Non-Tenure-Track Faculty at UGA
Who are UGA's Non-Tenure-Track Faculty?
Faculty members in non-tenure-track (also called "career track") faculty roles fill a range of key positions at the University of Georgia (UGA).
UGA's faculty ranks include not only the academic rank tenured/tenure-track faculty (professors, associate professors, and assistant professors), but also nine other types of faculty who make up almost half of all full-time faculty at UGA.
While all of these roles are part of UGA's faculty, these non-tenure-track positions often specialize in advancing particular elements of UGA's mission (e.g., teaching, research, service/outreach, administration), and usually bring substantial "real-world" expertise to their positions. (For instance, respondents to our 2020 non-tenure-track faculty survey reported an average of over 10 years of full-time employment outside of higher education.)
UGA's non-tenure-eligible faculty roles include the following:
Academic Professionals: Usually includes administrative or outreach work. Can include instruction, scholarship, service/outreach, administration. However, teaching plus research must be less than 50% total.
Clinical faculty: Can include instruction, scholarship, service/outreach, administration. May include clinical supervision. In some schools/colleges, called "professors of practice."
Lecturer: Primarily or entirely focused on instruction. Can include teaching, scholarship, service, administration. Some units may include administrative work at senior ranks.
Librarian: Usually have job-specific “Professional Activities”; promotion focuses on these plus service, research/creative activities.
Public Service: Must be 51% or more service/outreach. Usually role focuses on consultation/technical assistance, training, and/or applied research, and includes faculty in PSO units, cooperative extension, and some in academic units.
Research Scientist: Usually primarily or entirely assigned for research/scholarship, but may include teaching, scholarship, service, administration.
Instructor: Usually teaching only.
Administrative A: Usually administration.
Staff Physician:Job-specific. Some may have instructional responsibilities, esp. with the medical partnership.
At UGA, non-tenure-track faculty comprise over 50% of the full-time faculty.
See more in our At a Glance Overview document (PDF) that includes details about each faculty track as well as a presentation on NTT Faculty at UGA An Overview of Career Tracks and Perspectives from 2019.
At A Glance Comparison of NTT Ranks 12.2024.pdfNon-Tenure-Track Faculty at UGA Overview Presentation 9.2019.pdfFor current data from the Office of Institutional Research, UGA employees can log in to access the FACTS database to see faculty ranks, distributions, gender/ethnicity, etc.
Note: Non-tenure-track does not mean "part-time," "adjunct," or "limited-term" (though there are non-tenure-track faculty who also are in those categories). In some of the national literature, non-tenure-track faculty are called "contingent" faculty, although that name implies a shortened status of employment which is typically not the case for UGA's faculty in these roles. UGA's respondents in the 2020 NTT survey reported an average of over 7.5 years of service in their current roles, and almost 70% plan to be employed at UGA in five years; those who feel unlikely to still be at UGA report the most likely reason, as "retirement!"