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Welcome Back!

The 2011-12 academic year is well underway. The usual bumps are being negotiated and some new challenges, like the recent changes respecting copyright, are presenting themselves. As you’re maneuvering your way through these and other matters, know that the USFA is here to assist you. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns. […]

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When to go for tenure or promotion: 7th in a series

Practice of professional skills remains a troublesome category for members in many units, particularly the professional colleges. When the university standards for tenure and promotion were last revised, there was a wish to distinguish recognize practice of professional skills, but still require practitioners to show ability in research, consistent with the teacher/scholar model. Unfortunately, the […]

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Educators create wealth

Discussing the teachers’ job action, a local columnist commented that the arguments of the teachers’ union for “sharing the wealth” is flawed. The author writes that “fair share” “implies someone has contributed directly to creating what is they want to share” and that such reasoning “smacks of an entitlement mentality”. (Star-Phoenix, “Sharing the wealth not […]

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When to go for tenure or promotion: 6th in a series

It is surprising how often we evaluate a colleague’s research career by metrics like publication counts, page counts, or order of authorship, which border on numerology, rather than considering the actual contribution. Although time is the true test of research, the reason we do this is that the practicalities of our processes force us to […]

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When to go for tenure or promotion: 5th in a series

Today is the best day to start thinking about your promotion/tenure case. You have a lot of resources to help you in the preparation of your case file. By May 31, your Department Head or Dean should have met with you to discuss your progress in meeting the approved standards, which you should make yourself […]

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