The Chronicle

Issue date: 1/25/08 Section: News
Last update: 1/25/08 at 6:52 AM EST

Media Credit: Glen Gutterson John Aldrich, co-director of the Social Science Research Institute, said allowing the SSRI to hire its own faculty will make the center more flexible.

The Social Science Research Institute can now hire research faculty itself instead of relying on academic departments to fulfill its faculty needs.

Faculty and administrators discussed changes to the hiring policy for SSRI and affiliated centers at the Academic Council's first meeting of 2008 Thursday.

SSRI Co-director John Aldrich said giving SSRI flexibility in hiring its own faculty will allow it to expand its services and research.

The institute is an interdisciplinary institute that conducts social science research to "make the translation between theory and practice," according to its Web site.

"A reason we might be interested in the possibility of easily hiring a regular rank, non-tenure track faculty member is because we are beginning to offer certificate programs and other kinds of teaching opportunities," Aldrich said.

Before the changes, SSRI reached out to academic departments to fulfill teaching needs. But Aldrich said the institute needs faculty whose research interests are interdisciplinary and do not fall under a traditional academic department.

He added that flexibility to appoint its own faculty allows SSRI to better align its staff's experience with its research objectives. The proposal also affects SSRI's nine affiliated programs.

"The University institutes and centers are fundamentally interdisciplinary units, and they develop needs or specializations that sometimes don't match very well onto those of departments," Provost Peter Lange said.

He added that departments are often reticent to hire faculty members whose interests fit the interdisciplinary nature of University institutes and centers because those hires count against departmental faculty allocations.

"It creates a flexibility without impinging on the right of departments to determine who has regular rank, tenure track or tenure credentials in the institution," Lange said.

Council members raised concerns that bringing in regular rank, non-tenure track faculty members who teach courses will displace tenured and tenure-track faculty from the classroom.

As non-tenure track faculty, the new appointments will be reviewed periodically. Some members said this allows Duke to replace tenure-track faculty because the University is less committed to the careers of regular rank, non-tenure track faculty members.

"The instructional needs are in fact generated by the institutions themselves," Lange said. "There's no displacement because if [the institutions] can't [teach the courses], it just means the instructional need won't get met."

The new policy was approved by unanimous voice vote.



In other business:

Dan Rittschof, director of graduate studies in marine sciences and an associate professor of zoology, also presented a proposal to create a Ph.D. program in marine science and conservation. The council will vote on the proposal in its February meeting.

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