We recognize that the pandemic has significantly impacted the scholarship, teaching and service of faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences starting in Spring 2020 and will likely do so throughout the 2020-21 academic year. Faculty have responded with great effort, resilience, and creativity during this period. Nonetheless, “business-asusual” was not possible, a situation that should be acknowledged in the faculty promotion process.
The SCU Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC) echoes and elaborates on this sentiment, writing in an October 9, 2020 letter that the pandemic challenges faculty in the following ways:
- Uneven impacts of the pandemic on disciplines across the university, including the opacity of those differences to colleagues outside of those fields,
- Heavy burden on faculty who have child-care or other family responsibilities,
- The challenges of maintaining the University’s high standards of scholarly excellence while recognizing the limits of what is possible currently and in the foreseeable future including:
- The likely inadequacy of internal or external grants to support research,
- The restrictions on physical research including closed labs, performance venues, field sites, libraries, etc.,
- The long term financial effects of delaying the tenure clock and the undesirability of that extension for many faculty.
In its communication from October 22, 2020, the Provost’s Office wrote in support of the
...recommendation of FAC to ask departments to create a rider to scholarship standards explaining the impact of the pandemic on scholarship in their discipline and/or subdisciplines, with special attention to site-specific research requiring access to labs, fieldwork, studios, performance venues, museums or other exhibit spaces, physical archives, and travel. These riders would be reviewed and approved at the levels of the dean and the Provost; the Provost’s Office would include them in a repository of scholarship standards for inclusion in all future tenure and promotion cases that cover pandemic quarters.
After consultation with department chairs and program directors, we share the following templates for pandemic riders that can be incorporated into discipline-specific standards for scholarship. Programs and department faculty can choose a template and adapt it for their particular disciplines. Some programs and departments are interdisciplinary and may want to draw from a number of these templates.
STEM
Like many universities, SCU has provided a one-year tenure clock extension option for all TT faculty due to COVID-19. While this is one step toward accommodation, we note several specific challenges experienced by faculty in sciences, mathematics, and computer science.
- Travel to conduct field work, give talks, present at conferences (where feedback can be received and collaborations can be started), and work with collaborators has been difficult if not impossible and remains so.
- Access to on-campus and off-campus labs has been restricted or prohibited.
- Access to study populations and research participants has been restricted or prohibited.
- Student researchers in labs have been restricted (in time and number) or prohibited.
- Social-distancing requirements have hindered the training of new research students.
- Choice of research projects undertaken during this time has often been based on what can be done most safely in light of the restrictions, which won't necessarily align with what would be most high-impact/timely within the field.
- Reduction of lab productivity has resulted not only in delays in the completion of projects but in obtaining data to be included in proposals for external funding, potentially having long-term effects on research programs.
- Reduction of time for scholarship due to the demands of teaching online.
- Publishing pipelines have slowed: not only do editors have reduced budgets and more responsibilities; they also have a reduced pool of reviewers to draw from because teaching and caregiving responsibilities demand more time than ever before.
Comments on above:
Amelia: At our faculty meeting today, someone made the suggestion that we could have a shared description of local regulations in place during this period to calibrate nationally/internationally. Compared to colleagues at many other institutions, Santa Clara county seems to have imposed more strict rules and for longer. Even as a basic example, there are very few students in school even part-time here, which is not the case in many (most?) other parts of the country.
David: This is a great point, creating a historical record to give context to future reviewers (especially external letter writers is critical)
Social Sciences (Version 1)
Like many universities, SCU has provided a one-year tenure clock extension option for all TT faculty. While this is one step toward accommodation, we note several challenges experienced by social scientists. Some social scientists at SCU conduct fieldwork and/or interviews as part of their scholarly trajectory (including participatory action research); some conduct experiments with human subjects on- and off-campus; some use quantitative data and surveys; still others draw deeply on archival sources or museum collections.
