COVID-19 Updates to Tenure Clock - Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President

April 4, 2020

Dear tenure-stream faculty,

As the pandemic continues, I am grateful to each of you for the tremendous efforts you have put into converting our courses and programs to remote modality, continuing research and scholarship, and ensuring clinical and service work. I recognize that your work has been affected by, among other things, the revamped teaching, learning and working formats; closed research laboratories and clinics; restricted travel; canceled conferences, meetings and events; and shuttered libraries and archives. I am also aware that your family life is likely to have been disrupted as well. While I hope we will be able to return to normal soon, I realize that the effects will resonate even after the pandemic is under control and our campuses reopen.

Given these challenges, as an emergency measure under the exceptional circumstances related to the current pandemic, I am happy to announce that the university will be granting tenure track faculty an automatic Covid-19 one-year extension of the probationary period. The broad details of this extension are as follows:

Tenure-track faculty will automatically receive a one-year extension totheir tenure clocks with the exception of anyone whose case is already out for evaluation by external reviewers, is later in the evaluation process, or is currently in a terminal-year appointment.
Faculty members may opt out of this automatic extension and elect tofollow their original schedule. Whether faculty opt out of or accept the tenure clock extension, they may elect to come up early for tenure as available pursuant to their respective school’s process in any event.
This one-year extension will not be counted toward any current limit on the number of years faculty members may defer their tenure decision for other reasons.

Your dean will be sending you more information soon about how this extension will work within the processes already established in your school.

While I believe this measure will be essential to ease the anxiety of our tenure-stream assistant professors in this challenging time, we are also committed to supporting every one of you in many different ways. In particular, I am working with our school deans, Vice Provost Kevin Dunn, Vice Provost for Research Caroline Genco, and the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) on further strengthening our support networks and mentoring programs that make Tufts such a strong, collaborative, and unique community.

With warm regards and wishing health and safety to you and your loved ones,

Nadine Aubry
Provost and Senior Vice President