Who are UGA's Non-Tenure-Track Faculty?

Botanical Garden tour

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 (PDF) include not only the 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 42% of the full-time faculty.

See more in our At a Glance Overview document (PDF)  that includes details about each faculty track. We also have a presentation about UGA's non-tenure-track faculty (PDF)  that includes some of the findings from the 2018 campus-wide survey.

For 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"!