the candidate to evaluations and letters from undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students who worked with him or her. All told, the full assembly of materials often reaches the length of a book.

Among the most crucial materials is a collection of peer-review letters from other scholars in the faculty’s field.

“To look at their research, the committee will write to anywhere from twelve to twenty people in their field,” Etchemendy said. “These are top people in the field, people recognized as experienced. The committee writes to find out whether [the candidate] has achieved true distinction and whether they’re considered or are on their way to being considered in the top of their field.”

Reviewers are asked to explain the person’s position and relative strength in their field, and candidates under review are held to a very high standard.

“They’re typically asked to rank them against the best four or five people in the field,” Etchemendy said. “We expect and hope our person is going to be very competent, and if they’re coming up in the bottom of those lists, that’s a concern.”

“But if you pick a comparative set well, and they’re coming up second or third, that’s pretty good,” he added.

Tenured professors at Stanford are often asked to write reviews for evaluations at other universities, and some admitted that the process of evaluating was trying.

“It’s not really fun,” said Classics Department Chair Richard Martin. “It’s pretty painful. There are probably twenty visible scholars out there in a field, and you wind up ranking people where you know their life stories.”

“You try to contextualize where that person stands in relation to other people’s work,” said Psychology Department Chair Brian Wandell.

“It’s a pain in the butt,” he added.

Evaluators hope to get a full picture of the candidate’s research and teaching through the letters and evaluations that they compile.

“It’s very unusual for the documents not to speak with one voice,” Wandell said.

Once the initial materials are sorted, the tenure committee presents a summary of the materials to a full department meeting and vote. All active faculty are allowed to state opinions and participate in discussion, but voting is restricted to tenured faculty.

“It is usually a very long meeting, three or four hours,” Wandell said. “I wouldn’t say it’s easy to get a consensus.”

“The overall assessment is really one that’s come to after a long and careful consensus,” Saldivar added.

If the outcomes of these meetings are a decision against tenure, the emotions involved can run high.

“It’s very upsetting to turn someone down,” Wandell said. “These are people you’ve worked with, and when people are turned down, it’s something we all take very hard.”

For the professors under evaluation, the confidential deliberations of faculty, department heads and administrators are out of sight and mostly out of mind.

“For us it’s an opaque process,” said Sociology Prof. Michael Rosenfeld, who has just received tenure and will be promoted to Associate Professor. “It’s not really a process that we go through. You spend several years building up a portfolio and making yourself known.”

“My part in this is doing the most interesting work that I can do and achieving a reputation so that people twenty years my senior know who I am,” he added.

Despite the process’ opacity, however, those up for review ensure that they have planned for the possibility of not earning tenure. Scholars who do not earn tenure almost always leave Stanford, both for reasons of their contract and their career plans.

“It’s not a sure thing, and you have to have contingency plans,” Rosenfeld said. “When you’re up for tenure you apply for jobs in a few other places, and you have to do that.”

Even if this planning proves to be unnecessary, Rosenfeld added that the process provides valuable insights.

“Because a lot of the tenure process depends on what other scholars think about you, you do have to consider that community,” he said, “and one way to do that is to apply for other positions.”

Tenure evaluations in some departments, too, provide unique challenges.

“It is an extremely rigorous process, as one would expect,” said Music Department Chair Stephen Sano. “Sometimes it can be different in that there’s such a broad range of what constitutes excellence in scholarship as opposed to creative output in performance and as a composer.”

“Each discipline has unique challenges,” he added. “And part of the process, and being successful in it as a department, is understanding what those challenges are, and addressing them with transparency so everyone involved in the process knows what they’re looking for.”

Between schools, as well, there are often differences in the policies regarding positions and tenure.

“The main difference between us and the rest of the University is that tenure and promotion are coupled together,” said Law School Dean Larry Kramer. “There is an initial appointment at assistant professor, and a promotion to associate professor after three years, and when you earn tenure in the seventh year, you are a professor.”

MAKING THE CUT

The tenure review process, however, is generally regarded as something safe from department politics, even within departments as complicated as those within the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages [DLCL], which oversees six departments and their respective tenure reviews.

“Politics between departments in the division and inside departments are always at play, and that’s unavoidable,” said Assistant Manager with the DLCL Ryan Johnson. “But I haven’t seen any evidence that it has a significant impact. Rarely have I ever seen any friction within the division regarding personnel cases at all.”

In the final stages of evaluation, the Advisory Board thoroughly assesses the way the tenure review was conducted. The Board members are elected by the Academic Council for three-year terms and currently include Professors John Boothroyd, Microbiology and Immunology; Patricia Burchat, Physics; Karen Cook, Sociology; Harry Elam, Drama; Barbara Fried, Law; Alan Garber, Medicine and Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, Management Science and Engineering.

“We make sure that those involved followed University rules and that all regulations have been followed,” Pate-Cornell said. “There’s also a big amount of confidentiality, so we can assure that letter-writers are protected.”

“The Board typically meets weekly during the academic year,” said Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs Megan Pierson in an email to The Daily. “Recommendations for Academic Council appointments, reappointments and promotions are submitted to the Advisory Board. The Board performs a substantive and procedural assessment of each proposed action.”

Ultimately, those involved say the long, difficult process is worth the effort in ensuring a top-level faculty.

“We’re very comfortable with the process we follow,” Saldivar said. “We believe in its integrity.”

And for those who decide to enter the tenure process at Stanford, the challenge is part of the reward.

“The kind of excellence they do have here is a result of extra vigilance,” Rosenfeld said. “I could have gone other places where the tenure process was less opaque, but at Stanford you can’t tell, and because it’s harder they can’t give you any guarantees.”

“You have to be made of strong stuff,” he added. “But I never felt like I wanted to be some other place.”