Guidelines
College Art Association Standards for Retention and Tenure of Art Historians
Adopted by CAA Board of Directors, February 21, 1996Revised October 2002, revised May 2005
The College Art Association has established the following standards respecting the Retention and Tenure of Art Historians, a copy of which has been sent to each accrediting body in the United States and to institutional members of CAA under the cover of a letter from the current president of the association urging the said accrediting body to recognize the standards as appropriate to any collegiate art history program.
CAA encourages institutions to maintain their diverse and unique departmental missions, recognizing that such diversity makes it essential that applicants for positions be provided with as much information as possible.
Status of Art History Faculty
All art historians on full-time appointments other than visiting professors or lecturers on appointments of one year or less are to be granted all responsibilities and rights of faculty status at that institution. Such status should include eligibility for academic rank, promotion, tenure, retirement plan, and any other economic packages. Equal access to university support for research and professional development is essential for those on regular faculty status. Adjunct faculty, such as museum professionals, who are hired part-time and over a period of time, should be accorded the opportunity of participating in curricular development and other appropriate areas concerning their areas of expertise.
Terminal Degrees
The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is usually the terminal degree for art historians, though a different degree with appropriate scholarly work that contributes to the field of art history may well take its place. In the absence of such a terminal degree, specific recognized equivalent professional achievement and scholarship should be regarded as qualification for appointment to professional rank, promotion, or tenure. Neither the EdD nor the MFA are appropriate degrees for faculty hired to teach art history (though holders of these other degrees with solid art history backgrounds may be asked from time to time to teach lower division art history courses in small, nonspecialized departments). The legitimate use of adjunct faculty with full-time appointments in their professional areas is appropriate, especially in such areas as museology and historic preservation. The academic degree held by those professionals may vary from the norm.
Criteria for Retention and Advancement
The criteria for promotion, retention, and tenure for art historians shall be teaching effectiveness, research and professional accomplishment, and service to the institution, the profession, and the community. Evaluation of the published research, teaching effectiveness, and professional service will be carried out with the participation of other visual arts professionals, with the greatest weight being given to the evaluation given by art historian peers in the same area of specialization. Unless the candidate being evaluated for retention, promotion, or tenure is the sole art historian in the academic department, other art historians shall be consulted during the first stage of the review process, with representation on any department review committee.
Colleges and universities should make certain that their policies and procedures relating to matters of renewal, retention, promotion, and tenure are clear, concrete, and made available to each faculty member when she or he is hired. In addition, said policies shall be supplemented with more specific criteria as relevant to art historians, whether as members of a distinct art history department or as members of a more broadly based visual arts unit. At the time of hiring or reclassification of an art historian’s position within a program (e.g., moving from part-time to tenure-track), the institution should provide the faculty member a written account of all previous research (scholarly products), service activities, and teaching that will count toward retention, tenure, and promotion. Reviews of each faculty member’s record in regard to the three areas of research, service, and teaching should be held on a regular schedule, and at least in the first, third, and pre-tenure year of the probationary period. The person under review should be given full information in writing about his or her status at each review.
Specific criteria:
- Both the relative weight among research, service, and teaching and at the levels of performance expected in each must be explicit and in writing; liberal arts institutions may give equal weight to all three areas, while research universities are more likely to place greater emphasis on research accomplishment.
- In regard to evaluation of research, expectations in regard to both the quantity and significance of published work must be made clear.
- Definitions of scholarly accomplishment must be clarified by the institution. For example, if the institutional standard is as specific as a “book,” it must be made clear as to whether or not a monograph published by a major commercial press, a substantial exhibition catalogue, or a major annotated bibliography would meet that criterion. See also Addendum, “Publishing Requirements for Tenure and Promotion in Art History,” below.
- There should be a clear expression as to the level of recognition demanded of the candidate for advancement in rank or to tenure, whether local, regional, or national, including examples of how such recognition would be met. Such level of recognition must be realistic and consonant with the teaching load and research and financial support available to the individual faculty member.
- Should outside referees or reviewers be consulted as part of the decision process of promotion and tenure, they must be informed of both the institution’s and the department’s standards and expectations, including the relative weight accorded research, service, and teaching. Recognizing the differences in the mission of various institutions of higher education, the outside reviewer should be requested to limit the review of published (or in manuscript) research to its quality, without commenting on the likelihood or suitability of tenure for the candidate. (The question of the outside reviewer not commenting on suitability for tenure at the candidate’s institution is one that derives from AAUP suggestions and belief that the outside evaluator is certainly most clearly able to respond to issues of quality and evaluate the standing of the candidate in the profession; however, it is condescending to the institution to suggest that the faculty and administration cannot best decide how to use the critique in light of the needs of their own institution and their weighing of priorities.)
