Don’t make it personal

On Tuesday, at an Arts and Science Council meeting, Interim Dean of CAS Nina McClelland announced that University of Toledo President Lloyd Jacobs is planning to personally interview all candidates being considered for tenure.

News of Jacobs’ newly initiated interview process has caused some to weigh his intentions with suspicion — which is completely warranted. While we wouldn’t go so far as to say that Jacobs’ has a hidden agenda in wanting to do his “duty,” we are concerned that these personal interviews with Jacobs might not be a wise — or necessary — addition to the tenure approval process.

Jacobs and those in support of his initiative are claiming that it is within the president’s rights to interview all professors who are up for tenure and that it will allow the president to get to know the candidates on a “personal” level before he forwards their dossier to the Board of Trustees. It is great that Jacobs is trying to exercise his rights and is trying to get to know tenure track candidates; however, he does not need to have a formal interview with the candidates in order to get to know them personally.

Faculty and administrators should be asking themselves what real benefit this extra step in the tenure process will provide the university. When a professor’s academic career is at stake it is not the right time to bring in anything “personal.” Professors being considered for tenure are judged on their professional credentials, such as research and publications, not their personal credentials. If professors have a six year period before they can apply for tenure, that leaves Jacobs with plenty of time to get to know them before the tenure process begins. For example, maybe he should try something more informal, such as organize debriefing sessions in which tenure track professors can explain to Jacobs the progress of their research.

We find that Jacobs’ need to make his judgment on a “face-to-face understanding” to be quite problematic. Although Jacobs will not admit it (for obvious reasons), face-to-face interviews with him will factor in personal attributes of the candidate into the process. And while it is obvious that personality is factored into the process at the departmental level, the fact is such biases are unavoidable within academic departments, but they are avoidable at the administrative level. Therefore, in order to ensure that the process is as unbiased as possible, the university should refrain from conducting personal interviews with tenure candidates at the administrative level.

If personal, face-to-face interviews are so integral for one to make a judgment on whether a professor’s work is worthy of tenure, then why aren’t these interviews conducted with every member of the BOT? After all, the members of the BOT make the final decision on the professor’s standing, so in Jacobs’ line of reasoning, they should get to make their judgments on a personal level too.

Jacobs has stated that the addition of personal interviews with him is a way to evaluate the candidate’s integrity; however, he should be wary not to injure the integrity of the tenure process with his initiative.