2020 School Plan Highlights

The university-wide recommendation for schools to regularly monitor faculty compensation led to a review of Candler’s long-standing practices for setting salaries. As a result, the school’s standard processes of testing for equity and addressing salary compression were codified.

In response to data citing uncertainty regarding the promotion of limited appointment track faculty (also known as professors of practice), Candler began discussions to clarify the criteria and processes for promotion.

In direct response to faculty’s most significant concern—service—Candler’s Strategic Planning Committee has undertaken the task of thinning service requirements while sustaining Candler’s rich culture of connection, participation, and representation.

In response faculty’s desire for increased clarity and transparency in all processes related to reappointment, promotion, and tenure, the Office of Faculty has spent the last and a half reviewing and revising the “Principles and Procedures for Promotion and Tenure” The current version, available on the Office of Faculty website, was reviewed line-by-line and tenured and promoted faculty were asked to provide feedback regarding areas that required further clarification. This decanal document was approved by the dean and shared with the Faculty Senate. The Office of Faculty is currently revising the “Principles and Procedures for Teaching-Track Faculty Appointment, Reappointment, and Promotion in Emory College of Arts and Sciences.” This revised document will be shared with teaching-track faculty for input, approved by the dean, and presented to the Faculty Senate by the end of Spring 2023.

 

Faculty expressed concerns regarding diversity, equity and inclusion issues. With the guidance and calls to action outlined by the College Senate Anti-Racism Working Group, the Office of Faculty created a process whereby faculty can now share and be recognized for the important JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) contributions they are making to Emory and beyond through their research, teaching, and service. This reporting mechanism has been implemented through the Annual Faculty Activity and Merit Evaluation mechanism supported by Faculty 180.  

While faculty acknowledged that Emory values mentoring, they expressed an interest to increase  access to formal mentoring for teaching track and tenure track faculty. In response, the Office of Faculty has launched and re-envisioned the College’s Faculty Mentoring Initiative. This initiative aims to support faculty success at all states of the career trajectory and presents an opportunity for the College to actively build cultures of belonging for faculty on campus. For tenure track faculty, small mentorship clusters of pre-tenure faculty from across the disciplines are matched with an experienced full professor from outside of their home department. For teaching track faculty, mentorship clusters of assistant teaching professors and associate teaching professors are matched with two to three teaching professors from a range of divisions and disciplines. These mentoring groups meet regularly, with mentors’ feedback and mentees’ questions relayed back to the Office of Faculty. 

Faculty indicated they wanted greater transparency around the promotion and tenure process, workload and how teaching assignments were made, and how student evaluations were used in annual reviews for faculty. The school held a series of programs to address these issues in October and November 2021 and February 2022 called “Under the Hood.” These programs provided opportunities to discuss these processes, ask questions and give input.

Faculty expressed challenges in achieving work/life balance, which was made even more challenging for during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the school provided graduate students as Zoom managers to reduce teaching burden during remote learning, and supported greater flexibility of work hours for faculty.

As expectations for scholarship and research have increased due to course releases for both pre- and post-tenure faculty, Oxford College will focus on efforts to develop and retain faculty, especially those on the tenure track, by working to clarify promotion processes and expectations.

Oxford College has spent time evaluating faculty service. In response to findings, Oxford has eliminated or consolidated committees, and will continue to explore service workloads and the role of service in the evaluation of faculty.

Oxford has initiated a salary comparison analysis for tenure track faculty as well as clinical, research, and teaching track faculty.

In response to concerns on tenure and promotion policies and clarity on expectations, Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) has integrated discussion of the process and expectations for both tenure track and CRT faculty at both the assistant and associate professor levels into the RSPH Faculty Career Development Series, with a presentation by the Executive Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research Strategy as well members of the school-level APT committee. The dean’s office also offers faculty one-on-one mentoring and guidance.

In response to concerns regarding pressure for faculty to secure external funding, the Dean’s Office has developed a series of seminars and training sessions focused on grant writing and processes for proposal development, submission, and management at Emory. The school has implemented a Dean’s Pilot and Innovation Program to provide pilot funding each year to up to six early career researchers to support the development of competitive applications. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, RSPH supported five Dean’s Rapid COVID Pilots to support faculty to develop projects related to the pandemic. In addition, the Office of Research supports grant editing services, external grant reviews, and will assist in the development of complicated and large awards.

In response to concerns on faculty salary equity and retention programs, RSPH developed a framework to guide salary equity reviews and recognition programs in order to assure equity across the school and to honor the successes of faculty to reduce the need for reactive retention discussions.

The school has closely monitored tenure track salaries to minimize salary compression. In response to a more competitive job market, the School of Law reviewed market data on tenure track positions to ensure the salaries of existing tenure track faculty members were above market rate. The school also developed a system by which to consider compensation for new tenure track positions and a method for ensuring that the strong job market did not produce salary inversion.

A holistic review of the salaries of legal writing faculty included benchmarking with peer schools, comparison of course load, and opportunity for additional teaching opportunities. This resulted in a two-year plan to raise legal writing faculty’s average salary.

The school conducted a review of clinical faculty’s compensation, which included benchmarking with peer schools and schools within Georgia. This work built upon a previous multi-year plan to adjust salary and provide additional opportunities (including directorship of programs) to ensure clinical faculty salaries remain competitive. Additionally, in response to feedback from clinical faculty, the school will provide clinic funding in a way that prevents increases in compensation from impacting overall clinic funding levels.

Having originally proposed a version of the parental leave policy to the Office of the Provost, the School of Medicine is now discussing its implementation in concert with the school’s compensation plan.

The School of Medicine has implemented implicit bias training for all high-level school committees.

In response to a university-wide call for clarity in tenure and promotion processes, the school expanded faculty education and workshops on preparing for promotion.