Nontenure promotion path addresses faculty inequity

I understand it, is working on market adjustments, which is I think, the first time it has happened broadly across campus in a good number of years. They're looking at CUPA median salaries for people in different ranks and then trying to bring those people who are further from the CUPA median [closer]," Jensen said.

Despite receiving less pay, the majority of instruction at Texas State is done by nontenured faculty. Tenured faculty are offered opportunities outside of teaching, and can take entire semesters off after working at the university for at least six years, whereas nontenure line faculty can only apply for a reduced workload, which decreases the number of classes they have to teach for a semester.

By Ryan Claycamp News Contributor

The Texas State University Faculty Senate and Nontenure Line Faculty Committee are planning to implement the "Faculty Title Series" in fall 2023. The series plans to address inequity in the treatment of certain faculty that impacts many employees.

Under the structures currently in place, some feel that Texas State has two classes of faculty: the smaller, more prestigious and highly paid tenure-line, and the less prestigious, but more widely available nontenured line faculty. The "Faculty Title Series" plans to address this by offering raises and more ways to further the career of nontenured line faculty.

"Lecturers are going to have an option, relatively soon, to get on a promotional track, which we don't have now. You can get a title change to senior lecturer, but that doesn't come with a pay increase," Allison Robinson, a history lecturer, said.

Under current plans, the "Faculty Title Series" will place nontenure faculty on career paths, much akin to the path of tenure-line faculty. Current senior lecturers will be given the option to stay grandfathered into the current system, but no new senior lecturers will be hired or created unless an emergency situation calls for it.

"The idea is that senior lecturer goes away, which is one of the last categories that doesn't have a career path. In its place, you're going to have assistant professor, associate professor and full professor, and I think the latest term is

'of teaching,'" Shannon Duffy, a senior lecturer in the Department of History and member of Faculty Senate said.

Nontenure line faculty, who currently make up the majority of faculty, are on contracts that must be renewed after a set term whereas their counterparts have much higher levels of job security.

"It is much easier to get rid of a nontenure line than a tenure-line person. So [nontenure faculty] will have five-year contracts, which is what I have now. It always has language that says basically unless we [the university] don't need you," Duffy said.

Nontenure-line faculty currently experience a sometimes significant pay gap between themselves and tenure-line faculty. The pay gap varies by department and the demand for the position, but at times can be as much as several tens of thousands of dollars.

"It's my understanding that in general, nontenure line faculty, even people that have been here for 20 or 25 years, still earn significantly less than tenure-line faculty, even newly hired tenure-line faculty," Jennifer Jensen, a professor of geography and environmental studies and vice chair of Faculty Senate, said.

The hope under the changes of the "Faculty Title Series" is to make salaries more equitable between nontenured line and tenure-line faculty by offering raises based on the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA), which is an organization that tracks average salaries for faculty in higher education.

"What the university is doing, as

"I explained my situation, I sent them the recording, screenshots of all of the emails, and then after that, they scheduled a Zoom meeting with me. It was about an hour and it was just like, asking me questions about the situation," the RA said.

FIRE contacted Texas State through a letter sent to the president, describing the situation and how it is a violation of the First Amendment even though the policy was broken.

"At Texas State, which is a public university, it is fully covered by the First Amendment to discuss with student and non-student journalists," James Jordan, litigation fellow for FIRE said.

The defense against this case was that the RAs were speaking on a public concern: the dorm conditions. Since this was a public concern and it passed the Pickering Balancing Test, a test in conjunction with the court case Pickering v. Board of Education, the RAs had the First Amendment right to speak on the issue with no barriers or punishments.

"When it comes to employees talking to the press, the law uses a Pickering Balancing Test to see if what is being spoken about is a public concern and whether an individual's rights to talk about something on a matter of public concern outweighs the employer's interest in keeping them from speaking," Jordan said.

In this case, overcrowding is a matter of public concern, so the RAs are covered under the First Amendment to speak to the press about it. Still, they received punishment.

"Overcrowding is something that definitely affects everyone even if you don't live on campus," the RA said. "I think it would be different if I was like, directly talking about how much I disliked my supervisor. That wouldn't be a public concern, but in this case, it was."

FIRE also brought to light the discussion about Texas State's media policy, stating that, overall, it violates employees' First Amendment rights to speak freely to the press and can possibly restrict free speech.

"We would say that this is a restriction on the First Amendment that to speak on an issue of public concern you have to get someone else's permission before talking about

"The salary that tenure track and tenured professors get, and the reduced course load that they get compared to lecturers means that they have more time and income to take more opportunities to take leave, you know, may do a semester of leave to focus on their book. Lecturers do not get them and so that's one thing that I hope changed with the switchover because I would love to do more publications," Robinson said.

Some faculty members have expressed hope that the equity increase will lead to higher quality education for students on campus and a more prestigious reputation for the university as a whole.

ILLUSTRATION BY EVA BOWLER

"My understanding is that a lot of these conversations, and why President Damphousse is so supportive, is that he has this fantastic ambition of Texas State becoming an R1 university and we really can't do that with this kind of gap between lecturers, nontenure and tenure faculty," Robinson said.

The "Faculty Title Series" has not been finalized, and is still in development. More and future information will be, available on the Faculty Senate's webpage and the NonTenured Committee's webpage.

anything that impacts you," Jordan said. "So even if you're employed it is a restriction to have to get someone else's permission."

FIRE called upon Texas State to change the policies for RAs and employees in general; to allow more freedom to speak to the press without having to get permission.

"So what [the policy change] would look like is just lowering the restrictions on RAs and allowing them to discuss in this case, dorm conditions ... so it would just be opening up and allowing them to discuss this overriding issue of public concern," Jordan said.

According to the RA, they were not informed of the removal of the warnings. They found out on their own accord.

"I'm happy I no longer have to worry about that writeup," the RA said. "But what's concerning to me is I never found out [about the removal]. So I wish that would have been made known to me by someone,"

Currently, Texas State has not connected with FIRE to consider the organization's other request to change employees' media policy.

"At the end of the day, I'm a student, like what they tell us always is I'm a student first and then an employee at the university," the RA said.