Chatham University Trustees Approve the Reintroduction of Faculty Tenure

Chatham University’s Board of Trustees approved the re-introduction of faculty tenure contracts at the Board of Trustees Meeting on February 11, 2022. If approved by the full faculty, the new tenure contract system will replace the University’s previous capstone contract system for senior faculty that has been in place since 2005.  

The transition from capstone to tenure contracts has been adopted in part to better reflect Chatham’s undergraduate enrollment growth to a larger, more traditional, and balanced level for a Masters/Doctoral University since the shift to all-gender in 2014 (Chatham’s undergraduate college was formerly a women’s college). In addition, the new tenure contract system will expand the definition of scholarship, help reduce administrative resources, provide more clarity and job security for faculty, and attract, retain, and diversify top faculty talent.  

Under the new model, full-time faculty will be hired on a tenure track with a probationary period of seven years. The evaluation for a tenured professorship position at year seven will remain consistent with current University practice and be based on meeting standards of teaching, scholarship, and service. Once tenure is achieved, faculty will receive annual evaluations as they currently do, but no longer need to have a formal re-evaluation every five to six years as required by the previous capstone contract model. Faculty currently on capstone contracts will be converted to the tenure contract, and those on a probationary capstone contract track will be converted to a probationary tenure track contract.  

Chatham implemented the capstone contract model in 2005 to unify undergraduate and graduate faculty contracts due to the growth in Chatham’s master and doctoral programs, faculty, and enrollment (especially in the health sciences), which grew to represent 2/3 of overall University enrollment. Following Chatham’s shift to all gender at the undergraduate level in 2014, the University has experienced record undergraduate enrollment growth (from 597 to 1196 degree-seeking undergraduates), which now represents over 50% of total University enrollment.

The new tenure contract proposal was based upon the recommendation of an ad hoc capstone assessment committee made up of faculty from across the University who have been studying this issue since late 2019. The tenure contract proposal approved by the Board of Trustees will be voted on by the full faculty at an upcoming faculty meeting.