The General Assembly passed a resolution at a meeting yesterday urging the CAS Educational Policy Committee to keep current policies in place that allow students to have a voice in determining professor tenure.
The committee is considering changing the tenure process so that only other tenured faculty would constitute the rank and tenure committees, eliminating the student members.
"The student voice has been an essential part of tenure committees," said Adam Rosenblatt, chairman of the Academic Review Committee, which is charged with writing the resolution. "I'm sure they'll still take into account the faculty evaluations, but it's still very different from having people in the room."
Rosenblatt said that Ivy Broder, dean of academic affairs, said that students do not have a broad enough perspective to make decisions about tenure.
Each department in the College of Arts and Sciences and other schools has its own rank and tenure committee with its own set of rules. Most allow for student members, either in a voting or non-voting capacity.
If the CAS Educational Policy Committee changed the tenure process, its ruling would affect all departments.
Whether a faculty member receives tenure is determined by votes of committee members. The committee considers input from its members, as well as student evaluation forms, which are completed at the end of a course.
The committee began investigating the issue when Zee Elovich, undergraduate president of CAS and a student member of its Educational Policy Committee, brought the issue to Bob Tozzi, a CAS representative in the GA, last week.
The committee drew up the resolution at its meeting on Wednesday.
"It's a matter of urgency. It's the first step that we need to take," said Rosenblatt of the resolution. "We're saying that we need to stand by the opinion that students should have a voice on the rank and tenure committee."
Rosenblatt said he plans to talk with Chris Ying, the Student Confederation's director of academic affairs. He said he wants administrators advocating for the change in policy to read and consider the resolution.
"This is a paper that represents the views of thousands of undergraduate students in the university," said Rosenblatt. "When they make their decision, they have to take into account how strongly students feel their voices must be heard in the rank and tenure of professors"
