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Continuingly Employed

In the last round of collective bargaining, I served on the non-tenure-track faculty team and, among our other accomplishments, we completed negotiations for implementing "continuing employment". Until now, I've been appointed on term contracts -- usually every three years. These were typically formulaic, but there was always an element of stress involved as the deadline approached: Would the reappointment process go smoothly? Had anything changed? The University was equally happy to get rid of the administrative load in managing all the paperwork that had be copied and passed around and stamped and signed and countersigned.

There was some question what to call these provisions. Originally, the term "continuous employment" was used but, at some point, the University representative decided that it should be called "continuing employment".

Under the new process, for new employees you have two one year contracts followed by a two year contract. You are then evaluated for "continuing employment" after the first year of the two year contract: if you don't pass, the last year is your terminal year but, otherwise, you are reappointed afterward with no fixed end term.

It's not tenure: they can still let people go if they decide that the work isn't going to continue. But they can't arbitrarily replace one person with another. And another provision of the new contract sets different levels of criteria based on faculty rank (Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Senior Lecturer II).

And today, I finally received my "Notice and Acceptance of Reappointment" letter And having signed the letter, I guess I am now "continuingly employed". Here's to many more years in the service of the University of Massachusetts Amherst -- one of the worlds greatest universities!