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| Academic ranks worldwide |
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Academic ranks in Canada are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2023) |
| Academic ranks worldwide |
|---|
Academic ranks in Canada are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
In Canada, a distinction is generally made between college- and university-level higher education in Canada instructors along the lines of an institution's primary purpose – teaching or research, respectively.
These full-time faculty members engage in teaching, research, and service. Only faculty members in these positions are eligible for tenure. In most research-intensive universities, research produced by the individual constitutes the majority of tenure consideration, and pre-tenure faculty have a reduced teaching load. In universities with less research focus, research and teaching may hold equal weight, or in some cases (such as for teaching-stream positions), teaching might be the only factor considered for tenure.
Educators who hold a formal title of "professor" (referred to as tenured/tenure-track faculty) typically begin their careers as assistant professors with subsequent promotions to the ranks of associate professor and finally professor. The titles are historical traditions; for example, it is not implied that an assistant professor "assists" more senior faculty. There is often a strict timeline for application for promotion from assistant to associate professor, most often five or six years following the initial appointment. Applicants are evaluated based on their contributions to research, teaching, and administration. The relative weightings of these contributions differ by institution, with PhD-granting universities usually placing more emphasis on research and liberal arts colleges placing more emphasis on teaching. The decision to grant tenure and promotion from assistant to associate professor usually requires numerous levels of approval, with a common sequence being:
A decision to reject a candidate for tenure normally requires that the individual leave the institution within a year. Otherwise, tenure is granted along with promotion from assistant to associate professor. Although tenure and promotion are usually separate decisions, they are often highly correlated such that a decision to grant a promotion coincides with a decision in favour of tenure, and vice versa. Promotion to associate professor usually results in an increased administrative load and membership on committees that are restricted to tenured faculty.
Some people remain at the level of associate professor throughout their careers. However, most will apply for the final promotion to full professor; the timeline for making this application is more flexible than that for assistant to associate positions and the associate professor does not normally lose his or her job if the application is rejected. As with promotion from assistant to associate professor, promotion from associate to full professor involves review at multiple levels, similar to the earlier tenure/promotion review. This includes external reviews, decisions by the department, recommendations by members of other departments, and high-ranking university officials. Usually, this final promotion requires that the individual has maintained an active research program, and excellent teaching, in addition to taking a leadership role in important departmental and extra-departmental administrative tasks. Full professor is the highest rank that a professor can achieve (other than in a named position) and is seldom achieved before a person reaches their mid-40s. The rank of full professor carries additional administrative responsibilities associated with membership on committees that are restricted to full professors.
The top administrative post in many academic departments is the "department chair" (in multi-divisional faculties) and "director" (in single division faculties). Prior to the 1970s, such administrators were called "chairmen" or "chairwomen," but the term in most institutions has since been shortened to the gender-neutral "chair." While many department chairs also hold endowed chair positions, the two positions are distinct.
Temporary appointments
Individuals in these positions typically (though not always) focus on teaching undergraduate or graduate courses (not necessarily both), are not given credit for any research they undertake (except in the case of "research professors"), and may or may not have administrative or service roles. In some cases, Lecturers and Teaching Professors can have almost equivalent job security as tenure track positions after going through a parallel process of review. The use of the unqualified title "professor" is used only in non-academic contexts to distinguish a person's role as different from that of a teacher at a high school and does not refer to any academic rank. The term "instructor" is very generic and can be applied to any teacher, or it can be a specific title (tenured or tenure-track) depending upon how an institution chooses to use the term.
Retired faculty may retain formal or informal links with their university, such as library privileges or office space. At some institutions faculty who have retired after achieving the rank of professor are given the title "professor emeritus" (male, French : professeur émérite) or "professor emerita" (female, French : professeure émérite).
Faculty ranking systems vary from province to province. In Ontario, colleges usually include three faculty ranks: technician, instructor, professor. [3] All ranks may be full- or part-time positions. College professors may or may not have undergraduate and graduate degrees, but they typically have professional certifications and experience that qualify them for the position. Additionally, college professors may propose and create curriculum, whereas instructors and technicians cannot. In departments that offer bachelor's degrees, provincial governments typically require that a minimum of half of the program faculty hold terminal degrees and be employed at the professor rank. [4]
Academic Chair is a title applied to chairs of departments. Dean is a title applied to overseers of groups of departments.
A variety of vice-presidential positions exist at the discretion of individual colleges.
Some colleges have specialized research units whose staff may be full- or part-time. Staff in these units go by a number of titles relevant to their work.
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching, and further education, which usually includes a dissertation. The degree, sometimes abbreviated Dr. habil., PD, or D.Sc., is often a qualification for full professorship in those countries. The degree conferral is usually accompanied by a public oral defence event with one or more opponents. Habilitation is usually awarded 5–15 years after a PhD degree or its equivalent. Although in some countries Doctor of Sciences degree correlates with a position of Docent, it is closer in practice to the position of a full professor in the US.
Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct research.
Senior lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and Israel senior lecturer is a faculty position at a university or similar institution. The position is tenured and is roughly equivalent to an associate professor in the North American system.
The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French maître de conférences (MCF), and equal to or above the title of assistant professor. In Southeast European countries, it is the first position that people achieve once they enter the University, and after the completion of their PhD degree.
The following summarizes basic academic ranks in the French higher education system. Most academic institutions are state-run and most academics with permanent positions are civil servants, and thus are tenured.
A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a principal investigator.
Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions of teaching and research within a college or university. In the U.S., the word "professor" is often used to refer to anyone who teaches at a college of university level at any academic rank. This usage differs from the predominant usage of the word professor in other countries, where the unqualified word "professor" only refers to "full professors". Other tenure-track faculty positions include assistant professor and associate professor (mid-level). Other teaching-focused positions that use the term "professor" include Clinical Professor, Professor of Practice, and Teaching Professor. Most faculty with titles of "Lecturer" and "Instructor" in the U.S. are not eligible for tenure, though they are still often referred to as "professors" in a general sense and as a courtesy form of address. Non-tenure-track positions may be full or part time, although the qualifier "adjunct" always denotes part-time.
Academic ranks in the United States are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
This article describes the academic positions and ranks in Sweden.
Academic staff, also known as faculty or academics, are vague terms that describe teachers or research staff of a school, college, university or research institute.
Sessional lecturer or sessional instructor are contract faculty who hold full- or part-time teaching positions and may perform administrative duties but have no research responsibilities. Sessionals hold short-term contracts, typically running one or two academic terms; in many post-secondary institutions sessional contracts may be renewed repeatedly but by definition, they offer no legal expectation of ongoing work. Unlike members of other academic ranks, sessional lecturers are ineligible for tenure. It is an academic rank for a type of job common in Canadian and Australian universities and colleges.
The following are academic ranks in the Finnish higher education system. There are a specific number of posts, which can be applied to when they are vacated or established.
Academic ranks in the United Kingdom are the titles, relative seniority and responsibility of employees in universities. In general the country has three academic career pathways: one focused on research, one on teaching, and one that combines the two.
Academic ranks in Norway are the system of merit-based ranks used by academic employees in academia. Similar to the British rank system, the Norwegian rank system is broadly divided into three pathways, a combined research and teaching career pathway, a research career pathway and a teaching career pathway.
Academic ranks in India are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
Academic ranks in Israel are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
Academic ranks in Colombia are the titles, relative importance and power of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
Academic ranks in Denmark are the positions and titles of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia at Danish institutions, and the relations between them.
An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, but the term is generally agreed to mean a bona-fide part-time faculty member in an adjunct position at an institution of higher education.