A few words from
Nicholas "Nick" Allen, Provost and Chief Academic Officer

Nick Allen

Academic rank to be
conferred on full-time faculty

July 1 marked an important milestone for UMUC. We began the first phase of conferring academic (collegiate) rank on our full-time faculty members throughout UMUC. This step moves us closer to achieving greater recognition for our faculty and for UMUC among our peer institutions and others within the state and worldwide.

One of UMUC's strategic initiatives is to build one global faculty, integrating all 1,900 members into a strong community of practice. To do so, we have had to rethink the policies and practices that have governed our faculty in the past, moving away from separate silos (graduate/undergraduate, Europe/Asia/stateside) toward more consistent policies and operations throughout the University.

UMUC has long emphasized access, convenience, and responsiveness to our mostly adult working students, whether located in Maryland or overseas. High quality courses and programs that addressed the needs of working professionals, employers, and contractors had to be designed quickly and delivered to locations and at times convenient and accessible to the University's students, either by faculty sent to those locations or by means of technology. To respond to these demands, we have increasingly relied on a cadre of more than 500 full-time faculty in addition to the large corps of adjunct faculty.

This situation presented the University with a dilemma. To remain nimble in face of competitive market demands, UMUC needs the flexibility that traditional tenure systems do not facilitate. But to retain a quality faculty, the University needs to confer the benefits and recognition that foster a sense of academic community and build loyalty to the institution and its values. One of these benefits is academic rank.

USM faculty policies have focused on traditional tenure-track faculty at research-oriented institutions. Our unique, full-time, teaching faculty were essentially excluded from these policies. As a result, our full-time faculty have not received the recognition deserved in the higher education community at large, and UMUC has too often been viewed by outsiders as an institution that had no faculty of its own.

All of that is about to change. Last winter, the University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents approved our proposed changes to the system-wide faculty policies to create a new class of faculty - collegiate faculty - with duties primarily in instruction. This revision creates four ranks: collegiate instructor, collegiate assistant professor, collegiate associate professor, and collegiate professor. As with tenure-track ranks at research institutions, successive collegiate ranks require increasing experience and academic credentials.

On July 1 we began the implementation process by conferring collegiate faculty ranks on our full-time faculty here in Adelphi in our undergraduate and graduate schools. Commencing Jan. 1, 2002, the same process will take place in UMUC-Europe and Asia. Faculty at UMUC-Schwäbisch Gmünd will be appointed to collegiate rank in their renewed contracts for fall 2001.

Collegiate faculty rank will become a qualifying criterion for most academic administration positions in UMUC as assistant/associate deans, deans, and provost. All collegiate faculty, including those in administrative assignments, will have an onload teaching requirement depending on other assigned duties. These will be developed during the coming academic year for implementation July 1, 2002.

Policies governing the appointment, rank, and promotion of UMUC's collegiate faculty are outlined in UMUC Policy 181.0, which may be viewed on our Web site. The revised policy also defines the criteria for UMUC's other faculty categories - adjunct faculty, librarians, and professors of the practice - in greater detail.

Faculty status for USM librarians was approved by the regents this past year. This change is being implemented for UMUC librarians this academic year, consistent with the new USM policy. In January 2002, we also plan to assign adjunct ranks to all part-time faculty in our overseas operations, as has been our longstanding practice with those faculty in Maryland.

Approval of collegiate faculty ranks for UMUC full-time faculty signals well-deserved public recognition of UMUC's professional and highly qualified faculty of whom we are extremely proud. The steps we are taking to implement the new ranks, and to provide greater recognition for all UMUC faculty are important in moving us towards creation of a strong community of practice and increasing recognition for UMUC. Congratulations to our faculty in this well-deserved recognition.