Petition and Preamble

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http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/mark-ari-petition-for-tenure-line.html

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Petition

We, the undersigned students, alumni, and parents of the University of North Florida and Faculty, petition President John A. Delaney; Provost; Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Barbara A. Hetrick; as well as Associate Deans A. Samuel Kimball and David Fenner; and English Department Chair Brian Striar.

Please consider promotion of Mark Ari to the tenure line.

Preamble

March 11, 2013

University of North Florida

Dear Faculty, Alumni, Students, Parents, and Friends,

For those who are unaware, Mark Ari is a full-time Senior Lecturer at the University of North Florida, whose contract is renewed on a year-by-year basis. The intent of this petition, as expressed above, is to respectfully request the UNF leadership to consider Mark Ari’s credentials, service, and accomplishments as grounds for a special case promotion to a tenure line in the English Department.

For so many UNF students, Professor Ari is one of a handful of career and life-defining professors. His dedication to his students is unmatched, as is represented by his recently winning an Undergraduate Teaching Award for the third time since he became eligible to receive the award as a full-time instructor in 2006. Professor Ari has deep knowledge of his subject matter, as well as extensive involvement and promotion of his field through publications and editorial duties. Further, he has built a large and active literary community at UNF, a community that brings together students and faculty from across many disciplines and which ties students to UNF even after they graduate.

Professor Ari is a teacher par excellence, with the ability to inspire students to become active participants in their educations and to grow exponentially in their creative and academic writing abilities, all while acquiring the skills and knowledge that will lead them into successful careers after graduation. Professor Ari is an irreplaceable teacher and mentor.

We would like to submit this petition by April 8, 2013 to the Office of the President, The office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the English Department. Please forward this petition broadly to UNF students, alumni, faculty, parents, and other members of the UNF community.

More Information

1. Biography
2. Is Mark Ari tenurable?

1. Biography

Along with UNF students, Mark Ari founded and continues to serve as Editorial Advisor to the literary journal, Fiction Fix; edits EAT, a publisher of digital albums and audio chapbooks which includes the highly regarded EAT Poems series; and directs River House, the University of North Florida’s virtual writer’s house. He publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Among these are two chapbooks: Bloodshot and Blue, a collection of poetry (Stony Brook Free Press) and Deathfoot Ha! (Stroker Press) His novel, The Shoemaker’s Tale (Zephyr Press), received high praise in international trade and popular periodicals like the New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, Na’amat Woman, The Jerusalem Post, the Association of Jewish Libraries, and others.

He is a performing singer-songwriter and has written and performed three one-man shows: Flatbush Serenade (premiered at the Maryland Theater in Hagerstown, MD), Blue Babies (premiered at the Paramount Theater, Wilkes-Barre, PA) and Songs for the Waste Laboratory, (premiered at The Living Theater, NYC).

His paintings have been exhibited in group and solo shows in the United States and abroad, in such venues as Westbeth Gallery (NYC), Broome Street Gallery (NYC), the Southern Vermont Art Center, El Jueves Galleria (Seville, Spain), the Giralda Center (Seville, Spain), and Gallerie La Pantographe (Lyon, France). He has been awarded three fellowships the MacDowell Colony, two from the Ragdale Foundation, and one each from Fundacion Valparaiso and the Ucross Foundation.

He has won three Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Awards and a Distinguished Advisor Award at the University of North Florida, as well as two DRC Professor Empowerment Awards from the UNF Disability Resource Center.

2. Is Mark Ari tenurable?

With an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, Mark Ari holds the terminal degree recommended by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, accepted by the accrediting organization of UNF (the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools), and upheld by departments of the vast majority of colleges and universities across the U.S.


For further information regarding the recommendations of these organizations and schools, as well as the American Association of University Professors’ recommendations on converting contingent faculty appointments to tenure line, see the “Background information."

Background Information

Contents

1. AAUP on Converting Contingent Appointments to Tenure-line
2. The MFA as Terminal Degree
• AWP
• SACS
• MFA and PhD

AAUP on Converting Contingent Appointments to Tenure-line

American Association of University Professors, 2010 committee report on tenure and teaching intensive appointments.

The best practice for institutions of all types is to convert the status of contingent appointments to appointments eligible for tenure with only minor changes in job description. This means that faculty hired contingently with teaching as the major component of their workload will become tenured or tenure eligible primarily on the basis of successful teaching.  (Similarly, faculty serving on contingent appointments with research as the major component of their workload may become tenured or eligible for tenure primarily on the basis of successful research.) In the long run, however, a balance is desirable. Professional development and research activities support strong teaching, and a robust system of shared governance depends upon the participation of all faculty, so even teaching-intensive tenure-eligible positions should include service and appropriate forms of engagement in research or the scholarship of teaching.

