AN ACT Relating to creating new full-time tenure track positions at the state's four-year public institutions of higher education; adding a new section to chapter 28B.10 RCW; creating a new section; and providing an expiration date.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

(a) One of the most valuable assets of the four-year public institutions of higher education is the tenured faculty who teach, advise, mentor, and in many other ways contribute to the institutions that employ them. According to research, student completion and success in college improve when students are taught by tenured faculty members. However, in 2016, only forty-five to fifty-five percent of the faculty at the state and regional universities were full-time tenure track faculty.

(b) Student completion and success may be significantly improved by increasing the percent of full-time tenure track faculty who will provide instruction, advising, mentoring, curriculum and resource development, and other functions.

(2) Therefore, it is the legislature's goal that over the next several years, the four-year public institutions increase the numbers of full-time tenure track faculty positions on their campuses.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 2.  A new section is added to chapter 28B.10 RCW to read as follows:

(1) For the purposes of this section "four-year public institution" refers to any one of the state or regional universities or the state college.

(2)(a) Subject to availability of amounts appropriated for this specific purpose, the faculty expansion program at the four-year public institutions is created. The purpose of the program is to encourage the four-year public institutions to increase the number of full-time tenure track faculty positions on their campuses.

(b) For every two full-time tenure track faculty positions created by a four-year public institution in the 2017-2019 fiscal biennium, which the four-year public institution must fill or be actively seeking to fill, the program must provide to that four-year public institution one hundred thousand dollars for the 2017-2019 fiscal biennium and one hundred thousand dollars for the 2019-2021 fiscal biennium, to be used solely for the purpose of funding a third full-time tenure track faculty position at the four-year public institution, which the four-year public institution must fill or actively seek to fill. Each four-year public institution is eligible to receive up to five hundred thousand dollars for the 2017-2019 fiscal biennium and five hundred thousand dollars for the 2019-2021 fiscal biennium, to fund a total of five program-funded full-time tenure track faculty positions created under this section.

(c) A four-year public institution is eligible to receive amounts under this section only if the prerequisite full-time tenure track faculty positions created are new. A new full-time tenure track faculty position means a position that did not exist at the four-year public institution before the fall of 2017. A vacant full-time tenure track faculty position that exists due to attrition or retirement is not a new full-time tenure track faculty position and may not be counted as a prerequisite full-time tenure track faculty position for the purposes of this section.

(d) The duties of the prerequisite full-time tenure track faculty positions and the program-funded full-time tenure track faculty positions must include a full-time teaching load, advising, and curriculum development.

(3) This section expires June 30, 2022.

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