Meeting the NCA Criteria >> Criterion 2 ...
University Governance || Faculty || Staff || Students || Financial Resourses || Budget Process FACULTY AND OTHER INSTRUCTIONAL STAFF An outstanding faculty is an essential part of a great university. As part of a community devoted to learning, the University of Michigan's faculty help to "advance, preserve and transmit knowledge through study, teaching, artistic expression, research, and scholarship." (Faculty Handbook, http://www.provost.umich.edu/faculty/handbook/index.html) Regental bylaws define the faculty as including "members of the teaching and research staff together with the executive officers, the directors of various teaching, research, and library units, research associates, curators, and persons with similar duties (Regent Bylaw 5.01, http://www.regents.umich.edu/bylaws/bylaws05a.html#1).
Regular, clinical and supplemental instructional faculty Members of the University's instructional staff are classified as regular instructional staff, clinical II instructional staff, or supplemental instructional staff. The regular instructional staff includes professors, associate professors, assistant professors, instructors, and lecturers. Professors, associate professors, assistant professors and instructors holding regular appointments are either tenured or are on the tenure track; appointments with the title of professor and associate professor are made with tenure unless otherwise specified at the time of appointment. Appointments as assistant professor, instructor, or lecturer are without tenure and may be for terms of up to four years. Lecturers are not on the tenure track and, in most instances, appointments are usually temporary, lasting only one or two terms. Approval by the Regents is required for all tenured appointments and for non-tenured appointments of professors and associate professors. Only the Regents have authority to grant tenure. Specific conditions of all appointments are determined by each school or college. Appointments for instructional staff may be annual (12 months) or on a university-year (2 of the 3 full terms) basis, with additional appointments possible for teaching during the summer terms for faculty with academic year appointments. Clinical II instructional staff refers to clinical faculty with appointments at 50% or more and includes the following titles: clinical professor, clinical associate professor, clinical assistant professor, clinical instructor, and clinical lecturer. Qualifications for clinical appointments and promotion are consistent with those for regular instructional staff to the extent applicable; the emphasis of these appointments, however, is on clinical practice and teaching skills. Currently, ten schools and colleges on the Ann Arbor campus have clinical II tracks. Clinical II faculty appointments are not on the tenure-track. Adjunct, visiting, and clinical I staff comprise the supplemental component of the University’s instructional staff. This group is also referred to as "flexible instructional staff." "Adjunct" faculty refers to any rank of instructional staff whose primary employment responsibilities lie outside the University or in another capacity within the University. "Clinical I" instructional staff refers to professional practitioners in the community who assume teaching responsibilities within the regular curriculum and have an appointment of less than 50%. The term "visiting" is used for persons who are primarily identified with another institution of higher education and assume some teaching responsibility at the University of Michigan.
Faculty workload A major component of a faculty member’s role at the University is classroom teaching. On average, full-time tenure or tenure-track faculty members spend about half their time in instructional assignments. This activity includes course development and class preparation; classroom, laboratory, studio and clinic teaching; individualized instruction; grading papers; conferences with students enrolled in a class; supervision of student internships; participation in students’ honors programs, and advising graduate students about their dissertations and preliminary exams. The second major portion of a faculty member’s time is spent on research and creativity, i.e., the discovery, application, and dissemination of new knowledge, and/or performance and creation of visual arts. The generation of new knowledge not only results in the teaching of new ideas in the classroom but also contributes to the welfare of society. The remainder of the faculty member’s time is spent on scholarship and service activities. Scholarship includes activities such as attending seminars and conferences, reading relevant literature to keep up with new developments in their field, and reviewing articles for publication in professional journals. Service covers a wide range of faculty activities performed both within the university and outside of it in the community, locally and nationally. Within the university, service can include participating in administrative tasks, serving on committees, participating in institutional governance, counseling students, and providing professional services such as patient care.
Faculty statistics The figures reported in this section are based on an institutional definition of faculty used in reports by the Office of Budget and Planning. This definition includes all individuals with active faculty appointments regardless of whether or not it is a primary appointment or a salaried one. Thus, the figures here will differ somewhat from those reported in the Basic Institutional Data Form C, which includes individuals whose primary title is a paid instructional appointment. The number of regular instructional faculty at the University of Michigan has remained virtually the same at about 3,300 over the last decade (see table below). However, there have been some changes in the composition of the faculty over that time period. For example, women faculty have increased by 32% while faculty of color have increased 51%. Despite these significant percentage increases, there is still a great deal of room for increasing the diversity of the faculty since women currently comprise only 30% of the faculty overall and minorities only 17%. Another change in the composition of the faculty is the growth in the number of lecturers from 509 in 1990 to 609 in 1998, an increase of almost 20%. One of the reasons for this apparent increase is a change in the appointing practices in the Medical and the Nursing Schools. In the1980’s both schools appointed as instructors, faculty whose duties were more typical of those appointed as lecturers. Both schools changed their appointing practices after 1987 to appoint these types of instructional staff in the more appropriate lecturer title. It was not until the early 1990’s that both schools completed the transition in their change of appointing practices. A number of other schools also had small to moderately large increases in lecturers between 1990 and 1998, including the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts which employs the largest number of lecturers (about 330 currently). Growth in lecturers in some of these other units appears to be as a replacement for graduate student instructors which have declined from about 1,700 in 1990 to approximately 1,500 in 1998. The number of clinical II instructional staff has increased significantly since 1990, rising from 67 in 1990 to 449 in 1998. In 1998, approximately 20% were minority and 45% were female. While the gender composition of the clinical II faculty is not readily available for 1990, figures based on race/ethnicity indicate that the representation of faculty of color has increased slightly from 15% of the clinical II faculty in 1990 to 17% in 1998. The overall increase in the number of clinical II faculty is due primarily to the increasing reliance on these staff in the Medical School, which currently accounts for 85% of the campus faculty in this category. In addition to the faculty counts below, other current statistics on faculty can be found at this web site: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/faculty_and_staff.
Primary research staff and librarians, archivists, and curators Regular primary research staff includes persons appointed to either the primary research scientist track or the senior primary research scientist track. The primary research scientist classifications include research scientist, associate and assistant research scientist, and research investigator. These four ranks are considered parallel and comparable to the four tenured and tenure-track ranks; however, research scientists are involved mainly in research rather than in instruction and are not eligible for tenure. A close correspondence is intended between these two sets of ranks in the criteria of competence and achievement, as well as in the mechanics and procedures for applying these criteria in the appointment and promotion of staff. Those appointed to the senior primary research scientist or senior associate scientist ranks must have achieved excellence in research projects and a national or international reputation, in addition to meeting other criteria. Librarians, archivists, and curators are also considered part of the faculty of the University. Because libraries and archives have developed into "intellectual learning centers," librarians, archivists, and curators perform important educational, research and service roles at the University. In 1990 the number of primary research faculty was 260. By 1998, the number had increased 53% to 398. The number of librarians, archivists, and curators rose from 141 in 1990 to 165 in 1998. Of the total 563 primary faculty in 1998, 21% were faculty of color and 42% were women.
Source: Regular Instructional Staff Counts, data as of November 1.
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