Report of the FRPR committee for Academic year 2005-06

The committee met three times and participated in several email discussions. Of the charges given to the committee, the focus was on charges 6, 8 and 9. Most of the effort was directed toward gathering information relevant to these charges. At this point the committee has no recommendations to make. Minutes of committee meetings and data summaries follow this part of the report.

Charge 6—data was obtained from OIRP on the number of faculty in both tenure track and non-tenure track positions, broken down by department. Although the analysis of the information provided is incomplete there is at this time no indication that hiring for non-tenured positions has reduced the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty. Additional information should be gathered comparing the frequency and number of non-tenured appointments at KU with those at peer institutions and other AAU universities.

Charge 8—a more extensive review of the non-tenure track classifications across KU is needed. Through its surveys the committee did find that there is no uniform policy as to the responsibilities, expectations, benefits or evaluation of non-tenure track personnel. Data, for the last five years, broken down by department, have been obtained on the number and length of service of non-tenure track teaching personnel. There appear to be inconsistencies between the information provided by chairs and by OIRP so further analysis is needed.

Charge 9—Information on the number of faculty currently on phased retirement was obtained from the provost’s office. In addition, surveys of faculty and chairs indicate that many faculty plan to retire in the next five years and also expect to take advantage of phased retirement. Data obtained from OIRP shows that, in 16 departments, 20% or more of the faculty are aged 60 or older. In total, 212 or 19.4% of the KU faculty are aged 60 or older. In addition, 171 or 15.6% are 55 – 59 years old. The university does not have hiring plans for the replacement faculty that will be needed. Rather, such decisions are left to individual schools or departments.

The other issue addressed by FRPR this year was a review of the report made by a committee that investigated charges of scientific/scholarly misconduct. One thing that became clear when the committee met to review the report is that section 9.4 of USRR should be clarified or expanded in order to facilitate any future reviews of this type. The committee felt that it lacked sufficient information to accurately determine if the process had been fair to the individual against whom the charges were brought. For example, neither the original complaint nor any of the communications that ensued between the principals in this matter were provided. No rationale was given as to why the committee that prepared the report chose to categorize the incidents as “inappropriate attribution” rather than the more severe “plagiarism”. Some possible actions that might be taken would be to amend the USRR to specify that additional documents be made available to FRPR, or to make the chair or other member of FRPR a nonvoting member of the committee that conducts the investigation.

Respectfully submitted

Nancy Kinnersley

Chair, FRPR

Minutes of the FRPR meeting on November 28, 2005

Present: Ric Steele, Beju Benjamin, Prakash Shenoy, and Nancy Kinnersley

Absent: Betty Banks, Margaret Severson, George Crawford, and Gerald Mikkelson (sabbatical).

The charges to the committee were discussed with the primary focus being charges 6, 8 and 9 dealing with non-tenure track teaching appointments and the extent and impact of recent and anticipated faculty retirements. The committee decided to conduct two surveys (discussed below). In addition, a list of questions will be prepared for submission to the provost’s office to gather data on non-tenure track positions, the hiring trend for these positions over the last few years, and the impact of these hires, if any, on the number of tenured and tenure track faculty.

The discussion about the responsibilities and participation in departmental activities by lecturers and other non-tenure track teaching faculty revealed that there are wide differences between departments. Other questions raised include how such personnel are evaluated and the distinction (if any) between how the services of lecturers and adjunct professors are used.

With respect to phased retirement, the committee should get information about hiring plans for replacements and how it affects the need for non-tenure track personnel.

Ric Steele will prepare the two surveys mentioned above—one to be answered by department chairs and the other by faculty regarding anticipated retirements in the next five years. The chairs’ survey will also gather data on the number of lecturers and other non-tenure track faculty employed by the various programs, their responsibilities, and the extent of their participation in departmental activities.

Minutes of the FRPR meeting on February 3, 2006

Present: Ric Steele, Beju Benjamin, Prakash Shenoy, Betty Banks and Nancy Kinnersley

Absent: Margaret Severson, George Crawford and Gerald Mikkelson.

