A faculty committee has recommended that assistant professors on the tenure track receive an optional additional year "to get their portfolios together" before coming up for tenure review, according to the unanimous report submitted to University Provost Marty Krauss on Nov. 10.Krauss charged the task force in late September with reviewing the length of the tenure clock, the years during which a professor focuses on producing publications and research before being considered for tenure by the department chair, appropriate dean and provost.

Under the current system, professors first come up for review after three years of teaching. If their contracts are renewed, they come up for review again in the sixth year, and are then considered for tenure. The committee recommended that consideration for tenure instead occur during junior professors' seventh years. Krauss said that some professors in the humanities and sciences are being "disadvantaged by the current length of the clock."

Committee chair Prof. Michael Rosbash (BIO) said the group compared Brandeis with 12 similar universities, including the University of Washington in St. Louis, Brown University, the University of Virginia and Princeton University, and found that four have the same policy and the other eight have a longer clock. "We're within the norm but on the low side," Rosbash said.

Rosbash said that the committee could not find a downside to a "modest" increase in the tenure clock. "We think it's to the benefit of the junior faculty," he said. The extra year does not affect tenured faculty and should not raise tenure review standards, he said. "I don't think it'll affect whether people get or don't get tenure, but it will help us make better decisions in difficult cases," Rosbash said.

The charge also included a review of the current tenure clock policy in relation to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which gives professors time off with pay in the case of a new baby, family illness or emergency. The committee recommended lengthening the extension that a tenure track professor receives under the FMLA from a semester to one year.

Tenure track Assistant Prof. Donald Katz (PSYC), who is in his fourth year at Brandeis and under the current system will apply for tenure during the summer of 2007, said the tenure clock is ready for changes.

"In the current environment funding is hard to get, many fields are flooded with new scholars, more and more scholarship is required for tenure ... the age-old tenure process has begun to seem awfully unrealistic," Katz wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

Tenured Prof. Gary Jefferson (ECON), who heard Rosbash's presentation of the committee's recommendations at last Thursday's faculty meeting, said, he expects junior faculty to benefit from an additional year of work. He also said he "very much support[s]" the FMLA extension, though tenured professors, too, might benefit from extra time to care for children.

Katz mentioned that Brandeis should consider "that every discipline is different from every other one," and that "it's possible that the tenure clock that's best for English scholars may not be the same as the one that's best for Psychology."

The committee did not recommend different tenure rules for different departments, Rosbash said. "That would be a drastic change for Brandeis," Krauss said.

The committee is against different tenure timelines for different departments because it is "unfair and impractical," Rosbash said during Thursday's presentation.

The faculty initiated the committee because some departments, including Rosbash's own biology department, noticed that professors were coming up for tenure before they were ready and before they had done enough research.

It can take up to four years to apply for and receive a research grant, and only around 15 to 20 percent of requested grants are awarded nationwide, Rosbash said.

A professor in the English department expressed concern at the meeting that a longer tenure clock would affect his department's strategy to grant early tenure as a recruitment tool. "People are attracted to the fact that [we] offer tenure faster," he said.

Krauss said the whole faculty, the faculty senate and various standing committees will discuss the recommendations before passing them. If the recommendations pass, the next step would be discussing how to implement them.

Students, Rosbash said, are usually unaware of the issue of faculty tenure, until "a great teacher whose scholarship is a little lacking, according to the tenure committee" does not receive tenure.

An extra year, he said, should help that great teacher get "his portfolio up to snuff.