Regent nixing of backup titles likely to have mixed impact

The campus impact of the UW System Board of Regents decision to eliminate “backup” positions — which typically are one-year, fixed term positions given to at-will administrators — will be limited to certain categories of hiring, say UW–Madison leaders.

On Nov. 11, regents voted unanimously to abolish the practice of offering backup academic staff jobs, which can range from a year to an indefinite length of time, to certain administrators. The practice was commonly used to provide additional protections to academic staff members who serve at the will of a chancellor or other top official, and who can be fired for any reason.

In lieu of backups or fixed-term contracts for administrators, the regents opted instead for the requirement of a six-month notice of termination. The new rules apply in contracts for future hiring and not to existing staff contracts.

One area in which the new requirements may have an impact on future hiring, says Interim Provost Virginia Sapiro, is in hires from outside the UW System where the individual does not have faculty tenure status. These are academic staff positions in which people would be moving into executive positions but would have to be willing to accept short notice of termination if problems arise in the job.

“This may reduce the pool of highly qualified individuals willing to take the job,” Sapiro says. “It may mean that the appointing authorities will, in some cases, go to a less-qualified inside person, or forego opportunities to get ‘fresh blood’ in a division to avoid the hassle.”

On the other hand, there are several circumstances in which current practices remain in place, says Sapiro. One key example is with tenured faculty members who agree to serve in an administrative position. Those individuals continue to maintain their rights as tenured faculty.

“People need to understand that for faculty, it’s not just ‘going back to a job,’ because no one surrenders their status as tenured faculty when they serve as administrators,” Sapiro says.

For example, if a new dean came to the university, he or she may have tenure in his or her field of expertise. “Deans would be able to take up their work again if something happened during their deanship,” says Sapiro.

For those who are already academic staff at UW–Madison but are promoted to an at-will position, the new ruling would also be unlikely to apply.

“Those individuals would have been promoted because they’re good at what they do,” Sapiro says. “If the higher position doesn’t work out, they are going back to the position where they already demonstrated success.”