The committee discussed the online surveys designed by Ric Steele. One survey will ask all faculty about plans to retire or take phased retirement in the next five year. The other, for department chairs, will ask them for this information as well as data on the number of nontenure-track faculty and their privileges and departmental responsibilities. After some minor modifications the committee voted to send the proposals to FacEx for approval after which they would be forwarded to the provost’s office for distribution.

There was additional discussion about a list of questions to be submitted to the provost’s office to gather data on non-tenure track positions, the hiring trend for these positions over the last few years, and the impact of these hires, if any, on the number of tenured and tenure track faculty. Nancy Kinnersley will prepare a document to be emailed to the committee members for review and modification.

Minutes of the FRPR meeting on March 31, 2006

Present: Ric Steele, Gerald Mikkelson, Betty Banks, George Crawford, and Nancy Kinnersley

Absent: Beju Benjamin, Margaret Severson and Prakash Shenoy

Nancy Kinnersley presented data obtained from Janet Riley listing, by department, the number of people of phased retirement. (The document presented to the committee is included below.)

Ric Steele presented preliminary results of the two surveys conducted earlier in the semester. The faculty survey asked if the faculty member planned to retire in the next five years, and if so whether he or she planned to exercise the phased retirement option. The response rate was 29.2% (434 responses) (29.2%). Of those who responded, 20.3% plan to retire in the next five years and of those 71.6% plan to use the phased retirement option.

Thirty-eight chairs responded to questions about the anticipated retirements in their departments, the numbers of tenure track and non-tenure tract teaching personnel, and the privileges, responsibilities and evaluation process for the non-tenure track people. The analysis of those results was not complete at the time of the meeting.

The primary focus of the meeting was the discussion of the report prepared by a committee that investigated charges of scientific/scholarly misconduct and a proposed resolution of the case. The discussions both at the meeting and in subsequent emails, showed that the committee was divided on several issues. The members could not agree whether the investigation was thorough and effective because several felt that the materials given to FRPR were insufficient to enable it to make an accurate assessment of the process. There was no evidence of irregularities in the materials it did examine.

Report prepared by Ric Steele summarizing results of the faculty and chairs surveys.

Overview of Faculty Survey

In total, 434 usable surveys were returned to the Governance office, indicating a 29.2% response rate. Of these, 20.3% indicated that they do plan to retire within the next five years. An additional 1.2% were not sure.

Of those who indicated possible plans to retire within the next five years (i.e., all those who did not say “no” to the first question, the majority (71.6%) plan to use the phased retirement option.

Response rates across the College departments and schools varied widely. Rates of planned retirements among respondents range from 0% (Social Welfare) to more than 40% (Libraries and School of Journalism).

As suggested by the overall statistics, the use of the phased retirement option is quite prevalent across all schools and departments, with reported plans for the use of this option reaching 100% in some schools/departments.

Overview of Chair Survey

Retirements

A total of 38 department chairs (from across 10 schools) responded to the survey.

When the surveys were aggregated across schools (CLAS, Libraries, Architecture, etc.) chairs’ reports appear to have underestimated the number of faculty-reported planned retirements. For example, 43 faculty members in the CLAS indicated that they planned to retire within the next 5 years. In contrast, chairs in the CLAS estimated a total of 23 retirements within the next 5 years. The table below provides some basis for comparison across schools reporting.

School	Faculty Reporting number of planned retirements	Chairs’ estimates of the number of impending retirements
CLAS	43	23
Libraries	9	2
Architecture	3	1
Business	3	1
Education	7	2
Engineering	5	3
Fine Arts	5	1
Journalism	4	1
Law	3	Did not report
Pharmacy	4	1
Social welfare	0	Did not report

Of course, lack of correspondence across departments could account for some of the variance. However, the relative consistency across schools suggests a trend toward department chairs underestimating future retirements.

It is worth noting that chairs generally assumed that the faculty in their departments would avail themselves of the phased retirement option. In all schools, chairs assumed that 100% of new retirements would be phased-retirements. Given the faculty data noted above, this is a reasonable assumption.

Non-tenure-track (NTT) instructors

In terms of the absolute number of NTT instructors, values ranged by reporting department from 0 to 20, with a mean of 4.08. The range of permanent (i.e., budget line) NTT positions ranged from 0 to 10, with a mean of 1.83 across the 36 departments reporting on this item.

