University Senate Discusses Female Law Faculty Advancement, Bids Farewell to Provost

The University Senate honored Provost John Coatsworth at its final plenary of the academic year on May 3 with two standing ovations—one after heartfelt remarks by President Lee C. Bollinger, and another at the end of a ceremonial resolution that praised the provost’s "transparent and forthright engagement with the Senate over the past eight years." Coatsworth will return to the faculty on July 1.

In other business, Law professor Jessica Bulman-Pozen reported for the Commission on the Status of Women on the advancement of female faculty in the Law School over the past decade. She began by noting the unique dimensions of the 80-member Law School faculty: 80 percent tenured, 5 percent on the tenure track, and 15 percent clinical. There are no departments, and the whole tenured faculty votes on every tenure candidate.

Bulman-Pozen said the challenge for female law faculty is not so much getting through the academic pipeline—the main theme of previous commission reports on the Arts and Sciences and the College of Physicians and Surgeons—as it is getting on the faculty at all. There are two ways: a very small entry-level path for junior faculty aspiring to tenure in four or five years, and a very small lateral path, for faculty who have tenure elsewhere. 

Given these metrics, change in the law school’s tenured ranks is slow. But from 2007-08 to 2017-18 the percentage of women with tenure rose from 24 percent to 29 percent, an increase of four professors. Bulman-Pozen said this put Columbia Law in the middle of a pack of peer institutions, which ranged from Yale (37 percent) to  NYU (23 percent). During this span the percentage of women in the total faculty rose from 30 percent to 35 percent. Bulman-Pozen said two thirds of the tenure-track offers since 2014 have gone to women, while three of 10 lateral tenure offers went to women. All three came in the last two years, after Gillian Lester was appointed dean of the Law School in 2015. Bulman-Pozen commended Lester for her commitment to increasing the proportion of female faculty.

Two other significant updates did not appear on the agenda but were delivered under Executive Committee chair Sharyn O’Halloran’s regular report. Sen. June Cross (Ten., Journalism) reported briefly on the progress of a subcommittee on the School of Professional Studies, a joint panel of the Budget Review and External Relations committees that she chairs. The group has been examining whether the rapid expansion of SPS in recent years may have consequences for Columbia's institutional reputation, and whether the budgetary dependence of the Arts and Sciences on tuition revenue from SPS is a sustainable arrangement. The subcommittee expects to present a full report in the fall.

In the other update Sen. Julia Hirschberg (Ten., SEAS) expressed appreciation for recent progress toward a new system for reimbursing travel and business expenses of Columbia officers (called TBERS).  At the March 8 plenary, Hirschberg sounded the alarm about a possible repeat of the troubled 2012 rollout of the ARC accounting system, whose planning process lacked sufficient consultation with the faculty, researchers and office staff who had to use that system. Since March 8 Hirschberg heard from EVP for Finance Anne Sullivan, and saw the appointment of several colleagues to planning committees. She also learned of positive reports from peer institutions about new reimbursement systems based on the same software platform—Concur—that is planned for Columbia. Hirschberg said she was pleased to report that Columbia officers will also have the option of a simple per diem expense procedure.

The Senate also heard annual reports from its Education, External Relations and Student Affairs committees, as well as its Diversity Commission.

The provisional date of the next plenary is September 20, in the next academic year. Anyone with a CUID is welcome. Most plenary documents are available at senate.columbia.edu.

Tom Mathewson is manager of the University Senate. His column is editorially independent of Columbia News.