Provost launches annual search for tenure-track faculty

The timeline and processes have been announced for the 2023 institutional hiring plan, known as the IHP, which will designate the tenure-track faculty searches for the 2023-24 academic year.

The plan allows the University of Oregon to keep strategic priorities at the forefront and gives direction to progress happening across campus. This will be the seventh year that the university has engaged in an institutional hiring plan process.

Because of its importance to the university, the hiring plan is created through a collaborative process. The process begins locally with faculty members, involves discussions between the provost and individual deans, and concludes with feedback from advisory groups including the deans, the provost’s Faculty Hiring Advisory Committee, relevant initiative leads and others. All final decisions related to the IHP are the responsibility of the provost.

After a few cautious years due to COVID-19, acting Provost Janet Woodruff-Borden is optimistic that the 2023 plan will grow faculty numbers.

“We are committed to keeping up the momentum on our academic priorities,” Woodruff-Borden said. “I look forward to seeing proposals that build on our successes and support our pursuit of transformational research and teaching.”

The IHP process will prioritize proposals that best fit the institution’s long-term goals, Woodruff-Borden said. Each proposal must describe how a hire in the designated area would clearly map to the strategic vision, values and needs of the university and the priorities of the school or college.

Woodruff-Borden also wants proposals to describe how a hire would do one or more of the following:

  • Contribute to growth or maintenance of excellence in national and international leadership of the university within the proposed field.
  • Help catalyze inclusive excellence in new areas of research or creative activity, maintain or strengthen established premier areas of research or creative activity, or draw together multiple areas of research or creative excellence.
  • Grow or maintain areas of demonstrated prospective or future undergraduate student interest.
  • Grow or maintain successful graduate programs, where there is faculty capacity for building areas of excellence or new programs of particular institutional need.

Proposals tied to the Environment Initiative or the Sport and Wellness Initiative also must describe how the search will contribute to the development and success of that specific initiative.

Deans will solicit proposals from their school or college and submit their 2023 hiring plan proposals to the Office of the Provost by Feb. 3, 2023.

Complete details of the plan can be viewed on the Office of the Provost website.