FASTAP 2016 review committee

[Summary: This message announces the members of the committee that will review and consider possible revisions to Yale's FASTAP 2016 tenure system.]

To: FAS ladder faculty
Cc: FAS Department and Program Chair's Assistants, Operations Managers, and Lead Administrators; FAS Dean's Office; FAS Steering; SEAS Dean's Office; Jackson School Dean's Office; President's Office; Provost's Office

Dear colleagues,

In line with Yale's practice of periodically reviewing major aspects of how we do things, I have appointed a faculty committee to conduct a review of how well the current FAS ladder faculty tenure system is working and whether any adjustments are necessary. Yale’s FAS ladder faculty tenure standard reflects our aspiration that Yale should be the major research university that also most values teaching, and that we attract faculty who are both excellent researchers and teachers. 

Background

The FAS’s Tenure and Appointments Policy (FASTAP) for ladder faculty was implemented in 2007 and updated in 2016. The 2007 system (FASTAP 2007) provided a true tenure track for FAS faculty for the first time. Beginning in 2015, that system was reviewed, and a revised system (FASTAP 2016) was introduced the following year, bringing with it many important changes, including clarifications to the tenure standard, adjustments to the length of the tenure clock and the timing of leaves and reviews, the elimination of Associate Professor on Term as a rank for pre-tenure promotion, and the creation of an opportunity for formal written feedback at the moment of an Assistant Professor’s reappointment review. Currently, FAS faculty are reviewed either under FASTAP 2007 or FASTAP 2016, depending on when they joined the faculty. 

The committee and review process

The FASTAP review committee includes faculty members from across the FAS, including those who have been promoted in the past five years under each of the current FASTAP systems (FASTAP 2007 and FASTAP 2016) as well as faculty members who have served on the Tenure and Appointment Committees and who have overseen promotion cases as department chairs. The committee will be consulting widely with FAS faculty, with colleagues in SEAS and across the university, and with those who administer the various stages of the promotion and review processes. They will reach out to ladder faculty at all ranks, including those who are untenured and recently promoted, for feedback on the current system. There will also be opportunities to provide anonymous feedback via a survey. 

The committee will review the important aspects of our current FASTAP 2016 system. The committee will also determine whether and what additional useful guidance could be provided for tenure-track faculty, for academic units, and for tenure and appointment committees, on how to fulfill our expectations of world-class research, excellent teaching, and engaged department, university, and professional service.  

I am grateful to Professor Christina S. Kraus, Thomas A. Thacher Professor of Classics, for agreeing to chair this committee, and to the other committee members listed below for their service. 

In the coming months, the committee will organize opportunities for you to share feedback. Announcements of meetings and surveys are forthcoming. Meanwhile, you may reach out to Professor Kraus with your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Steven

Steven Wilkinson
Dean
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Yale University

Committee membership

• Christina S. Kraus, Committee Chair; Thomas A. Thacher Professor of Classics
• Sarbani Basu, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Astronomy
• Casey Dunn, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Cajetan Iheka, Professor of English; Director, Whitney Humanities Center; Chair, Council on African Studies
• Amit Khandelwal, Dong-Soo Hahn Professor of Economics and of Global Affairs  
• Tina Lu, Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures; Chair, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
• Hélène Landemore-Jelaca, Professor of Political Science and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies
• Scott Miller, Sterling Professor of Chemistry
• Yihong Wu, James A. Attwood Professor of Statistics and Data Science; Chair, Department of Statistics and Data Science
• Jason Zentz, Staff, Senior Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences