Story updated on May 9, 8:01 p.m.

The San Jose State Professional Standards Committee, which is responsible for all faculty affairs, presented a report to the SJSU Academic Senate on April 20 that offers 15 recommendations to improve the Retention, Tenure and Promotion process. 

According to the report, “In 2018-2019, five women of color were denied tenure or promotion and two other women of color received additional probation—resulting in seven negative decisions for women of color.”

They alleged the Retention, Tenure and Promotion policy was unfair and lacked reasoning for not advancing them to the next step in their tenure process, according to a Nov. 11 email sent to the Spartan Daily from Christian Jochim, the now retired SJSU Faculty Association Chair.

“I think the Academic Senate professional standard committee report on the RTP process last year could not have been more thorough,” said Sang Kil, justice studies professor and co-chair of the Anti-racist, Social Justice Transformation, a social justice organization. “It was a near perfect read from start to finish for me.”

Kil was one of seven women of color who, out of nine faculty members, were either denied tenure, promotion or received additional probation, or time needed to make the decision to run for tenure. 

She, along with the other nine faculty members, filed seven union grievances through the California Faculty Association alleging “elements of unfairness in the RTP process, including inappropriate reasons (or lack of reasons) in the President’s decision letters,” according to Jochim’s email.

The Academic Senate approved the final draft of the report with a 42-0 vote and three members abstaining during the senate meeting. 

“[The report] took our concerns very seriously and treated these seven women of color with dignity and respect we deserve, but unfortunately did not experience with the RTP process,” Kil said to the Spartan Daily over the phone. “They did the data and they did the research to back up the fact that serious injustice happened with the RTP process.”

The data and research in the SJSU Professional Standards Committee report analyzed the overall tenure and promotion rates, as well these rates categorized by racial, ethnicity and gender.

Some data revealed denial rates for promotion to professors doubling and higher negative rates for women and people of color. 

According to the report, “In past years, the rates for tenure and promotion have never been published.”

Faculty affairs began collecting this data in the Fall 2019 semester and the report said SJSU should continue to do this research for a more transparent Retention, Tenure and Promotion process.

“We could only tell the Professional Standards Committee, our anecdotal and our personal experiences with a screwed up RTP process,” Kil said. 

But Kenneth Peter, chair of the Professional Standards Committee, said over Zoom that the report goes further than just the diversity aspect.

“The report was about a lot more than particular grievances, or particular cases. This is what the professional standards committee normally does,” Peter said. “There are always problems.”

He said his committee normally does yearly reviews of the Retention, Tenure and Promotion policy to see what can be improved.

Peter said faculty members who raised concerns told the committee to look carefully at ways to support faculty of color with two of the report’s recommendations, which are to study retention and advancement for SJSU faculty of color and understand the needs of faculty of color who need help during the RTP process.

But he also said things such as the Student Opinion Teaching Evaluations, or SOTEs, are another example of what needed to be improved because they are evaluated online and students are really busy so there’s no real accountability for students to do the surveys.

“The use of these student opinion surveys has always been controversial,” Peter said.

Kil was recently not recommended for promotion from the university Retention, Tenure and Promotion committee because of her SOTEs, according to her March 26 full professor review. She said she was unjustly denied for poor reviews even though she said her “SOTEs aren’t bad.”

She said the college Retention, Tenure and Promotion and the university Retention, Tenure and Promotion committees “seem to not be in compliance with campus policy and did not evaluate my dossier holistically, much like last year.”

“What the Professional Standards Committee report says and makes very clear is that by only relying on SOTEs to evaluate someone’s dossier in regard to teaching is a violation of the university policies,” Kil said.

She said that the problem with SOTEs is the low response rates. 

“The level of returns for students to answer SOTE’s is really rather low for social scientific surveys and so then that erodes the outcome . . . When you don’t reach a certain percentage of respondents,” Kil said.

Peter said this is an issue because over the last few years, less students are filling out the surveys. The policy report states SJSU went from around an 85% response rate at one point, down to almost 50%.

“That undermines the credibility of the instrument. And so if we want the student voice to be taken seriously,” he said. “We need to get that response rate higher.”

Peter said the credibility toward evaluating professors should improve if the university focuses on enhancing the response rate as the report recommends.

“There are some faculty who believe that the whole idea of doing an instrument like this would be unfair. I don’t believe that,” he said. “I think that we need to have the student voice represented. But in order to have that voice be regarded as an effective and fair voice, then the survey needs to be credible.”

Other recommendations in the policy report include improving Retention, Tenure and Promotion timeline and process training for faculty members as well as improving evaluation letters and electronic dossiers used to evaluate professors.

Peter said that after meeting with Vincent Del Casino Jr. SJSU provost and vice president of academic affairs, about half of the recommendations already have been or are being implemented. 

“I was pleased to read the report from the Professional Standards Committee, which has been looking at RTP policy throughout the year. We are already tackling some points raised in the report, and continue to consult about others,” Del Casino stated in an email to the Daily. “It is important to note that there are other concerns that did not make that report but are equally important.” 

He said he is looking forward to a stronger Retention, Tenure and Promotion system that sets clear expectations for faculty members.

But one of the things Del Casino presented to Peters during the April 20 Academic Senate meeting was the idea of making the document a “living document” that can be edited to address other concerns regarding the Retention, Tenure and Promotion process.

The idea was quickly shut down by Peter and the rest of the senate on the premise that the document served as a summary of all of the concerns that various faculty have expressed to the Professional Standards Committee.

“One of my jobs as a faculty leader is to make sure that the faculty who have come to me with concerns, that they are heard.” Peter said. “If there were no reports that were adopted, then there would be no evidence that their concerns have been heard.”

Kil echoed that statement and said the report is a brave step in the right direction and the Academic Senate did the right thing in pushing back the idea of making the document editable.

“This document needs to be frozen in time as a testament to what happened with this RTP process,” Kil said. “If it became a living document and editable in the future, then our struggles would have been edited out.”