Faculty Tenure Plan

At the most recent meeting of the general faculty President Kemeny outlined a 15-year plan for programming tenure appointments evenly in order to assure that Dartmouth maintains a well-balanced faculty in terms of age distribution, avoids a clustering of senior faculty such as occurred right after World War II, and thus keeps open the opportunity for professorial advancement for younger teacher-scholars. The plan projects that in 15 years the percentage of faculty on tenure will come out to about 60 per cent.

At present, slightly more than half of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is tenured, but only one-third of these tenured members will retire in the next 15 years. President Kemeny stated that the College would therefore take these steps: (1) all normal faculty recruiting will be at the rank of instructor or assistant professor, (2) the time for making tenure decisions will normally be at the end of the sixth year, and (3) even if tenure for a competent assistant professor appears unlikely, he may be offered a second three-year appointment at that rank. A new role for the Committee Advisory to the President, Mr. Kemeny said, would be to assure that there is an equitable distribution of tenured positions among the different departments and "to see that the institution as a whole does not box itself in" with regard to opportunities for faculty advancement and tenure.