The ad hoc Committee on Faculty Rewards and Responsibilities was formally established by a letter from Provost Lee Huntsman, dated February 5 of this year (Appendix 1). It was charged with organizing and moderating a University-wide conversation on responsibilities and rewards, involving all ranks of academic, research and "without tenure" (WOT) faculty and lecturers on all three University of Washington campuses (Appendix 2), and making recommendations as appropriate. The topics that it was instructed to incorporate into that conversation include rewards and incentives to faculty for meritorious performance spanning an entire career at the UW, differential responsibilities and contributions of faculty and the units in which they are housed, and metrics for evaluating performance individually and collectively. The charge letter states that "a proposal for post tenure review or its equivalent is expected as one outcome."
The charge to the Committee is in response to pressures that are coming from both inside and outside the University. Increasing competition for research funding and recognition for scholarship, more rigorous assessments of teaching performance, and growing demands for service to the state and nation render it increasingly difficult for any single faculty member to excel in all three areas at the same time. These changes have implications for the division of faculty responsibilities and the ways in which faculty are reviewed and rewarded. At the same time, university faculty throughout the country and particularly those at state-funded institutions are subject to growing pressures for accountability. Some of their critics are questioning the relevance for research and scholarship at publicly funded institutions of higher learning. Others, concerned about the need for expanded access to higher education, believe that faculty must "increase their productivity" by employing management methods similar to those used in industry and relying much more heavily on computer-based instructional software. The University's autonomy and its financial health depend upon its ability to provide an understandable and convincing justification for the balance of faculty responsibilities and the way they are assigned.
Even apart from the internal and external pressures enumerated in the previous paragraph, it is good business practice for the members of any organization to periodically review the way it operates, with a view toward improving it and adapting it to changing external conditions.
Justifying tenure was not part of the Committee's charge. In this context, the Committee considers "post-tenure review" to be a component of "faculty review," which applies to all ranks and types of faculty (the non-tenured as well as the tenured), and will deal with it in that context.
