Staff job titles back in campus hands

Campus leaders are asking academic units to decide whether to implement working professorial titles for instructional and research academic staff.

The move comes after the former UW System interim senior vice president for academic affairs, Al Beaver, recommended against budgeted professorial titles for instructional and research academic staff, known as IRAS, earlier this summer due to a lack of systemwide consensus on the issue. Instead, Beaver told campuses that the authority to create a set of informal, working professorial titles already exists.

UW–Madison interim provost Gary Sandefur says the university will let the executive committees of each academic unit decide whether to use the informal titles. “The decision on what titles to use depends on the department’s needs, traditions and practices,” Sandefur says. “Leaving the decision on whether to use these at the unit level fits well with our tradition of decentralized decision making.”

The School of Business is the first on campus to use working professorial titles for academic staff, creating three positions under the title “teaching professor.”

“We thought it critical to adopt policies regarding support and rewards for individuals willing to take on these tasks that are so vital to the school,” says outgoing Business School Dean Andrew Policano. Policano says teaching professors will have a support structure that is similar to that of tenured faculty, including access to sabbaticals.

Professorial titles for IRAS have been discussed in governance groups for years, with the majority of faculty and academic staff differing sharply. Supporters, including Academic Staff Assembly members, say budgeted professorial titles would give staff deserved recognition and more leverage when competing for grants that fund their salaries and research. However, some faculty members oppose budgeted professorial titles, preferring informal working titles for academic staff.

The discussion over staff titling is mirrored at universities nationwide as leaders grapple with impending retirements of large numbers of professors and academic staff – and as more and more academic staff take on duties that for years were exclusively the domain of faculty.

The UW–Madison Academic Staff Assembly endorsed budgeted professorial titles for IRAS during spring 2000. However, the Faculty Senate approved only honorary modified professorial titles for academic staff researchers such as “associate research professor” and “research professor,” and rejected similar titles for instructional staff.

Last March, a UW System working group, made up of academic staff, faculty, and campus and system administrators, recommended budgeted professorial titles as a way to more accurately reflect the responsibilities, credentials and work expectations of career IRAS.

The regents rejected that recommendation when Beaver received mixed reaction from campuses after asking their opinions. He, instead, recommended working titles.

Linda Newman, who replaced Wilton Sanders as chair of the Academic Staff Executive Committee earlier this summer, says ASEC will keep a close watch on how working titles are implemented at UW–Madison.

She says budgeted titles will become necessary as more academic staff members take on roles traditionally filled by faculty.

“Budgeted titles would be an appropriate way to recognize how higher education is changing,” Newman says. “We will continue to face the titling issue because it is not solely faculty that make [UW-Madison] a better place.”

University Committee chair Pat Wolleat says the new UC has not yet discussed staff titling. However, it continues to oppose budgeted titles for IRAS out of concern that they would weaken the tenure system.

“[The UC] is pleased that the IRAS proposal for budgeted titles was not accepted by the Regents but, importantly, that the door was left open for the campuses to develop their own working titling systems,” she says.