The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted unanimously on Friday to consider faculty members’ patents and the commercialization of their research in deciding whether to grant them tenure.
“We are taking a leadership position in modernizing the tenure process to bring it in line with some new realities,” Robert D. McTeer, chancellor of the university system, said in a written statement. As state support of higher education continues to decline, he said, universities must rely more on partnerships with businesses.
Mr. McTeer, an economist and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, recommended the tenure reform to the Board of Regents to give professors “credit” for their commercial ventures. Patents, for example, should be recognized as part of faculty scholarship, he said.
“It doesn’t require that you commercialize research,” he told reporters on Friday. “It just permits that you can count this in the tenure process. ... It will help some people and hurt nobody.” Some professors, he said, will no longer wait until they have received tenure to pursue patents.
Under the new tenure policy, “patents and the commercialization of research, where applicable,” will join five other criteria previously considered in the review process: teaching effectiveness; scholarly or artistic endeavor; professional growth; public and university service; and quality of patient care, where applicable. The Texas A&M University system includes nine universities and one health-care center.
The move “reflects the furthering of commercialization of higher education,” Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Monday. “As far as I know, this is the first time such action has been taken,” he said.
Professors may worry that under the new policy, research and teaching will take a back seat to lucrative commercial agreements. “Some administrators may look at the bottom line as a critical concern over teaching and research,” Anita Levy, an associate secretary of the AAUP, told the Houston Chronicle.
The tenure reform represents another step in Texas A&M’s pursuit of more partnerships with industry. Last December the Board of Regents approved the Texas A&M University System Office of Technology Commercialization and created the new position of vice chancellor for technology commercialization.
Texas A&M officials were not available for comment on Monday.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
