Provost Statement on Hiring Credentials - Office of the Provost - Christopher Newport University

Office of the Provost

Provost Statement on Hiring Credentials

Two considerations influence and inform the university's hiring decisions of instructional faculty. First, over the past 15 years, Christopher Newport University has been transformed from an open admissions commuter school to a highly selective liberal arts university. We seek to become more selective and more rigorous. As part of the continuing process of transformation, our standards and expectations for faculty have changed. We demand that our new faculty be able to provide excellent teaching at the undergraduate level and produce scholarship that allows them to remain current in their scholarly fields.

Second, the decision to hire a tenure-track faculty member represents an enormous investment for the university and, ultimately, the taxpayers of Virginia. We expect those who are hired for tenure-track positions will achieve tenure and will spend their careers at the university. We envision a 30- or 40-year relationship and expect that the tenured faculty member will make a profound and positive impact on our students, other faculty members and his/her field.

Because of these greater demands on new faculty and because of the magnitude of the investment, we consider a wide variety of factors, including teaching ability, scholarship potential, interpersonal skills and commitment to our liberal arts values, in determining who is the best candidate. While all of these factors are relevant, we also expect that our candidates will be graduates of either a prestigious undergraduate institution or a highly ranked doctoral program. By considering the reputation of the undergraduate and graduate programs, we are following the implicit and explicit practices of the most prestigious institutions in the nation – a group to which the university aspires.

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