CHAPTER 3: RECRUITMENT, APPOINTMENT, REASSIGNMENT, and RESIGNATION

SECTION 1 - RECRUITMENT, SELECTION, AND APPOINTMENT

(To see who has authority to approve changes to this section, please see the Approval of Changes page).

UW-Stevens Point Human Resources is responsible to ensure recruitment of faculty and staff and facilitate recruitment and hiring of highly qualified employees in a manner that is fair, efficient, and effective. The office will apply best practices and legal requirements in accordance with the University of Wisconsin Administrative Recruitment Policies (1275 (formerly TC 1) to protect the University’s fiscal and people resources and present the University positively to potential and actual applicants. As an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity employer, recruitments should provide for equal opportunity and seek diverse pools of applicants. Above all, recruitments should be effective in recruiting highly qualified individuals with the requisite skills, expertise, and commitment to become outstanding scholars, teachers, colleagues, and citizens in the University community.

CONVERSIONS FROM RANK OF INSTRUCTIONAL ACADEMIC STAFF TO RANK OF FACULTY AT UW-STEVENS POINT

Policy Background

UWS 1.04 Faculty.

“Faculty” means persons who hold the rank of professor, associate professor, assistant professor, or instructor in an academic department or its functional equivalent in an institution. The appointment of a member of the academic staff may be converted to a faculty appointment in accordance with s. UWS 3.01 (1) (c).

UWS 3.01 Types of appointments.

In accordance with s. 36.05 (8), Stats., academic staff appointments may be converted to faculty appointments by the action of the board upon the recommendation of the appropriate faculty body and the chancellor of an institution. Such faculty appointees shall enjoy all the rights and privileges of faculty.

Conversion Process

The primary mechanism for filling a tenure-track faculty position is through a national search process, which ensures the broadest diversity of qualified candidates in the applicant pool. However, conversion from instructional academic staff to tenure-track faculty is possible in special circumstances, including hiring in fields for which applicant pools have typically contained an insufficient number of qualified candidates, increasing diversity in a department, or other pressing programmatic needs where a national search is unlikely to yield sufficient qualified candidates.

1. The academic department initiates the request for instructional academic staff to be converted to ranked faculty. The chair prepares a document outlining the rationale and documents the support of the department.

2. For an instructional academic staff person to be converted to ranked faculty, the individual must have been hired through a national search using the university-required recruitment and hiring process, including the department’s review of qualifications. This will be verified by the UW-Stevens Point Office of Human Resources and Affirmative Action.

3. A proposed change from the rank of instructional academic staff to the rank of faculty requires a positive recommendation from all levels of faculty governance that typically provide input on a tenure recommendation, and approval by the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, the Chancellor or designee, and the Board of Regents in accordance with UWS 3.01 (1)(c).

4. Credit toward tenure upon conversion, or obtainment of early tenure, may be considered by the appropriate committees and governance groups, and should be part of the original recommendation for conversion.