While students use NIU to receive a higher education, faculty use classes as one of many duties they must perform for the university.

After attending lectures of the occasional unenthusiastic professor, a student may question whether or not tenured professors are a good thing.

Working on tenure

English professor Nicole Clifton is one faculty member at NIU who holds a tenured position.

“It isn’t like you can go sit in your ivory tower and do nothing [once you have tenure],” Clifton said. “You are still held accountable.”

Clifton said the role of universities in society is not only to provide higher education to students, but also to conduct research and studies to further the society’s collective academic knowledge.

For this reason, she said, professors require tenure to ensure they can complete long-term research projects, particularly ones that do not allow professors to publish findings right away.

“The most important thing [about tenure] is academic freedom,” Clifton said. “You can work on whatever area of scholarship most interests you, regardless of how controversial it is and how long it will take you to finish.”

Student concerns

Some students are concerned professors with tenure may not be as interested in classes as they are in research.

“It appears some professors with tenure are more concerned with their research than their students,” said David Jonelis, a second year graduate student in economics. “I believe professors should definitely be concerned with their students and their teaching.”

Jonelis also sees the need for professors who hold tenure to be able to continue working on important projects.

“I believe the idea of teachers not being able to lose their job no matter how bad they do is a bad idea, but if you remove it, you won’t be able to compete with other universities,” Jonelis said. “Research brings money and prestige to the university.”

How to receive tenure

To receive tenure, a member of NIU’s English faculty must serve for six years and demonstrate accomplishments in the three areas of teaching, scholarly research and community outreach, Clifton said. After a faculty member passes a review of people in the department, they are evaluated again at the college level and finally at the level of the provost’s office.

Deborah DeRosa, an English faculty member, will face her tenure evaluation this year.

“I think the most difficult [area of evaluation] is always scholarship,” DeRosa said. “One slaves over an article for months or a book for years and then you are at the mercy of a journal or press for their verdict.”

Ivan Legg, executive vice president and provost, serves on the board that approves teachers for tenure.

Tenure requirements vary from department to department, with departments more concerned with undergraduate work emphasizing more a professor’s teaching ability and departments with more graduate work emphasizing research accomplishments, Legg said.

Legg said there are two functions of making faculty do research.

First, to make new academic discoveries and second, to instill into professors enthusiasm for the field of study they teach in their classrooms.

“If [professors] are not doing scholarly work, they become dead teachers,” Legg said. “What we do with tenure is determine the future of the university.”