3.19 Named Chairs

Expectations

Faculty assigned to named chairs are expected to provide leadership in their designated field by organizing and participating in campus events related to their area of expertise, by maintaining high quality teaching, and by demonstrating a willingness to participate in campus governance. They should have a distinguished teaching record and be actively engaged in scholarly and/or creative activities. Those who are named to chairs will be asked to give a presentation to the college community concerning their professional work in their first year of the appointment.

Procedure for Appointment to a Named Chair

When a chair falls vacant, the President shall have the right to nominate a Professor (full) to fill the chair, to leave the chair unfilled if he or she judges that there is no suitable candidate at the present time, or to institute a search under the usual Faculty Executive Committee/Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee procedures to fill the chair from outside the faculty. In making his or her nomination, the President will solicit informed advice from the Dean, members of the faculty including members of the department if applicable, the Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee, and, if warranted, from outside experts. In making an internal nomination, the President will submit a letter to the Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee explaining the grounds for the nomination and a current curriculum vitae. The Dean of Faculty will provide the APT with course evaluations since the last review and the APT letter from the last review. The APT will convey its recommendation to the Dean of Faculty who will then report back to the President. The Elizabeth Hubert Malott Endowed Chair for the Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities will be held by the Core Director who need not be a full professor.

Term of Appointment

Unless otherwise specified, the term of appointment to a named chair shall be 10 years. Appointments to Named Chairs are generally renewable with the exception of those that are not specific to a particular discipline, such as the Mary J. Johnson and J. Stanley Johnson Chair in the Humanities, the Distinguished Professorship in Modern Foreign Languages, the Richard Armour Chair in Modern Languages, and the Mary Wig Johnson Professorship in Teaching. It is expected that appointments to these chairs shall not be renewed and will rotate among qualified faculty. An exception may be made for faculty with signed retirement agreements within 3 years of the chair’s expiration date. The term for the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Endowed Chair for the Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities is for the duration of the service as the Core Director.

Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities

Scripps College does not normally award tenure to any member of the faculty or administration at the time of their hiring. Nevertheless, the faculty of Scripps College authorizes derogation to this policy with respect to the search for a new Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities. This person will be considered a professor of the College, housed in a given department but not included in the calculation of normal FTE.

In authorizing this derogation the faculty instructs the Committee on Appointments, Promotion and Tenure (APT) to evaluate the suitability of candidates for the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities to receive “lateral tenure,” as defined below, according to the following guidelines:

Definition of lateral tenure

“Lateral tenure” consists of granting professorial status without limitation of contract at the time of hiring to an individual who already holds tenure at another academic institution.

Eligibility for lateral tenure

1. The individual in question must currently hold tenure at another academic institution.
2. The individual must have a Ph.D. or comparable terminal degree in a discipline or field that is currently taught at Scripps College; or, in the event that the individual has a Ph.D. or comparable terminal degree in a discipline or field that is not currently taught at Scripps College, an existing department or interdisciplinary program must affirm, consistent with the procedures outlined in point 11 (below), that it is prepared to accept the individual as a potential teaching member of that department or interdisciplinary program.
3. The establishment of an individual’s eligibility for lateral tenure does not result in automatic conferral of lateral tenure. Rather, the process for awarding lateral tenure is described below.

Delegated authority for awarding lateral tenure

4. APT is the sole body authorized to determine whether individual candidates for the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities are eligible for lateral tenure; and, having established their eligibility, APT is the sole body authorized to recommend the award of lateral tenure to the President. The Dean of Faculty, as an ex-officio member of APT, will make a separate recommendation to the President as is normally done with all APT decisions.
5. The faculty authorizes APT to amend its normal procedures for evaluating candidates for tenure as outlined below. The faculty further authorizes any additional modifications of APT’s normal procedures that are consistent with these guidelines and judged necessary in order for APT to evaluate candidates in a timely fashion. APT shall be sole judge of whether such further modifications to its normal procedures are necessary.
6. Favorable judgments with respect to the substantive questions of eligibility and (subsequently) the possible award of lateral tenure require the affirmative vote of no fewer than four voting members of APT. Procedural matters, such as additional changes to APT’s normal procedures (pursuant to point 5) beyond those outlined below, require the affirmative vote of no fewer than three voting members of APT.

Procedure for awarding lateral tenure

7. After the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee has constituted its list of finalists for the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities position, the chair of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee will immediately notify the APT if there are individuals on this list who appear to meet the eligibility requirements for, and who have expressed an interest in, lateral tenure. At this time the Search Committee will consult with the APT regarding materials needed for tenure review.
8. At the time of this notification the chair of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee will inform APT of the presumed timetable for an offer to be extended to one of these candidates, and will request that APT make its determination with respect to lateral tenure in accordance with this timetable. APT will endeavor to comply with this request.
9. At the time of this notification the chair of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee will also provide APT and the department or interdisciplinary program in which the candidate would be housed with all the materials in the possession of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee relevant to the evaluation of the teaching, research, and service of potential candidates for lateral tenure.
10. In view of the deadlines involved, APT is not expected to solicit new materials in support of its review of potential candidates for tenure. However, APT retains the authority to do so. In such cases, the chair of APT will advise the chair of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee what materials APT requires, and will request that the chair of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee ask the candidate to supply those materials forthwith.
11. As part of its evaluation process, and consistent with point 2 (above), APT will solicit written evaluations from the members of the department or interdisciplinary program in which the candidate would be housed. The members of this department or interdisciplinary program will be asked whether they are prepared to accept the individual as a teaching member of that department or interdisciplinary program. The members of this department or interdisciplinary program may submit their views on this question collectively or individually, or both, as they see fit.
12. In order to facilitate the evaluation process referred to in point 11 (above), APT will request that the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee organize the agenda for the campus visit of candidates considered for lateral tenure to permit meetings with the relevant departments or interdisciplinary programs.
13. In view of the compressed time frame likely to be associated with APT’s review, the chair of APT and the Dean of the Faculty will immediately inform the chair of the Hartley Burr Alexander Endowed Chair of Humanities Search Committee and the President of the College of their recommendations.