How to Promote Faculty Advancement for Nontenure-track Faculty

Institutions of higher education are increasingly relying on non-tenure track (NTT) faculty to support teaching needs and service duties such as directing undergraduate programs. Academics have expressed a variety of concerns about this shift in hiring practices, many of which have focused on difficulties faced by part-time and adjunct professors. This paper will focus on a somewhat different, more recent, trend. A growing number of universities have established full-time renewable NTT positions with an array of titles and ranks. Research done at the University of Delaware (UD) – in the form of a full-time faculty climate survey – indicate high levels of job satisfaction among their NTT continuing faculty. That said, there are a number of challenges that need to be addressed in terms of workload, fair promotion practices, and equal access to effective formal mentoring. This paper will focus on what has been done at UD – and what else needs to be done – to support faculty development of its NTT faculty. It will also report on other institutions that are working to carve a place in academe for a new type of faculty position – one that deserves equal access to many of the benefits enjoyed by tenured and tenure-track faculty.