Dean's Office contacts: Ivy Mason-Sharrah and Susan Miller
Voting eligibility.This is determined in several steps, listed below.
The Faculty Code (Section 21-32) defines the voting members of the faculty and states the requirements for an effective vote, which vary as a function of the type of action to be taken.
- The person must be a voting member of the UW faculty. The Handbook states that persons holding the following titles are eligible voting members of the faculty:
- Professor
- Research Professor
- Teaching Professor
- Associate Professor
- Research Associate Professor
- Associate Teaching Professor
- Assistant Professor
- Research Assistant Professor
- Assistant Teaching Professor
- Senior Artist in Residence, full-time
- Lecturer, full-time
- Artist in Residence, full-time
- A retired assistant professor, associate professor, or professor during the quarter(s) he or she is serving on a part-time basis, or a retired research assistant professor, research associate professor, or research professor, associate teaching professor, or teaching professor, during the quarter(s) he or she is serving on a part-time basis.
- Faculty are not eligible to vote during the time they are on leave* of absence.
- Faculty on leave are defined as the following:
- Faculty on a sabbatical leave
- Faculty who are on a leave without salary of more than 50%
- Faculty on intermittent leave *may* be eligible to vote on the day the vote takes place, based on their leave arrangement. It is the responsibility of the academic unit to determine voting eligibility for faculty.
- Note: Summer hiatus is not considered a leave of absence with respect to voting eligibility.
- Faculty on leave are defined as the following:
- As an eligible voter, the person may vote in his/her primary (home) department.
- If the person has a joint appointment, the joint (secondary) department and the person must determine at the time of appointment whether voting rights will be given in the joint department. This is not dependent upon the percentage of appointment or funding in the joint department, i.e., a person may have from 0% to 100% funding in the secondary unit and still be an eligible voter if it was arranged at the time of appointment. (See the Handbook, Vol. II, Section 24-34 B.6 for the rules regarding a joint appointment.)
Requirements for an effective vote on personnel actions. Following are the requirements for voting on faculty personnel actions, which include new appointments, promotions, tenure, reappointments, renewals, and salary increases. (See the Handbook for rules regarding other types of governance or voting actions.)
If a department does not have at least three eligible faculty members to vote on a personnel recommendation, a standing committee should be appointed by the Dean for this purpose (see Standing committees).
Any personnel action that requires a departmental vote is effective only if passed by a majority vote of all eligible voting members of the unit.
- All voting members of the department faculty vote on recommendations for a new appointment - at any rank, including new emeritus appointments. (Note that for new short-term appointments, the department faculty may delegate to the chair the authority to make short-term appointments without a full faculty vote.)
- Recommendations for reappointment, renewal, or salary increase - at any rank - are voted on by those voting members who are superior in academic rank to the person under consideration. (Note that for reappointments of short-term faculty members, the department faculty may delegate to the chair the authority to make such reappointments without a full faculty vote.)
- Very explicit groups of faculty are allowed to vote on recommendations for promotion and tenure. For specifics, please see the AHR Promotion and Tenure Voting Matrix.