The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees approved 32 faculty members for tenure on Wednesday after delaying votes for professors outside of the health-affairs schools since March. The unusual period of inaction — during which no professors from the university’s College of Arts and Sciences had received tenure in over six months — caused anxiety among faculty who said the board’s delay hindered career planning and harmed recruitment.
A university spokesperson said in a statement that university administrators and the Board of Trustees moved the personnel actions forward “given the impact the deferral caused on departments.” He added: “The University will continue to weigh all factors when considering the timing of expenditures given the current fiscal environment.”
A majority of the newly tenured faculty teach in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a few come from the School of Law, School of Education, and School of Information and Library Science.
The approval, conducted via written ballot, comes earlier than expected. The board was not scheduled to meet until the end of July. In a message to deans last week, the university’s interim provost, James W. Dean Jr., wrote that he was “confident that these votes will be taken at the next Board of Trustees’ meeting.”
Beth Moracco, chair of the university’s Faculty Council, said that many faculty members wrote messages to trustees, the interim provost, and the chancellor advocating for the board to take action. “I hope that was part of the reason,” she said. “It’s such a huge relief, especially for the faculty directly impacted.”
It’s still unknown what caused the board to defer these votes. A university spokesperson previously said that the timing of tenure cases is “subject to a number of variables that our Board of Trustees and administration may consider with any recommended appointments.”
Mehdi Shadmehr, an associate professor of public policy, said that the consequences of the board’s inaction will linger even though it’s been corrected. Prospective faculty may worry about the precarity of receiving tenure, he said.
“Tenure is one of the most important events of someone’s career in academia. Messing with that is such a deviation from norms of behavior,” said Shadmehr, who was not impacted by the delayed tenure votes. “I can’t even describe how stressful that would be, and the damage to the reputation of the university is nearly irreparable.”
