Whether you prefer to call RPI an institute or a university, there’s little question that it should be a collegial atmosphere. With that in mind, we find the trustees’ recent stance regarding the definition of faculty to be rather disturbing. The Board’s rejection of the Faculty Senate’s recommendations was terrible from a communication and relational standpoint, truly an example of the great disconnect between the two bodies.
One of the cited reasons for the Board’s decision to recognize only tenure-track professors as “faculty of Rensselaer” was to reinforce the ultimate goals and values of the Institute as an academic body. In fact, the change seems to do just the opposite. In many cases, the clinical professors are the greatest asset to Rensselaer as a scholarly institution; how many of us have had that fantastic calculus professor, or perhaps a wonderful creative writing instructor—people who may not have tenure, but who are making at least as great an addition to education here?
We can also look at the librarians and archivists; perhaps they aren’t the most utilized resources at RPI, but they too play a critical role in maintaining our base of knowledge. Without them to collect and organize our history and the other resources available to the region, we could not learn from it and our growth as an Institute would be stunted. Then there are the research faculty; are we saying that they are not making a sufficiently significant contribution to learning to warrant the attention of the Board?
Clearly, all these people do seriously enhance the wealth of scholarship at Rensselaer. They deserve a say in the policies and interactions that involve the Board of Trustees, and in fact, we would be silly to ignore their voice in such matters. There are times that these non-tenured employees of the Institute are at least as valuable as their tenured counterparts, and thus they should be recognized for the many services they provide students with in their quest for acquiring knowledge.
