photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

The University of Kansas campus is pictured in this aerial photo from September 2023.

Tenured professors at KU and other public universities in Kansas may soon be facing a system of two strikes and you’re out, under a proposal up for approval this week by the Kansas Board of Regents.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Regents will consider a new statewide policy that says any faculty member — including those who have tenure protection — “will be dismissed” if they receive two consecutive “unsatisfactory” annual reviews from their department chair or division head.

The state’s current policy doesn’t have such language, and technically does not require that faculty members undergo an annual review, although the policy acknowledges such reviews may occur. The new policy requires an annual review for every faculty member, and states that the review must be tied to a written work plan that states how many classes professors will teach, how much time they will spend on research and service projects and also includes other metrics.

The two-strikes provision is one of several changes to the state’s tenure policy and faculty workload policy that the Regents began reviewing last month. As the Journal-World reported, the dismissal provisions were part of that draft language considered last month, but it was unclear how much those provisions would apply to tenured faculty members because the policy also included additional protections for professors who have obtained the rank of tenure. Specifically, the proposed policy stated that a tenured faculty member could be terminated “only for adequate cause.”

However, the proposed policy didn’t define adequate cause, which raised red flags with some Regents last month.

“That’s kind of vague, to the say the least,” Regent Pamela Ammar said of the adequate cause phrase during November’s Regents meeting.

The proposed policy that Regents will consider on Wednesday now has a definition of adequate cause: “Serious misconduct or performance issues that significantly impact the employment relationship.” The policy further states that such performance issues “should be documented and addressed in the process of annual review or post-tenure review, as may be appropriate.”

The topic of tenure — an academic rank conferred upon faculty members who meet a certain level of scholarship — has become a hot political topic in many states as higher education systems have faced greater scrutiny. In Kansas, legislators have questioned whether faculty members are required to do enough teaching at universities, and also have questioned whether it has become too difficult to fire poor-performing professors.

The Regents, which oversee the University of Kansas and the state’s other public universities, decided in July to study the state’s tenure system amid the concerns being expressed by lawmakers. The Regents got their first look at the proposed policy at their November meeting, and are scheduled to vote on the policy at Wednesday’s 1:30 p.m. meeting in Topeka.

KU Chancellor Douglas Girod told Regents last month that the proposed changes might make Kansas one of the tougher states for university professors to maintain their tenure status.

“If the proposed changes were implemented, this would be one of the most robust processes in the country,” Girod told the Regents in November.

Academic leaders in Kansas and elsewhere have said changes to the tenure system must be very thoughtful because anything that would weaken tenure protections or make the rank extremely difficult to obtain or keep would negatively impact the ability of the state’s universities to attract top professors. But Regents also have noted that if they do not make changes to the state’s tenure policy, they suspect that the Kansas Legislature will pass a law to make its own changes to the tenure system.

The provision for an annual review and dismissal after two consecutive poor reviews is one of several changes the Regents will consider. Others include:

• Professors who have received tenure would be required to undergo an extensive “post-tenure” review by a committee every five years, instead of the current standard of every seven years. The policy states the review committee also must include at least five individuals, and two of them must be from outside the home department of the faculty member under review. For example, an engineering professor could not have a review panel comprised entirely of individuals from the engineering school.

• Every faculty member — whether they have tenure or not — will have a written work plan that includes assigned teaching loads. The proposed policy stops short of mandating a minimum number of hours a professor much teach, but it does create an expectation. The policy states faculty members at research universities — such as KU, Kansas State and Wichita State — should typically teach six to nine credit hours per semester. In most instances, that equates to two to three classes per semester. At regional universities — which include Emporia State, Fort Hays State and Pittsburg State — faculty members should typically teach 12 hours, or the equivalent of four classes, per semester.

The policy does provide exceptions for clinical and research faculty, and also for librarians. Otherwise, the policy says “all faculty should have assigned teaching loads,” but also states that “variations in teaching loads among individuals within departments, schools or colleges are acceptable if approved by the provost.” That language seemingly would remove the ability of deans to unilaterally approve lighter teaching loads for faculty members.

• When not performing teaching duties, faculty members are expected to undertake research and service projects. At research universities, faculty members are expected to spend 35% to 45% of their time on research activities and 5% to 20% of their time on service projects. At regional universities, the breakdowns are proposed to be 15% to 30% for research and 5% to 20% for service. The policy defines service as “efforts that strengthen the university or discipline’s scholarly community, enhance the quality of life or society, or support the overall well-being of the institution, professional and academic societies, the community, the state, the nation or the international community.”

• The proposed policy allows for exceptions to be made to the workload breakdown for faculty members who have administrative duties, such as serving as a department chair, program director or center director.

• The policy will create a new report that each university must create and submit to the Kansas Board of Regents every two years. The “faculty workload report” will provide data on the percentage of all classes that are taught by tenured faculty members, and will include details going all the way down to how many class sections are taught by tenured faculty members.

The policy states that the report, in addition to being presented to the Board of Regents, will be “shared widely with legislators and other constituents.”