EDITORIAL: Reexamine the tenure process

Student and faculty input should receive more consideration during the tenure process. Only the School of Arts and Sciences personnel committee can currently be the judge of that in someone's tenure application. But we think student and faculty opinions are important in determining whether a professor should get tenure. Those recommendations should be more than just a peripheral part of the tenure process. Recently, Penn has had at least one controversial tenure case each year. Popular teachers such as English Professor Gregg Camfield and Geology Professor George Boyajian were denied tenure in 1995. And last year, English Professor Michael Awkward and Religious Studies Professor Edward Breuer -- who just received a Lindback Award for distinguished teaching -- also failed to receive tenure recognition. Both cases also had unanimous support from their respective departments. While students may not be able to give adequate commentary on the research capabilities of a professor, they definitely can assess the quality of teaching. The SAS personnel committee should take student observations into consideration more than it does now. The committee also needs to look seriously at peer recommendations and the amount of support a tenure case receives from its department. Colleagues within a professor's field are the best judges of quality of scholarship and research. A greater emphasis should be placed on the importance of their opinions. Penn is a research institution, and it is important to retain good researchers as part of the faculty. But the University shouldn't be losing professors who win Lindback awards or are unanimously recommended for tenure by their department. The SAS personnel committee needs to revisit how heavily it weighs certain criteria in the tenure decision process. Otherwise we might continue to lose valuable researchers and teachers to other institutions.