Faculty Appointment Policies and Tracks in U.S. Dental Schools with Clinical or Research Emphases

Abstract

The 1995 Institute of Medicine study of the future of dental education, Dental Education at the Crossroads: Challenges and Change, recommended that dental schools increase the use of nontenure-track positions in their employment of faculty. As part of a larger investigation of faculty appointment processes in U.S. dental schools, dental deans were queried about institutional policies governing faculty appointments and the use of tenure and nontenure faculty tracks. Response from the fifty-four U.S. schools exceeded 90 percent for each of two mailed questionnaires. Dental schools were classified according to one of two emphases: clinical or research. Deans classified faculty into one of seven appointment tracks. Nontenure-track appointments were less common in clinical-emphasis schools. Research-emphasis schools had a greater mean proportion of their faculties in both the nontenure research track (7.0 percent vs. 2.7 percent) and the nontenure clinical track (20.8 percent vs. 17.4 percent). Compared to faculty appointment data reported in 1990, there were more nontenure-track faculty in 81 percent of research-oriented schools and 55 percent of clinical-oriented schools. The most frequently cited reasons for more nontenure faculty in these thirty-three schools were greater administrative flexibility, better fulfillment of mission, and increased difficulty achieving tenure. This study showed the number of faculty holding nontenure-track appointments had increased since 1990, especially among researchemphasis dental schools.

<p>Restructuring of Academic Tracks to Create Successful Career Paths for the Faculty of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences</p>

“…We applied lessons learned from a wide variety of structures and applications of Tenure and Non-Tenure academic tracks of US medical and other health sciences schools, all individually designed to serve the specific needs of each institution. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] After extensive discussions and multiple iterations, we generated new guidelines, following the Tenure Track and Non-Tenure Track titles and regulations already in place at Rutgers, modified to suit the special needs of healthcare faculty.…”

“…A number of reports have shed light on relevant considerations of academic tracks governing clinical educators in the health sciences, but most were focused solely on medical schools. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] We describe the driving forces and structural details of creating Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS), which included eight health care professional schools with historically highly divergent scholarly, educational, and clinical missions. We also describe our rationale, approach, and outcomes for development of a new academic track system that provides opportunity for our diverse faculty to succeed.…”

“…5 The effectiveness of various systems has been further complicated by lack of central oversight, exemplified by systems where the requirements for scholarship on the same track were applied differently among different schools within the same university system, 2 and by highly liberal and diverse policies permitting switching between tracks among US medical schools. 1 …”

The Utility of Hybrid Promotion and Tenure Tracks for Dental School Faculty

“…The policies of dental schools regarding promotion and tenure have been reviewed by previous authors, but those analyses did not focus on the presence of hybrid tracks within these institutions as a tool for advancement 31 – 35 . As an initial step in reviewing policies in North American dental schools regarding the hybrid track for clinician‐educators, we analyzed promotion and tenure policies for fifteen dental schools and one medical school (Table 1).…”

Rethinking Tenure in Dental Education

“…Tenure reform in dental education should recognize and reward teaching responsibilities as part of the attainment of the duties expected for their specific track. Faculty tracks similar to those suggested by Kennedy and Hunt 29 and Hunt and Gray 30 should be considered so faculty members have the opportunity to choose the track that coincides with their strengths. By having multiple tracks with more emphasis on clinical teaching, didactic teaching, research, or administration, guidelines for promotion and/or tenure could be made clearer, and schools could improve their ability to both recruit and retain new faculty members.…”