- For those art historians whose research is dependent on travel to distant locations, usually abroad, there should be clear recognition of the financial and time implications of such travel on the faculty member’s productivity.
- The evaluation of teaching should include both student evaluations and peer review. The candidate under review should also be given the opportunity to present the reviewing body any syllabi, examinations, examples of student papers, descriptions of museum-based assignments, and any other material relevant to her or his teaching.
- In the area of service, each faculty member should be informed of the level and amount of service expected and whether community service as well as service to the profession is expected.
- Any expectation of having the faculty member participate in the governance of such professional organizations as the College Art Association, Society of Architectural Historians, etc., should be accompanied by financial support by the faculty member’s home institution.
- If art historians are expected to give public lectures, to speak at primary or secondary schools, or to participate in the programs of local service organizations, the necessity of providing such service should be explicit.
- While service to the department and institution may be expected of even the most junior faculty, it is desirable to avoid making substantial demands on young teachers and scholars; it would be helpful to limit the amount of service to permit those at the start of their careers to concentrate most of their attention on improving their teaching and establishing their research directions.
- Should department or institutional standards or requirements in regard to research, service, or teaching substantially change during the probationary period of a faculty member, said faculty members should either be allowed to continue to serve under the standards in force at the time of their initial appointment or be given an appropriate amount of time (normally three additional years) to meet the new standards.
- CAA strongly urges institutions to comply with American Association of University Professors standards with respect to the length of probationary periods.
Teaching Loads
The full-time teaching assignments of art historians should be comparable to those of other humanities faculty at the same institution (with two courses per semester as the norm at research universities and three at institutions where teaching is given greater priority). Institutions must also recognize that class preparation in art history differs from that in other liberal arts disciplines in the time expended on the selection and arrangement of visual materials. Appropriate reductions in the number of classes taught are warranted when the position also includes administrative responsibilities for a department, slide collection, or gallery, or for teaching studio courses. It is also appropriate to either reduce the number of classes taught or to provide teaching assistants when courses that require both examinations and papers are larger than a norm of forty students.
Class Size
Class size must necessarily vary by the level and structure of the individual course and the availability of graduate assistants or student help, and should be consistent with the size of similar offerings in other humanities departments at a given institution. However, student access to visual arts material for study purposes should be a factor in establishing class size for art history courses.
Graduate Students
When graduate students are assigned teaching duties as part of an assistantship, they should receive direct supervision by the faculty to whom they have been assigned. While advanced doctoral students may be given responsibilities for their own courses, MA candidate teaching assignments should be limited to the teaching of discussion sections or supervised lectures within a lower division course. In no case should graduate students be given teaching assignments in excess of half the normal institutional teaching load. The reading of both undergraduate examinations and papers provides help to the faculty with large classes and pedagogical training in the profession, but care should be taken to avoid either exploitation or totally unsupervised responsibility for grading.
Mentoring
In order to give the fullest opportunity for success of a beginning faculty member, the chair of a department should assign a senior art historian to serve as a mentor. Such a mentor would be available to answer questions and respond to concerns of the new faculty member, and would make sure her or his work is progressing as necessary to achieve professional advancement. This is especially important to those from under-represented groups who have little experience and few models on which to base their behavior.
Positions Listings
The CAA Online Career Center is the official site for positions listings of the College Art Association; institutions are encouraged to advertise their positions listings therein to insure reaching all members of the organization.
It should be noted that there has been an increasing tendency in recent years for many institutions--even those that traditionally hired at all ranks--to restrict appointments to starting assistant professorships or instructorships. As well as minimizing access of some students to more experienced teachers and scholars, a form of “senior gridlock” has thus been created, excluding the possibility of senior faculty from being considered for academic positions at other institutions. CAA notes the value of having a more diverse faculty, by rank and academic accomplishment, and urges that institutions attempt to recruit and hire faculty members across the ranks whenever possible. Detailed information regarding the position--minimally including the rank, tenure status, specialization required, and salary range--should be part of the listing for the position. Additional information should be available to all candidates upon request, including but not limited to the following:
- A thorough description of the position, including the number and type of courses to be taught.
- Such information about the institution and the department as educational philosophy, size, areas of specialization, class sizes, resources, etc.
- A listing and description of any non-teaching duties attached to the position; examples: gallery supervision, care of slide collection, etc.
- Information on working conditions such as availability of office space, computer facilities, travel funds, availability of paid sabbaticals, and access to secretarial services.
- Departmental and institutional expectations concerning office hours, advising, and other aspects of availability to students.
- Relative weights of Research, Service, and Teaching in annual evaluations, retention, promotion, and tenure.
- Discipline-specific standards and expectations of accomplishment in each of the areas to be evaluated.
- A brief description of the procedures and evaluation processes used in making decisions relating to professional advancement.
