Penn shifts full-time lecturers to faculty track in move to end support staff status

Full-time lecturers at the University of Pennsylvania are set to lose their formal designation as academic support staff under a new initiative announced Tuesday. Provost John Jackson Jr. and Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Laura Perna revealed the next steps toward creating a dedicated teaching track. This move places long-term instructors into the associated faculty category, a shift that alters their institutional standing and evaluation processes.

The change responds to a May resolution by the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. That body called for a new teaching faculty track to be operational by the start of the 2027-28 academic year. A 12-member working group has been formed to advise on the implementation. The group includes Perna, Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives David Asch, and Perelman School of Medicine Executive Vice Dean Lisa Bellini.

The working group’s mandate is specific. It must draft language for the Faculty Handbook that defines the central elements of the new track. The group will also propose a process for considering current full-time lecturers, senior lecturers, and advanced senior lecturers for placement in the new category. These proposals will serve as advisory recommendations subject to existing university governance and adoption by individual schools.

The impetus for the change comes from a report published in June by a Faculty Senate committee. The report identified persistent concerns regarding the professional status and advancement opportunities of full-time lecturers. It noted that these instructors frequently hold long-term or effectively career-length appointments despite their formal classification. Graduate School of Education professor Nelson Flores, whose committee issued the report, is a member of the new working group.

Current rules in the Faculty Handbook limit full-time lecturers to three consecutive years of appointments, with exceptions approved by the provost. Some can be promoted to senior lecturers, a role that allows successive appointments. Flores argued in June that this structure mismatches the needs of schools seeking to retain lecturers long-term. Consequently, individual schools have developed different strategies to address the issue.

These workarounds include the advanced senior lecturer role in the Graduate School of Education and the School of Nursing. The School of Engineering and Applied Science uses practice professor appointments. The June report stated that these approaches provide partial solutions but result in a patchwork of school-level practices. The report argued these measures do not resolve the underlying structural issue at the university level.

The associated faculty category already includes research and practice professors. Under the current structure, both associated faculty and academic support staff cannot fully participate in the Faculty Senate. The Executive Committee moved to expand their involvement in shared governance earlier this month. Starting with the current academic year, associated faculty and academic support staff will participate in a 10-member committee. They will also serve as non-voting members on the Executive Committee and four standing committees.

Announcement materials confirm the working group’s composition includes history professor Kathleen Brown, past chair of the Faculty Senate, and Annenberg School of Communication professor Aswin Punathambekar. Punathambekar was selected in August to help lead the response to the resolution. Other members include accounting professor Christopher Ittner, music professor Jeffrey Kallberg, School of Nursing professor Catherine McDonald, electrical and systems engineering professor Santosh Venkatesh, and School of Dental Medicine professor Yu Zhang.