Chapter 14: The Provost's Office: Supporting Faculty Promotions
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Description
Dr. Dmitrovsky discusses issues involved in supporting faculty promotions in a term-tenure system. He explains the overall situation: faculty must prove themselves, but lack tools to move effectively through the tenure process. He observes that faculty with clinical responsibilities experience the most anxiety. Dr. Dmitrovsky describes measures taken: providing department chairs with guidelines for providing support and mentoring; providing financial support to develop publications; holding information sessions to create transparency about tenure requirements and how to create a strong portfolio. Dr. Dmitrovsky addresses recent questions from the faculty about tenure decisions that have been overturned.
Identifier
DmitrovskyE_02_20150506_C14
Publication Date
5-6-2015
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; The Administrator; The Professional at Work; Leadership; Mentoring; Research, Care, and Education; Building/Transforming the Institution; Growth and/or Change; Obstacles, Challenges; Institutional Politics; Controversy; MD Anderson Culture; Ethics
Transcript
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. Well, that would be great. I guess in the few moments that's left, maybe I could ask you kind of a medium-size question.
Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD:
Right. Go ahead.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Which is about helping manage the roles of individual faculty. I know there's been a lot of discussion about how to help faculty move through the promotion levels. And I'm wondering, some thoughts that you've heard from faculty about that process, and how you've addressed that.
Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD:
Advancement of faculty is such an important topic. And I've heard I've received so much candid feedback about the promotion process here at MD Anderson, which as you know, is different than at most other institutions, because there's not lifelong tenure, but term tenure. And so in a sense, that that distinct, if not unique, tenure system term tenure system differed from a tenure system, has its own dynamics. So putting that aside, because that's a separate topic, the consequences that people feel the need to prove their merit in the promotion process on a regular basis. And they sometimes feel they don't have all the tools that are needed. So what I've asked Dr. Oliver Bogler, who's our senior vice president for academic affairs, to do, is to try to selectively go back to those groups where the anxiety is greatest. And those groups tend to be the most clinically active groups, that don't have enough time for scholarship, so that we could give them some added assistance in the promotion in tenure process. And so what we also learned is that the department chairs had variable experiences, in terms of how you write a robust chair, letter supportive of a faculty member. And so what we're trying to do is provide chairs with some guidance about how do you support how do you maximally support a faculty member? And we found that, in the promotion process, is that there was a need for additional content knowledge. And in a focused manner, when we realized there were groups of faculty who were particularly having difficulties with the promotion process, I've had the office of the provost office make directed investments in those departments. And so what we did is we mobilized research dollars at the department, and at times at the division level, for faculty who we could provide them resources through a peer review process, that would allow them to develop the additional publications or clinical trials that some resources would make available. And I'm beginning to see an improvement in terms of the success rate by these investments that we've made. And at the same time, I thought it was really important that we have a didactic program put in place, so we can explain what was seemingly an opaque process. What do you need to do to become promoted? So we actually had sessions for every different type of faculty. Tenure track, or CFA or RFA track, the non-tenure track positions that we have in the faculty, all important and meritorious paths for people to go advance their careers through. So we had sessions with the chairs of the promotions committee to invite anyone who would like to come. These were video taped, so they're online. I attended each one of them to try to touch on some of the common challenges that people have been putting together a robust portfolio. So my expectation is this will be a multiyear effort, and that communicating more clearly by the folks who are the co-chairs of the promotions committee, what the panels are looking for, and what you need to do to assure, with a high level of certainty, that you'll progress, has been really valuable. And I've always because every promotion package crosses my desk and crosses the president's desk, I do try to really take a view of a humanistic approach, which is that we're very understanding that sometimes people have life events that have intervened, that the promotions committee will never be privy to. I might know that they had a husband who passed away of cancer or a wife, or a sick child. And I might be privy to information that, of course, I guess it's of a confidential nature, the promotions committee would not. And I've always erred on the side of being humanistic, and so I've tried to look at proposals for promotion or appointment from the point of view of has there been a major life event that may have caused someone who, for many years, has been productive, and they've had an illness themselves? We have a mechanism in place. But what if there's a family member, or they were a major caregiver for a mother or father? Or another life event intervened? And these events do occur. So I have to report back to the promotions committee if I ever disagree with them, whether I disagree in favor of the faculty member or not. And I never reveal the private information that I might have access to, but I do tell the promotions committee, "You voted a majority view unfavorable for this faculty member, but you may not know that there are some extenuating circumstances that would make me feel that it would be appropriate to either defer their decision for a year, or to be favorable when they were not.These are very rare events. They're not common. They occur, you know, infrequently, less than four or five percent of the time, but they do occur. And at the same time, I want to also be mindful that I have to be an arbiter if there are ethical issues that occur. And I know that good people can make bad decisions. And I do try, when possible, to give people a second chance. But if someone recurrently has lapses of behavior, then I do take that into account, too. So on the rare circumstances where a positive evaluation may have been overturned, since I've come here, I may be privy to some information regarding integrity or other issues that, by their very confidential nature, the panel of reviewers can't ever know, or am I allowed to tell them. But I do have to report back, What were the general reasons? These are very rare disagreements. But, you know, I've tried to be humanistic.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, Dr. Dmitrovsky, I'm very aware of the time. So, yes.
Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD:
Yeah, I have another meeting. Thanks so much for your time.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, yes, thank you very much.
Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD:
Good, good.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I look forward to talking to you next week.
Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD:
Yeah. So you'll work with Nadia.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I will. And I'm turning off the recorder at 2:33.
Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD:
See you.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Thank you very END OF AUDIO FILE
Recommended Citation
Dmitrovsky, Ethan MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 14: The Provost's Office: Supporting Faculty Promotions" (2015). Interview Chapters. 649.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/649
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