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[longtimeliterary]

Hi All,

No one does their job perfectly.  We're all human; we all make mistakes and errors from time to time.  I am wondering if your campus has some type of "margin of error" practice, policy or, at least, understanding.  (Sort of like the employment equiavalent of "normal wear and tear" clause in an apartment lease.)

I am posting this question because there is an untenured faculty member in my dept whom we all agree our chair is trying to get fired.... determined to get fired.... is dead-set on firing. 

This untenured faculty member is excellent; the issue is a personality conflict (on behalf of the chair, not the untenured colleague), and not one that is actually related to job performance.  But, of course, no one is perfect--at some point, sometime, somewhere, somehow, this colleague is going to make a mistake:  large or small, real or imagined.

Is this just the way "the world works" or "the cookie crumbles" --so to speak. Or, is there some type of employment policy or AAUP guideline (or something... I don't know) that prevents campuses from holding an employee, essentially, to the standard of perfection. 

Thanks in advance.

[seniorscholar]

Assuming that you're at a real college or university, and this faculty member is on tenure track or on a renewable contract, there is unlikely to be a "margin of error" clause in the contract, but there is almost certainly an actual contract, and probably also a faculty handbook, with various rules and procedures: the process for renewal, the factors to be considered, the appeals possible, and so forth. Reading and understanding the process, and then talking to some senior faculty in your own department about the local customs, would be much more fruitful than speculating on a public forum about the possibility of a "margin of error" policy on some other campus of unknown reputation, quality, and governance structure.

[systeme_d_]

I agree with Seniorscholar here that you seem to be posing the wrong question.

If you want to help this untenured faculty member, then get together with other senior faculty in the department and short-circuit the chair's malevolent intentions.  There are lots of ways to do this, and the path you choose will depend upon the way your department, college, and university operate. 

At my place, a confidential meeting between senior faculty members and a sympathetic dean would be a good move, but maybe not at yours. 

The first thing you might do is document any indication that the chair holds this person to a standard different than others.   In other words, how do you know that the chair has it out for this person?  Ask each senior faculty member in your department to answer that question, and collect and keep records of the pattern of discrimination that emerges from those answers.   That's the kind of thing one can then bring to a dean.

[lizzy]

What SeniorScholar and Systeme said.

Also--is your colleague past the 3 year review? If not, then documenting the chair's behavior is key. If the dean option won't work for you, what about an omsbudperson? Is your place union?

If your junior colleague is past the three year review, I'd be helping him/her find and carefully review whatever written standards for tenure exist at your place. Beside his/her contract, s/he should be looking for any/all stated policies on tenure. At my place, at least, the chair alone can't sink a tenure bid.

[prytania3]

At my college, they can fire you the first year for a bad hair day. It gets harder every year thereafter, but the first year? They can pretty much axe you for anything.

[ruralguy]

I would agree with the vast majority of whats said in the previous posts.

I'd say that the "process" at most schools I know of usually allows for some errors intially, but then is increasingly less tolerant (somewhat opposite of Prytania's school). Chairs and deans and T&P committees are usually given a lot of leeway in deciding what constitutes "good evaluations" or "enough scholarship that counts", etc. This is one of the reasons why most school's have many people in on the process--so that one person's arbitrary definitions don't rule the day.

That being said, most Deans (and in some cases, Chairs) have ability to fire people for cause if they do something egregiously bad. But even then, there's a process that has to be followed.

I go along with the idea of the senior faculty powow.