On March 5, the Bellevue College Board of Trustees of the Community College 8th District held a meeting discussing action items “policy 3655: the use of human participants in research activities,” as well as the tenure committee recommendations.
The first action item discussed was a discussion regarding an update to an existing policy, the use of human participants in research activities. The original policy 3655 was put into action in April of 2009 and was later revised in Sept. of 2012.
The recommended change was to formalize the responsibility within the Office of Effectiveness and Strategic Planning of the director of institutional research assuming the role of IRB Chair.
The board once again agreed to the revisions of policy 3655 and a new revision date was set.
The next action item on the agenda was the vote on tenure candidate recommendations. When a tenure track position becomes available, there is a rigorous hiring process, explained Margaret Harada, arts and humanities dean. “Tenured faculty usually serves as search committee members, who screen applicants from across the country and conduct interviews (faculty are required to go through training before being allowed to serve on such a committee). Once finalists have been recommended by the committee, the VP of instruction interviews them and makes the final decision,” said Harada in an email.
Once a tenure track position is accepted, there is a tenure process of about three to four years. This process consists of forming a tenure subcommittee, which collects information on the tenure candidate that is then submitted to the Tenure Review Committee, made up of tenured faculty, the vice president of instruction and a student representative and then makes recommendations on each candidate to the board of trustees, as explained by Harada.
This year the review committee forwarded eight candidates to the board of trustees to vote on. There are many things that the board looks at when voting on whether or not they would like to grant a tenured position to a recommended candidate. When preparing for a vote like this, “they study the materials for each candidate that are generated in the review process” stated Tom Nielsen, vice president of instruction. “The documentation includes a self-evaluation, peer evaluation, student evaluations, administrator observation and review, and recommendations from a tenure evaluation subcommittee, as well as the tenure review committee itself.”
The board voted on each tenure candidate and granted tenure to all eight recommendations.