University of New Mexico This proposal studies the importance of the tenure system in engineering in institutions of higher education. The tenure system distinguishes the academy from other forms of professional work. However, the rapid reduction of tenure-track positions and the rise of part-time and non-tenure track positions has reduced the importance of the tenure system. Most importantly, the tenure system has become a controversial subject that passionately divides scholars between those who argue for maintaining the system and those who argue for eliminating it. The proposal focuses on engineering because it makes an interesting case study of the technical system and human values. This is primarily a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 15+ subjects. This sample includes 10-12 engineering faculty who are tenured and on tenure-track, female and minority faculty, and faculty who are in their terminal year from one public university and one private university. The sample of tenured and on tenure-track faculty will be drawn randomly where as the sample of female and minority faculty and the faculty in their terminal year will be selected via snowball sampling method. Intellectual Merit Engineering is one of the best disciplines in which to illuminate the underlying roles of the tenure system that go beyond the traditional justification of academic freedom. Engineering, as a technical field, is unlikely to investigate those problems that result in deep-rooted prejudice and intense emotional reaction for which tenure has been justified. Yet engineering design is a decision-making process in which technical knowledge is applied to convert resources into a socially required product. Engineering design implies some understanding of the structure of society, social organizations, work environment, peoples safety, and protection of the environment. Furthermore, engineering deals with technologies that have profoundly transformed society since World War II. Most importantly, engineering faculty increasingly collaborate with industry which undermines the traditional notion of academic autonomy. In other words, engineering is not really value neutral as proclaimed. An investigation into whether engineering faculty involved in social and political questions relevant to the university face challenges during the tenure process, whether the engineering faculty with industry s links have a competitive edge in securing tenure, and whether women and minorities face additional hardship in tenure promotion in engineering, will show the underlying relationship between technical and social systems. Broader Impact This is a pilot study; findings from this study will result in a full proposal to the NSF on August 1, 2006. In probing the importance of tenure to academic personnel, it is likely to illuminate structures of status and opportunity in academia. It will also show the ways in which the supposed political neutrality of engineering is constructed despite patently social and political views held by engineering faculty. It will provide data for social scientists concerned with social equity. This project also has great potential to contribute to undergraduate teaching; the findings can be incorporated in future teaching. It is especially important because engineering students are in great need of understanding the social and political dimensions of their own curricular and disciplinary worlds.
