At Trent, faculty must be members of the graduate faculty in order to instruct or supervise graduate students. All graduate faculty must be tenure-track or tenure stream appointments, with a PhD or equivalent qualification appropriate to their program. Membership on graduate faculty denotes the ability and willingness to be engaged in one or more of the following activities:
- act as an MRP, thesis or dissertation supervisor
- serve on supervisory committees
- teach graduate courses, set and mark exams
- supervise or sit on comprehensive, candidacy, or qualifying exams
- chair oral thesis/dissertation and other examinations
- supervise graduate internships, placements and research projects
Members of graduate faculty should have an ongoing, active program of research as indicated by research activities listed in the Trent Quality Assurance CV template. These include, but are not limited to :
- publications such as books, journal articles, chapters in books, conference proceedings, and reviews and reports that are read and/or reviewed by their academic peers
- technical or other reports for agencies under a research contract
- the presentation of invited or submitted papers at scholarly conferences professional meetings and other venues attended by colleagues in their field of expertise
- internal and external peer-reviewed grants and contracts
- editorship of a journal, or membership on an editorial board
- Indigenous Studies faculty members who have qualified, or intend to qualify for tenure under Trent guidelines as a candidate with traditional aboriginal knowledge, or as a dual tradition scholar, may count scholarly activities outlined in the Indigenous Studies statement on the process for tenure and periodic review
Procedures for appointment
- One or more approved graduate faculty members in a graduate program may recommend to the appropriate executive, personnel or program committee, scholars whom they consider worthy of appointment to graduate faculty. If the program approves the nomination, it is forwarded to the Dean of Graduate Studies with documentary evidence of the person’s qualifications, including a current curriculum vitae, and a covering letter from the nominee explaining their interest in the appointment to a particular graduate programme and more broadly graduate faculty at Trent.
- All applications must be reviews by the Graduate Studies Advisory Committee on Appointments which is made up of two graduate directors drawn from the GSC and two ‘at large’ graduate faculty, all of whom will serve for two to three year terms. At large faculty representatives will be nominated by the graduate programs, with final appointments made by the Graduate Dean.
- Recommendations of the Advisory Committee are sent to the Graduate Studies Committee for final approval. The Dean of Graduate Studies will send a letter to all nominees, advising them of the GSC’s decision, copied to the graduate program which nominated them. Letters to successful candidates will also be copied to their home undergraduate department and to the Provost.
- Annually, the School of Graduate Studies will provide a list to COAP of those appointed to graduate faculty, for information purposes only.
- Every seven years, or when a Quality Assurance external review takes place, graduate faculty will be asked by the director of their home graduate program is they wish to be reappointed. Applications for reappointment should include a report on their past contributions to the graduate program, their anticipated future contributions, and an updated curriculum vitae.
- Graduate programs may set more precise criteria for appointments to graduate faculty, denoting the nature, quantity, and quality of the candidate’s research production, and they may establish criteria on teaching and supervision that is specific to their program. These specific details must be made available to the Graduate Studies committee reviewing these appointments.