NTT contract proposal would offer greater job protection amid layoff concerns
UPDATE: MU faculty council members unanimously approved the proposal. However, as one faculty council members said, the proposal was a “statement of principal.” Administrators will still have to take action.
MU faculty members are expected to take action at a meeting Thursday on a proposal for non-tenure track (NTT) faculty contract lengths at their meeting Thursday.
The Chancellor’s Campus Standing Committee on NTT faculty is asking the provost’s office to consider “a campus-level policy on contract lengths for NTT faculty that offers increasing contract lengths” based on the following formula:
A probationary period of no more than three one-year contracts No less than two-year rolling contracts for all ranked NTT faculty at the assistant and associate levels who have worked at the university for three or more years No less than three year rolling contracts for all ranked NTT faculty promoted to full professor, as well as those ranked NTT faulty who quality as “the highest qualified, highest performing.”
The contract proposal also provides a rationale for the changes. It says NTT faculty account for 44 percent of the total ranked faculty at MU.
“Given these numbers, it is clear that the stability of NTT faculty directly impacts the stability of our programs and departments, where ranked NTTs often play critical roles across our teaching research, extension and clinical missions,” the proposal says.
The contract proposal comes fewer than three months after the MU faculty council unanimously voted to endorse a proposal related to layoffs of NTT faculty. That resolution included additional protections for NTT faculty as they face the possibility of layoffs.
In his address last week on campus budget plans for fiscal year 2018, President Mun Choi announced that more than 400 jobs will be eliminated, systemwide. Mizzou was hit hardest with job cuts: Approximately 307 administrative, faculty and staff positions are set to be eliminated. Of those, 136 positions are currently vacant and will not be filled.
