The faculty that sign below would like to express their concerns with two items related to the new Teaching Professor Tracks at Rice University.
1. We cannot support policy 201 if it does not increase the number of years for contracts issued to Assistant, Associate, and Full Teaching Professors. As it stands, Assistant Teaching Professors would be afforded 2-3 year contracts which is the same length as Lecturers. Contract length needs to be modified to reflect the professionalization of the teaching track and to distinguish it from the lectureship.
2. We would like to request a commitment from Rice Administrators and Central Office for increases in starting salaries for the new tracks and standard salary increases with each promotion within the new track. We would like to follow the practice established for Tenure Track faculty which outlines a specific percentage of salary increase for each promotion.
If the workload and responsibilities is increased within the new teaching tracks but contract length and compensation are not, we deem these titles as solely symbolic. We fully support the creation of the new teaching tracks but would like these to be more than titles and include longer contracts and better pay.
