Center Establishment, & Joint and Interdisciplinary Appointments: Best Practices and Required Agreements

Given the increasing number of interdisciplinary centers, and corresponding joint and/or interdisciplinary appointments, i.e. appointments where a faculty member’s apportionment is divided between a tenure home and another program, whether a second department or interdisciplinary center, the following issues must be addressed in the case of all such centers and appointments. Some of these issues may be most appropriately addressed in a Memorandum of Understanding. Others may be addressed in the actual letter of offer and/or position description.  

All such agreements will be kept on file in the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, which office will check to see that all necessary steps are followed. 

A number of best practices and required agreements are reflected in the attached documents:  

  1. A number of best practices and required agreements are reflected in the attached documents:  
  2. A procedure for joint appointments agreed upon and adopted by Academic Affairs and the Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources in 2005 
  3. A description of the Tenure Home and Evaluation Process to be followed in the case of joint appointments.  

A description of the Tenure Home and Evaluation Process to be followed in the case of joint appointments.  

  1. Center Establishment and/or Search and Recruitment 
    1. Total funding, both permanent and temporary, committed.  
    2. Source of Funding. 
    3. How committed funds will be applied.
    4. Center reporting structure. 
    5. Description of what will happen to the funding and/or the position if one of the programs no longer exists.
    6. Identification of Center/joint appointment partners/possible tenure home for faculty positions.
    7. Description of recruitment authorization process, appointment process and composition of search committees. 
    8. Description of recruitment process, including faculty participation and required levels of review. 
    9. Identification of signatures necessary on Center establishment and/or recruitment authorizations and letters of offer. 
  2. Faculty appointment/position 
    1. Faculty member’s name.
    2. Salary. 
    3. Appointment begin date. 
    4. Tenure effective date. 
    5. Title.
    6. Tenure Home Department. 
    7. Programs participating.
    8. Reporting structure, i.e., to whom does faculty member report; to whom does program and/or department chair/head report. 
    9. Apportionment of FTE and duties split between department(s)/programs. 
    10. How department/program leaders will collaborate to make personnel decisions on such things as initial assignment of responsibilities, specific teaching assignments, change in responsibilities or apportionment, leave requests, etc. 
    11. Expectations of faculty member in teaching, research, service, outreach, administration. 
    12. Rights of faculty member in department and program governance. 
    13. Description of coordination of evaluation process, re e.g. annual evaluation, promotion and tenure evaluation, merit increases. Note that fairness requires that all those with input into such decisions provide such input on the basis of all available evidence, e.g. all current and previous evaluations, external letters of review, etc.
    14. Resources provided to the faculty member, including office and laboratory space and start up.
    15. Program credit for faculty member’s work.  

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