In some instances faculty serving on a contingent basis will prefer a major change in their job
description with conversion to tenure eligibility. For example, some faculty in teaching-intensive
positions might prefer to have research as a larger component of their appointments. While the
employer should not impose this major change in job description on the faculty member seeking
tenure eligibility, the AAUP encourages the employer to accommodate the faculty member. However, faculty themselves should not perpetuate the false impression that tenure was invented as a merit badge for research-intensive appointments.

http://www.aaup.org/aaup/comm/rep/teachertenure.htm

The MFA as Terminal Degree

AWP

The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) represents nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers’ conferences and centers. Their mission is to foster literary achievement, advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing. Their document, “Guidelines for Creative Writing Programs and Teachers of Creative Writing,” recommends “that the Master of Fine Arts be considered the appropriate credential for the teacher of creative writing. Holders of this degree may also be prepared to teach literature courses as well as composition and rhetoric.” See this document at https://www.awpwriter.org/library/directors_handbook_guidelines_for_creative_writing_programs_and_teachers_of_creative_writing).

The AWP also states that its position is “that creative writers be given parity with scholars in terms of salary, including senior positions at the top of the salary range, and that the MFA degree be considered the equivalent of the PhD in literature, linguistics, or composition. While the system of part-time or visiting writing faculty is often used to increase the breadth of a program’s offerings, such a system should not exclude writers from access to full-time, tenure-track positions and the possibility of renewal.”

SACS

Traditionally, the MFA degree has been considered the proper terminal degree for tenure-track creative writing position at colleges and universities.  It has been and continues to be accepted as such by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).   Please consider the following guidelines issued by SACS (http://www.sacscoc.org/pdf/081705/faculty%20credentials.pdf) noting particularly the highlighted areas:

Comprehensive Standard 3.7.1 of the Principles of Accreditation reads as follows: The institution employs competent faculty members qualified to accomplish the mission and goals of the institution. When determining acceptable qualifications of its faculty, an institution gives primary consideration to the highest earned degree in the discipline. The institution also considers competence, effectiveness, and capacity, including, as appropriate, undergraduate and graduate degrees, related work experiences in the field, professional licensure and certifications, honors and awards, continuous documented excellence in teaching, or other demonstrated competencies and achievements that contribute to effective teaching and student learning outcomes. For all cases, the institution is responsible for justifying and documenting the qualifications of its faculty. 

When an institution defines faculty qualifications using faculty credentials, institutions should use the following as credential guidelines:  

a. Faculty teaching general education courses at the undergraduate level: doctorate or master’s degree in the teaching discipline or master’s degree with a concentration in the teaching discipline (a minimum of 18 graduate semester hours in the teaching discipline). 

b. Faculty teaching associate degree courses designed for transfer to a baccalaureate degree: doctorate or master’s degree in the teaching discipline or master’s degree with a concentration in the teaching discipline (a minimum of 18 graduate semester hours in the teaching discipline). 

c. Faculty teaching associate degree courses not designed for transfer to the baccalaureate degree: bachelor’s degree in the teaching discipline, or associate’s degree and demonstrated competencies in the teaching discipline. 

d. Faculty teaching baccalaureate courses: doctorate or master’s degree in the teaching discipline or master’s degree with a concentration in the teaching discipline (minimum of 18 graduate semester hours in the teaching discipline).  

e. Faculty teaching graduate and post-baccalaureate course work: earned doctorate/terminal degree in the teaching discipline or a related discipline.  

f. Graduate teaching assistants: master’s in the teaching discipline or 18 graduate semester hours in the teaching discipline, direct supervision by a faculty member experienced in the teaching discipline, regular in-service training, and planned and periodic evaluations.

SACS accepts the MFA as a terminal degree and leaves it to the university programs and departments to determine their needs.

MFA and PhD

It has been suggested by some at UNF that the Master of Fine Arts is no longer the appropriate terminal degree due to the proliferation of Creative Writing PhD programs, making it no longer the case that the MFA is the highest degree in the field.  This is incorrect.  There has been no such proliferation of PhD programs.

While the number of MFA programs has grown over the years, the same is not true for PhD programs.  The following table is extracted from page 3 of the 2011-2012 AWP Report on the Academic Job Market (https://www.awpwriter.org/application/public/pdf/2011-12Report_on_the_Academic_Job_Market.pdf) and shows the growth of both MFA and PhD programs.

(click to enlarge image)

The number of PhD programs has not significantly changed in approximately a decade.  According to Natasha Saje, writing for AWP in 2010, Paisley Rekdal has seen “the bulk of the tenure-track creative writing jobs go to MFAs…” (http://english.unm.edu/resources/documents/preparing-for-the-job-market-as-an-mfa.pdf).

The MFA continues to be considered an appropriate terminal degree for teaching creative writing at every level at universities throughout the country.  For instance, Florida International University states on page 12 of its “Faculty Credentials Manual” that an instructor holding an MFA is considered credentialed appropriately for teaching graduate Creative Writing Courses (http://opir.fiu.edu/effectiveness/Faculty%20Credential%20Manual_120911.pdf).  This is the common approach, and it is considered by SACs to be in full compliance with Comprehensive Standard 3.7.1 e of the Principles of Accreditation.

The AWP job market shows creative writing listings that list either the MFA or PhD as the required credential.  Generally, either degree is acceptable.  Sometimes the PhD is preferred.  Occasionally, only the MFA is listed. Other significant credentials that occur regularly are teaching experience and/or publications in more than one genre, and literary journal editing.

Other links to relevant information:

• http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issues/contingent/resources.htm
• http://www.aaup.org/report/contingent-appointments-and-academic-profession
• http://www.campusequityweek.org/2003/Selections/Articles/aaupCFpressrelease11-9-03.html