With this year’s tenure and promotions announcement came a title shift for Elon professors formerly known as lecturers, now called teaching professors.
The title change provides these professors a chance to have the more upward mobility of multiple promotion levels that tenured professors have. Lecturers previously could only be promoted to senior lecturer. Beyond the shift, the announcement included promotions for 52 professors and continuance for 19.
Tenure — an advancement that increases job security — or promotion is a different process depending on the type of professor. Tenure-track professors are those who participate in research in addition to teaching students. Teaching professors don’t go up for tenure as they do not have a research requirement, but have to teach more classes each year.
For all professors, the process for promotion starts with putting together a digital portfolio. This document includes self evaluations, the feedback surveys students are asked to fill out at the end of the semester and other documents to show the school the professor’s commitment to three categories: teaching, service to the university and scholarship.
Professor of math and statistics Heather Barker was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor. She went up for tenure and promotion after 6 years of working at Elon. She said the process is nerve wracking because if tenure track professors do not get the promotion they are asked to leave the university.
“Once you get to that promotion level, it’s almost like you can take a step back and breathe, like, ‘Ok, I did it. I did all the things. I checked all the boxes. Now maybe I can take a little bit more risk with my research. Maybe I can try different things in the classroom,’” Barker said.
Barker said that in academics there is always another goal to hit from getting a bachelor’s degree to getting a master’s followed by a doctorate degree and she is relieved to have hit the one of the last major hurdles of the career.
With all the stress of the process, Barker said the professors going up for tenure also are able to find a community in working on their applications together, but that they aren’t the only ones that deserve recognition.
“Those of us that went through it together, like this summer, we had a big writing group that met once a week to just put our heads together and push each other forward,” Barker said. “Like my office neighbor here, he and I went up together at the same time. But I think when we vent about the process and how hard it is, sometimes we forget about the people that are reviewing us.”
Professor of Spanish Mina Garcia served on the promotion and tenure committee from 2023 to 2025 and was committee chair for the 2024-25 academic year. Garcia said she enjoyed the experience of being on the committee, even with the intense work.
Garcia explained that each year after the promotion portfolios are turned in, the committee and individual department chairs review the portfolios. The committee and chairs meet to discuss their recommendations, before sending them to the provost’s office for final approval.
Garcia — a tenured professor herself — said having been on both sides of the process, she wants other professors to understand that the committee looks at each application individually and carefully.
“Every file is read entirely by everybody, and every file is discussed at length,” Garcia said.
Professor of management Scott Oakes ’90 was granted continuance on the new teaching professor track. He said continuance, or being granted the chance to continue working toward the next promotion level, on the teaching professor track comes during a professor’s fourth year as a full-time faculty member.
Oakes said he was pleased to see the university provide staff members that were hired as lecturers the opportunity to move up in the university through the same levels as the tenure-track faculty.
“There were a lot of senior lecturers who had been at Elon for quite some time who also were promoted to, I guess you would say full teaching professor, because it really didn’t have any other track, any other forward movement to do,” Oakes said. “So that was a big deal for them.”
Barker said the campus would not run without teaching professors and the new position shift provides them a more equal playing field.
“There’s a lot of people that have been on campus for a long time that have been pushing for this, and they’re finally celebrated,” Barker said.
All promotions come with a raise to professors’ salaries, a chance to take a full sabbatical within the first two years of the promotion, and three course releases over the next four years that provide the professor the opportunity to teach fewer classes and focus on other aspects of their job on campus, such as furthering their research.
According to the 2024-25 Elon Faculty Handbook, tenure-track professors see a $5,000 dollar raise when promoted to associate professor and a $9,000 raise when promoted to full professor.