- Support for research and faculty development, from the department, institution, community, etc.
- Additional information that will define and clarify any expectations or demands unique to the institution or department.
Addendum: Publishing Requirements for Tenure and Promotion in Art History (2005)
The College Art Association is the professional organization of art historians, artists, and others engaged in the practice, teaching, and research of the visual arts. The Association has over 13,500 individual members, of whom some 4,500 are art historians, as well as 2,000 institutional members, including university art and art history departments, museums, libraries, and professional and commercial organizations.
For the use and protection of its membership, the College Art Association issues guidelines that set national standards of practice and professional advancement in art and art history, including academic practice and advancement.
In view of recent developments in academic and commercial publishing, the College Art Association hereby supplements the section of the “Standards for Retention and Tenure of Art Historians” respecting criteria for judging research productivity. This supplement affects the paragraph above, under “Criteria for Retention and Advancement,” beginning, “Definitions of scholarly accomplishment” and in particular the statement, “. . . if the institutional standard is as specific as a ‘book,’ it must be made clear as to whether or not a monograph published by a major commercial press, a substantial exhibition catalogue, or a major annotated bibliography would meet that criterion.”
With the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other exponents of the humanistic disciplines in the United States, the College Art Association observes a sudden and steep decline in the publication of scholarly books in the humanities in the United States. Respecting art history, the Association notes with regret the recent cancellation or severe reduction of art-history lists by such eminent English-language presses as Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, and Ashgate. Other presses have skewed their lists in favor of topics with commercial potential, such as Impressionism, disregarding the full chronological and cultural spectrum of art history as it is practiced and taught.
Further, the College Art Association affirms that the escalating cost of publication rights for photographs provided by museums, commercial archives, galleries, artists’ estates, and other sources is an additional impediment to art historians seeking to publish the results of their research. In light of these developments, the College Art Association advises academic institutions that the well-documented “crisis” in scholarly publishing in the humanities is especially acute for art historians, and threatens the integrity and continuity of the discipline if colleges and universities continue to insist on books as the chief criterion for tenure and promotion.
The College Art Association recommends that colleges and universities consider the following forms of publication (whether in print or electronic format) equivalent to single-authored books as vehicles of scholarly productivity:
- journal articles
- essays and substantial entries in museum or exhibition catalogues
- articles in conference proceedings
- unpublished manuscripts, whether or not under contract with a publisher
In addition, the College Art Association observes that many journals published outside the United States have selection procedures that do not match the American system of peer review. This is true of even the most highly regarded and prestigious journals and does not by itself suggest that the journal is any less rigorous or selective than its American counterparts. In the absence of homogeneous procedures it is impossible to rank journals for the purpose of assessing the quality of scholarship published in them. The Association recommends that judgments of the quality of a candidate’s publications should be based on the assessment of expert reviewers who have read the work and can compare it to the state of scholarship in the field to which it contributes.
Addendum: Endorsement of Recommendations of the Modern Language Association (2007)
Addressing the continuing difficulties attached to scholarly publishing in the humanities, the CAA Board of Directors endorses a set of twenty recommendations proposed by the Modern Language Association in its 2007 Report of the Modern Language Association Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, presented in the Executive Summary. These recommendations supplement CAA's own statement on tenure publishing in the arts.
Submitted by the Professional Practices Committee: David Sokol, Chair, University of Illinois, Chicago; Emma Amos, Rutgers University; Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University; Phillip Blackhurst, University of Kansas; Judith Brodsky, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University; Whitney Davis, Northwestern University; Kathleen Desmond Easter, Central Missouri State University; Samuel Edgerton, Williams College; Dennis Ichiyama, Purdue University; Dorothy Joiner, West Georgia College; Jon Meyer, University of Arizona; Jock Reynolds, The Addison Gallery of American Art; James G. Rogers, Jr., Florida Southern College; Larry Scholder, Southern Methodist University; Susan Sensemann, University of Illinois, School of Art & Design; Gregory Shelnutt, University of Mississippi; Adrian R. Tio, Bowling Green State University; Victoria Star Varner, Southwestern University; Monica Visonà, Metropolitan State College of Denver; Annette Weintraub, City College of New York, CUNY; Barbara Hoffman, Esq., Schwartz Weiss Steckler Hoffman.
Revised 2002 by the Professional Practices Committee: D. Fairchild Ruggles, Chair, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Addendum (2005) submitted by the Publications Committee: Nicola Courtright, Chair, Amherst College; Susan Elizabeth Chun, Metropolitan Museum of Art; S. Hollis Clayson, Northwestern University; Marc Gotlieb, University of Toronto; Dale Kinney, Bryn Mawr College; Winifred McNeill, New Jersey City University; Patricia C. Phillips, SUNY New Paltz; John Paul Ricco, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Larry Silver, University of Pennsylvania.