???There are two sides to every story.
???This story involves a group of nine professors who were strangers before they formed the Ad Hoc Task Force on Gender Equity in Promotion at UB two months ago, and the university administration was caught in a disagreement over the tenure process.
???The Spectrum published an article called "Former professor pursues gender-bias case" on Nov. 28, 2008, regarding the situation surrounding Katherine McCormick, an assistant professor denied tenure in 2005.
???At the beginning of 2009, the university settled with McCormick, a research associate professor who claimed that her denial of tenure was the result of gender bias. She consequently cannot comment about the situation because of the settlement.
???"I received a settlement from the UB in January. As part of the settlement, I agreed not to discuss the details of the settlement, so there is really nothing more I can tell you about that," McCormick stated, in an e-mail.
???The Ad Hoc group has since taken form and has made three proposals, which they call mild, for President John B. Simpson and Provost Satish Tripathi, who make the final decisions of giving or denying tenure at UB.
???Lucinda Finley, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and coordinator of the promotion and tenure process, states that the Ad Hoc group is using incomplete information and making claims that are therefore misleading.
The process
???Both sides agree that the tenure process, which enables someone to remain at the university as an associate professor, is a complicated and demanding process. Faculty and staff have seven years from their start at the university to obtain tenure.
???"It's a very long process. It's extremely difficult for the faculty member involved. This is the big decision... typically it's what they call 'up or out,' " said Mary Bisson, a professor of biological sciences, and part of the Ad Hoc Task Force. "If you don't get tenure, you don't stay. This is a case where if you're not promoted, you lose your job."
???In their sixth year, several levels of committees review the faculty member's statements and teaching portfolio. At the end of the review session, a faculty member is either granted tenure or terminated.
???A candidate is first examined by his or her department and the chair makes a recommendation. Then a committee that sits under the dean makes a decision before the dean. External and internal reviewers are also used before the President's Review Board sits down to make a decision based on a dossier.
???The President's Review Board is made up of nine members of the UB community who are assigned three-year terms on the board.
???"Every level prior to the president is simply a recommendation. Only the president has the authority to make the actual decision on whether to grant or deny tenure. That's SUNY policy," Finley said.
???The provost makes a recommendation before the president sends his letter of decision to the SUNY chancellor. The chancellor then grants tenure to an assistant professor, making the assistant an associate professor.
Not an accusation, but call to a possible problem
???The Ad Hoc Task Force on Gender Equity in Promotions at UB is a group of associate professors that have come together to point out data that is suggestive of gender bias, they explained.
???"The problem has been suspected for years, but because the UB administration has not regularly released comprehensive data, it has been hard to prove," said Jim Holstun, an associate professor of English who is a part of the Ad Hoc group.
???They recovered data detailing tenure decisions from the past five years that was released because of the subpoena filed by Katherine McCormick's attorney.
???"In the UB administration's interpretation of their own data, they are denying promotion and tenure to women at a rate of three times that at which they are denying promotion and tenure to men," Holstun said. "In our interpretation of their data, women coming up for tenure and promotion from assistant to associate professor fail at a rate 2.6 times that of men."
???Group members emphasize that they are not accusing anyone in the administration of bias, but the data is biased in a technical sense, which calls for a review of some cases.
Administration response
???The Ad Hoc Task Force on Gender Equity in Promotions at UB has tried corresponding with Simpson and Tripathi regarding the data they state suggests gender bias.
???Tripathi released a statement, which states that the numbers and statistics the group is using are "incomplete, thereby misleading."
???"It is a selective subset of all tenure cases and there is no reason to focus on some cases as opposed to all cases," Finley said about the Ad Hoc's data. "Raw numbers alone do not indicate any bias. Every case is evaluated as an individual case."
???Finley, in person, and Tripathi, in his statement, both emphasize that 95 percent of all faculty that come up for tenure receive it.
???"It's a very small group that is unfortunately unsuccessful and as an administration." Finley said.
???In Tripathi's statement, the provost also explains that more men than women have "come through the tenure process during the last five years. Specifically, 156 men sought tenure and 79 women sought tenure."
Commission
???The Ad Hoc group still actively seeks to address the campus issue at the last Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting in May.
???They propose specifically that the president and provost review some of the cases of denied tenure determined last year again, because otherwise, these professors will be out of a job at UB. They also ask the administration for more transparency and consistency with the decisions made of the different levels of the tenure process.
???"We hope to make immediate changes and systematic changes," Bisson said. "We are asking them to make some changes to make that process a little more transparent and a little more consistent."
???Tripathi expresses that there has not been any gender-biased patterns after performing an analysis of information.
???"This in-depth analysis revealed that there [are] no gender-based patterns. To the extent that common reasons for lack of success could be identified, they were factors that affected men and women equally," Tripathi said, in his statement.
???A commission will be established, however, to ensure that everything is being done to ensure fairness in the tenure process.
???"As an administration, we take very seriously that if a [slightly] greater number of women are, for whatever reason, during their years in their department, facing conditions that are not enabling them to be as successful as men," Finley said. "We want to look at what the reasons might be and with the departments that have been having problems."
???Ad Hoc group members' opinions of the task force vary, Bisson explained. Some believe this is what they have been looking for, while others remain neutral about the commission, in only its roots of forming without members or a charge.
???"What would have been a great response would have been if the president said 'there's a problem here, let's look at it and fix it.' That's what we were hoping for," said Ruth Meyerowitz, a member of the Ad Hoc group. "We do feel like they responded to us with the formation of the commission... but they're doing it in a way that doesn't really acknowledge us."