The resumption of fieldwork, experiments and interviews will require time due to travel restrictions, travel risk, IRB/ACUC resubmissions, changes at field sites, planning for personal and local (humans living at/near the field) site virus protection, planning for environmental protection (inter-species transmission), and other factors related to the virus.
We recognize that most social science faculty must explore other ways to contribute to the discipline and that this will take considerable time.
Social Sciences (Version 2)
Like many universities, SCU has provided a one-year tenure clock extension option for all TT faculty due to COVID-19. While this is one step toward accommodation, we note several specific challenges experienced by faculty in the social sciences.
- Travel to conduct field work, give talks, present at conferences (where feedback can be received and collaborations can be started), and work with collaborators has been difficult if not impossible and remains so.
- Access to on-campus and off-campus labs, archives, and collections has been restricted or prohibited.
- Access to study populations and research participants has been restricted or prohibited.
- Student researchers in labs have been restricted (in time and number) or prohibited.
- Social-distancing requirements have hindered the training of new research students.
- Choice of research projects undertaken during this time has often been based on what can be done most safely in light of the restrictions, which won't necessarily align with what would be most high-impact/timely within the field.
- Reduction of productivity has resulted not only in delays in the completion of projects but in obtaining data to be included in proposals for external funding, potentially having long-term effects on research programs.
- Reduction of time for scholarship due to the demands of teaching online.
- Reduction of time for scholarship due to additional administrative duties during the pandemic and the challenges associated with remote and available administrative support due to the current hiring freeze and other budgetary constraints.
- Publishing pipelines have slowed: not only do editors have reduced budgets and more responsibilities; they also have a reduced pool of reviewers to draw from because teaching and caregiving responsibilities demand more time than ever before.
We recognize that most social science faculty must explore other ways to contribute to the discipline and that this will take considerable time.
Arts
Like many universities, SCU has provided a one-year tenure clock extension option for all TT faculty. While this is one step toward accommodation, we note several specific challenges experienced by faculty in the arts. Many arts faculty at SCU need access to studios, performance venues, museums or other exhibit spaces, and to collaborate with other artists, as part of their trajectory in creative activity. Many creative projects were cancelled and cannot be restarted, forcing faculty to pivot to new projects which could take years to develop. Artist residencies have been cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic. The shelter in place orders meant that some faculty effectively were unable to work during their sabbaticals.
The resumption of creative activity will require time due to travel restrictions, travel risk, lost financing, and other factors related to the virus. Venues for exhibitions (galleries, museums, arts fairs, etc.) have been closing and it is likely that it will take some years for the number of available venues to reach pre-pandemic levels. Organizations that host and/orfund artist residencies are struggling financially and may offer residencies reduced in number and scope when or if they start back up.
We recognize that most faculty in the arts must explore other ways to contribute to the discipline and that this will take considerable time.
Humanities
Like many universities, SCU has provided a one-year tenure clock extension option for all TT faculty. While this is an important accommodation, we note several specific challenges faculty in the humanities experience. For example, fieldwork and archival research will be curtailed if not impossible. Humanities faculty at SCU rely on travel to archives) or to locations for fieldwork (which may be overseas). Furthermore, giving talks and presenting work at conferences allows faculty to receive peer feedback and to make connections with potential collaborators, publishers, and/or funders. Although some conferences have transitioned to presentations via audio-visual platforms, many venues for scholarly interaction and scholarly work will remain inaccessible due to the pandemic. An additional obstacle is the fact that many archives, museums, and other research sites have laid off staff, which will result in lowered availability to scholars when these sites re-open. Publishing pipelines have slowed: not only do editors have reduced budgets and more responsibilities; they also have a reduced pool of reviewers to draw from because teaching and caregiving responsibilities demand more time than ever before. The resumption of such research will require time due to travel restrictions, travel risk, reduced funding from departments and granting agencies, and other factors related to the virus. Funding that is administered by research institutions is also likely to be reduced compared to pre-pandemic levels. We recognize that many faculty in the humanities are having to explore other ways to contribute to the discipline and that this will take some time.