During the Baker University Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday, the senators discussed the De Facto Tenure motion, but no decision was made.

The De Facto Tenure motion was proposed at the Oct. 5 faculty senate meeting by Ryan Beasley, associate professor of international studies.

If added to the faculty handbook, De Facto Tenure would be awarded to a faculty member who serves the university in the same way as a tenured-track professor, but is not tenured and is on a probationary period of seven or more years.

“What I want to avoid is having a tenure-track professor go through and (an) administrator say ‘we don’t want to have you get tenure, but we do want you to continue to work here,'” Beasley said.

Beasley said by adding the proposal to the faculty handbook, a decision would have to be made after the probation or review period has been served.

“By doing that, we are recognizing that a person should be tenured, but we don’t want them to go through the process where they did not go through the proper process,” Ran Sivron, associate professor of physics, said.

The senators had discussion for some time during the meeting.

“We would not be able to string them along having them do all of the things a tenure faculty member does without giving them tenure,” Beasley said. “It is a way to make sure we appropriately review someone for tenure when the time comes.”

The motion was postponed until the next faculty senate meeting.

At the meeting, changes to the biology course numbers were made, as well as changes to the biology minor.

The four required introductory biology course numbers were changed in order to make it more clear for students.

The minor requirements have been changed to two courses at the 100-200 level, each of which must have a laboratory component, and two courses at the 300 level, one of which must have a laboratory component.

Professor of Biology Darcy Russell said the changes were made to benefit the students so their major can specialize in the area they would like.

“We want to make it more flexible for students,” Russell said.