Hi all,

Like many other institutions I presume, my university has a two-tier faculty: tenure-earning and tenured faculty (more prestige, power, and pay) and non-tenure-earning instructors/lecturers (less job protection, higher teaching loads, lower pay, etc).  As our faculty union enters in full-book contract negotiations next year, we'd like to propose a way for those in non-tenure earning lines to cross-over into tenure-earning positions (should they desire to do so), i.e. for a lecturer with a PhD and a research record to apply for a promotion to assistant or associate professor.  If anyone has models for this at their institutions, I'd love to hear about them.

Note:  I am not looking for two-track promotion systems.  Our instructors and lecturers can be promoted to more advanced levels of the same (associate or full instructors and lecturers).  What I am looking for is the ability to leap from one (lecturer) track to the other (assistant professor) track.  I think of this as creating a path to full citizenship in the academy.  It is also a way to protect tenure from becoming further eroded as the neoliberal university increasingly replaces retirees who had tenure with non-tenure earning lines.  I also see it as a feminist issue, since here as elsewhere, academic hierarchies are highly gendered with women carrying heavier teaching loads and earning lower pay.

Thanks, in advance, for any models or ideas you can share!  

Shelley