Most departments (n=18) reported that NTT instructors were evaluated by supervisors only. A total of 12 departments reported that NTT instructors were evaluated by faculty committee (n=6) or by both supervisors and committee (n=6). An additional 4 departments reported “no formal means” of evaluating NTT instructors.

In terms of departmental privileges of NTT instructors, the chairs reported a wide range, as indicated by the minimum and maximum values in the table, below. As the table indicates, about half of NTT instructors have voting rights and health/medical coverage. In terms of averages, a smaller percentage of departments report that their NTT instructors have administrative, committee membership, and supervisory responsibilities, and about 16% have research responsibilities.

	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. Deviation
Percent with Voting privileges	37	.00	100.00	47.97	45.79
Percent with health/medical coverage	37	.00	100.00	53.38	41.73
Percent with administrative duties	37	.00	100.00	34.46	38.80
Percent who serve on student committees	37	.00	100.00	39.86	40.59
Percent with supervisory duties	37	.00	100.00	27.03	35.54
Percent with research responsibilities	36	.00	100.00	16.67	32.18
Valid N (listwise)	36

Data obtained from provost’s office on the number and disciplines of faculty on phased retirement.

FY 06 Phased Retirement

Department	Number on phased retirement	Current FTE
American Studies/Sociology	1	.75
American Studies	2	.75 + .5 = 1.25
Anthropology	1	.7
Anthropology/Linguistics	1	.5
Applied Behavioral Science	1	.5
Architecture & Urban Design	2	.5 + .6 = 1.1
Art	2	.6 + .6 = 1.2
Business	2	.5 + .5 = 1
Communication Studies	2	.75 + .5 = 1.25
Design	1	.65
EEB/Mus Natural History	1	.5
Engineering Management	1	.5
English	3	.75 + .5 + .5 = 1.75
English/HWC	1	.5
Geography	1	.5
Geology	1	.5
History	3	.75 + .5 + .5 = 1.75
Health, Sport and Exercise Science	1	.5
Journalism	1	.75
Law	1	.5
Libraries	4	.7 + .75 + .5 + .5 = 2.45
Mathematics	4	.5 + .5 + .5 + .5 = 2.0
Music & Dance	1	.5
Pharmacology & Toxicology	1	.5
Physics & Astronomy	2	.5 + .5 = 1.0
Psych & Res in Education	2	.5 + .5 = 1.0
Psychology	3	.5 + .5 + .5 = 1.5
Public Administration	1	.5
Social Welfare	1	.75
Special Education/CRL	1	.6
Special Education	1	.5
Speech/Language/Hearing	1	.5
Teaching & Leadership	3	.5 + .25 + .5 = 1.25
Total	54	29.7

Email sent to FRPR committee members on 4/ 14/ 06.

FRPR committee members:

Here is a summary of some of the information I received yesterday from OIRP. There will be more data forthcoming so most of the discussion of this information will be carried forward to next year. The number we do have give an indication of potential problems with future

retirements.

Although there may be some problems with the data, of the 1093 faculty at KU, 212 or 19.4% are aged 60 or older. In addition, another 171 faculty are 55 – 59 years old.

The following departments have 20% or more of their faculty aged 60 or over:

English 20/43 46.5%

Pharmacology and Toxicology 4/9 44.4%

East Asian Languages and Culture 3/7 42.9%

Mechanical Engineering 5/13 38.5%

Art 5/15 33.3%

Classics 2/6 33.3%

Humanities and Western Civilization 3/9 33.3%

Religious Studies 3/9 33.3%

KS Biological Survey 5/15 33.3%

Special Education 6/21 28.6%

Journalism 5/18 27.8%

Applied behavioral science 4/17 23.5%

Civil, Environmental and Arch Engr. 5/22 22.7%

Music and Dance 12/55 21.8%

Law School 7/33 21.2%

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 8/38 21%

I also have data on GTAs and non-tenure track faculty. I find the non-tenure track numbers to be a bit suspect since they seem very low. The median number appears to be 0 and only one department, Social Welfare, with 5 has more than three non-tenure track faculty. My guess and it’s only a guess is that the numbers I got are only the ones who have budget lines.

Nancy