University of Arizona officials have announced more faculty will receive multi-year contracts starting next fiscal year, after more than a decade of faculty advocating for the initiative.
State policy currently allows the UA to have up to 476 non-tenure-track, career-faculty positions on multi-year contracts. But only 186 career-track faculty were on multi-year contracts as of Jan. 8, Andrea Romero, UA vice provost for faculty affairs, told the Faculty Senate on Monday.
“As of fall 2023 and January 8, 2025, we’re not even close to the 30% that we could be,” said Romero.
Due to the advocacy of the Faculty Senate and “lots of discussions and thoughtfulness,” Interim Provost Ron Marx “has agreed to really push this further with the deans and make sure all the colleges, all the units, do a systematic review for faculty so that we can get closer,” Romero said. “We have approximately 290 additional multi-year contracts that we can move towards.”
“The university wanting to recognize the importance of that work, and recognize the quality of the faculty who are doing that work for our students, is really driven by our mission to prioritize student success as we go forward,” Romero said.
The university has seen a gradual increase in career-track faculty awarded multi-year contracts, with 116 in fall 2021, 169 in fall 2022 and 192 in fall 2023.
“All of that came along with developing promotion and overview criteria within departments, within colleges,” Romero said. “And since that time, we’ve had hundreds of career-track faculty who’ve gone through the promotion process successfully.”
Career-track or contingent faculty are basically faculty members who cannot be tenured and hence have contracts that need to be renewed over the years. The percentage of career-track faculty on multi-year contracts is decided in relation to tenured or tenure-track faculty.
Under previous Arizona Board of Regents policy, 15% of all tenure-track university positions could be awarded multi-year contracts. In November 2021, ABOR raised the cap on multi-year contracts to 30% of all tenure-track positions after a push by the UA, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University.
The UA now has 1,588 tenure-track or tenure-eligible positions and 30% of that would be 476 positions.
Romero said the Provost’s Office has had conversations with deans of all UA colleges in the last week and will email a follow-up this week with more details. While the official contracts will be approved for FY26 starting July 1, the process of approving multi-year contracts for faculty will take place on a rolling basis between now and July, she said.
The multi-year contracts may go up to three-year contracts, in accordance with ABOR policy.
Among the career-track faculty, Romero said the Provost’s Office will focus more on faculty who have received recognition of the highest rank and are the university’s “best and brightest.”
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The door is still open, also, for department heads to recommend assistant-rank and associate-rank faculty who they think deserve to be considered for multiyear contracts as well.
The process will include consideration of faculty members’ annual reviews from the spring and fall of 2024, including students’ ratings and feedback and recommendations from peers and department heads. The decision will ultimately be made by department heads.
“The department head is the one who does the hiring of faculty, they do the renewal of annual contracts, they make decisions about multi-year because they’re managing the budget at the local level,” said Romero.
While approximately 85% of career-track faculty will be eligible for this, about 15% who are research-track and could be funded from fixed funds such as external grants will not be up for consideration.
The secretary of the faculty, Katie Zeiders, who led the initiative in Faculty Senate meetings over the last year, credited collaboration between the senate, the Provost’s Office and many career-track faculty across campus.
“Multi-year appointments increase faculty job security and this directly benefits our students by ensuring greater continuity in their learning over the years,” Zeiders said. “Retaining and promoting faculty will increase morale and this is very much needed at the moment.”
This step comes as the UA continues to whittle down a deficit, now at $65 million and due to be eliminated by the end of this fiscal year.
It also comes as UA President Suresh Garimella has said he plans to offer university-wide raises in fiscal year 2026. Garimella told the Faculty Senate on Monday that improving faculty morale is one of his top priorities.
