The Tenure Process in Higher Education: An Application of the Boyer Model of the Professoriate to Create a Coherent Record of Scholarly Productivity
Dr. Billy Long

Abstract
The processes of mentoring, evaluation, promotion, and tenuring of new faculty members oftentimes confuse professors in the academy. Non-tenured faculty members are often unsure about what they should be doing to add to their portfolios leading up to a tenure application. They often do not know if their teaching and advising will be rewarded or if they should de-emphasize these activities in favor of research and publication, which is more easily quantified. Along the same lines, they are unclear as to what qualifies as an adequate record of service. Are committees and departmental work enough or should service-related activities be discipline-related and performed in the community? In this paper I argue that the Boyer Model of the professoriate offers an easily understandable paradigm that new, probationary faculty can follow. Using examples from my own teaching, research and service, I provide a template for non-tenured faculty that, if followed, will greatly reduce confusion, increase the confidence of new professors, and substantially enhance the chances of receiving a favorable tenure decision. The four dimensions of the Boyer Model are applied to my activities for illustration purposes. Those four dimensions are: the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching.

Full Text: PDF