Professor
The rank of (full) professor is the highest attainment of a faculty member’s career. At this level, your experience is valuable in shaping the university’s research and teaching and ensuring that we sustain a strong infrastructure of faculty support. As a professor, you’re valued in the UMass Boston community and play a vital role in your disciplines.
Professors often mentor pre-tenure and associate professors as well, which is a significant component of their work.
Important Faculty Resources
We’ve compiled the most important links for faculty, including the Annual Faculty Report (AFR), a repository of your yearly teaching, research, scholarship, service, and creative activity.
- The Red Book (Academic Personnel Policy)
- WISER Faculty Guide
- Faculty Staff Union
- Annual Faculty Report
Faculty Leadership Fellows Program
We invite tenured faculty members to apply to the Leadership Fellows program. You'll learn about leadership, data-informed assessment & planning, inclusive excellence, budgeting, personnel management, and conflict resolution. To apply, please send a ~500-word statement on why this opportunity interests you. What do you hope to achieve as a leadership fellow? What skills do you have that benefit the campus? What tasks and responsibilities have you taken on that qualify you for this fellowship?
Faculty Development
These centers and programs are useful for faculty who want to develop and hone their craft and teaching skills.
- Center for Innovative Teaching (CIT)
- National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD)
- Grand Scholarly Challenges
TEACH Sessions
Stay tuned for TEACH session announcements! These virtual sessions are specifically designed to address faculty concerns and questions about a range of issues, including how to create innovative assignments in an age of AI tools and how to ensure students keep up with work when their attendance has suffered due to unavoidable circumstances.
Periodic Multi-Year Review
The Periodic Multi-Year Review (PMYR) is for tenured faculty and librarians on continuing appointment and is conducted every seven years after tenure is awarded. It is a peer assessment of a faculty member’s continued effective performance in teaching, research, and service.
The PMYR may be delayed under certain conditions, such as if a tenured faculty member has an administrative appointment (e.g., a department chair or Associate Dean). Consult your department chair about the timing of your PMYR and the materials required for it. The Office for Faculty Development holds an informational session on the PMYR in May of each academic year.
Research Active
What does it mean to be actively engaged in research? Every department and discipline conceptualizes research, creative, and professional activity in different ways, and the expectations vary across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
Research, creative, and professional activity typically comprises submission of articles, creative pieces, and/or grants for review, presentation at conferences, and other professional activity deemed by a department or college to constitute robust participation in and contribution to the discipline. Being research-active is tied to the teaching load for tenured faculty. All pre-tenured faculty are deemed to be research active and assigned a 2-2 teaching load (two courses per semester) per academic year.
Department Chairs
Your department chair is your first point of contact for all things academic. To learn the full scope of your department chair’s responsibilities and how they can help you, visit our Department Chair section.