Committee on Academic Priorities (CAP)

The Committee on Academic Priorities is charged with the responsibility for recommending academic priorities (including priorities concerning staffing allocations, department and program facilities and resources, and restructuring or terminating existing departments and programs) per Article III, Section 1(a)(ii) of the Plan of Governance and in the Faculty By-Laws, Article VI. E, and with the authority to advise the President on institutional priorities and on the College budget, to the extent that it affects institutional priorities. The Faculty may, to the extent that it deems it appropriate, assign additional responsibilities within the jurisdiction of the Faculty to this committee. You may also refer to the history of CAP and the CAP archives.

The 2025-2026 members of the Committee on Academic Priorities

  • Astrid Lindenlauf (Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology) (2022-2026)
  • Pedro Marenco (Geology) (2025-2029)
  • Dee Matthews (Creative Writing) (2024-2028)
  • Michael Noel (Physics) (2022-2026) (on leave Semester I)
  • Adrienne Prettyman (Philosophy) (2023-2027) (Chair) (Serves on the Advisory Council and Representative to the Board of Trustees)
  • Joel Schlosser (Political Science) (2025-2029) (on leave Semester II)

Former Recent Chairs of the Committee on Academic Priorities

  • Maja Šešelj (Anthropology) (2024-2025)
  • Kate Thomas (Literatures in English) (2023-2024)
  • Penny Armstrong (French and Francophone Studies) (2021-2022; 2022-2023)

Most Recent Documents

Annual Report & Responses

2024-2025 Annual Report, April 2025

2025 Annual Report Response, July 2025

Proposals for Positions

2025-2026 Tenure Track and Continuing Non-Tenure Track Intended Positions Requests to CAP, October 2025

Information for 2026-2027 Position Requests

Below you will find the Committee on Academic Priorities (CAP) guidelines for requests for tenure track (TT) and continuing non-tenure track (CNTT) positions.

CAP is available during the Fall 2026 semester to meet with any department or program Chair, Director, or faculty group to discuss the submission of a specific position request or any long-range planning issues. Please contact the CAP Chair Adrienne Prettyman with a copy to Tina Bockius, if you have questions that you would like answered either by email, or if you would like to schedule a meeting with the committee.

Please note that CAP has implemented changes regarding the format of the proposal, which consists of a 12-page questionnaire (with space for a narrative) and a preformatted Excel spreadsheet that petitioning departments/programs need to fill out with their enrollment and staffing information. The 2026-2027 questionnaire can be found on CAP’s website. Please be aware that late submissions cannot be accepted. 

Position Proposal Process

Departments or programs wishing to request a tenure-track or continuing non-tenure track position in 2026/27 are required to submit a letter of intent form that briefly outlines the position to be proposed. As a revision to our process in light of the transition to 2/2 for tenure stream faculty, CAP also requests that departments or programs that anticipate submitting a request within the next 3 years (for any reason, including but not limited to the impact of 2/2) submit an LOI and indicate the planned timeline of their request. The letter of intent should be emailed, as an attachment, to CAP via Tina Bockius, by September 4, 2026. 

For departments or programs that wish to proceed with a request in 2026/27, full proposals should be emailed to CAP via Tina Bockius, by October 20, 2026, using the proposal questionnaire (Word document) and staffing information (Excel spreadsheet) located on the CAP website. Please note that this deadline is firm and cannot be extended. Once the proposal documentation is submitted, it goes directly to CAP and no further changes are possible. Should you have any questions regarding the required documentation, please contact the CAP chair, Adrienne Prettyman, and copy Tina Bockius, before the end of the submission window. Proposals that are incomplete, submitted late (without prior CAP approval), or do not adhere to the submission guidelines, will be returned without consideration. When completing the staffing worksheet, please ensure that all faculty are entered for a full-time load of CEs (whether 4 or 5) and if there is a discrepancy, please use the comment box to explain. In addition to the Excel Staffing Information spreadsheet that departments/programs will complete, the Office of Institutional Research will produce more detailed enrollment reports. Departments and programs that submit a letter of intent should expect to receive the report by the end of September. If you need help accessing this information through Bionic, please contact the Registrar, Kirsten O’Beirne.

CAP examines each position request in terms of:

  • the College’s core mission to deliver an excellent education across the liberal arts at the undergraduate level, and across existing graduate programs in the humanities, sciences, and social work;
  • sustainably balancing curricular breadth and depth with student trends and enrollment pressures;
  • contributions to disciplinary and interdisciplinary directions;
  • relation to existing faculty resources relative to enrollment pressures, including re-envisioning curricular choices and/or leveraging interdisciplinary and Bi-Co collaborations to alleviate pressures efficiently.
  • impact across the College, including contributions to College-wide and interdisciplinary initiatives or other programs, keeping in mind these must be balanced against the needs of the home department;
  • impact on the department/program's need for interim staffing;
  • opportunities to enhance the diversity of our faculty, conceived broadly;.
  • In the case of CNTT requests, see the established guidelines on the nature of CNTT appointments.
  • Bi-Co departments and program requests will be considered in consultation with Haverford’s Strategic Curriculum and Personnel Committee (SCPC).
  • Department/program submits a one-page letter of intent form for anticipated requests in the next 3 academic years. The LOI should indicate clearly whether the Department/program intends to submit a full proposal in 2026/27.
  • After September 4, letters of intent will be shared with faculty. CAP highly recommends that departments/programs who have submitted LOIs hold listening meetings for departments, programs, and faculty who may have a shared interest in the proposed line(s) and would like to collaborate.
  • CAP Chair sends a message to all faculty inviting them to look at these letters of intent, and reaches out to department/program chairs/directors with curricular interests in the positions identified in the letters of intent.

Full proposals due to CAP for 2026/27 (using both the Word Questionnaire and Excel Staffing Information documents and submitted electronically)

  • CAP conducts a formal meeting with each department/program
  • CAP provides its recommendations to the President and the Board of Trustees
  • CAP submits its Annual Report to the faculty
  • The President and the Board of Trustees make their final decisions

Committee on Academic Priorities History & Archives

 

The Ad Hoc Academic Planning Committee, which preceded CAP, first met in November 1987. It was charged, according to the College’s Middle States Report “with developing plans for the academic future of the College within the guidelines of the already adopted Plan for Achieving Financial Equilibrium [PAFE].” Related concerns included but were not limited to faculty research issues, the relationship between research and teaching, the nature of the curriculum, and faculty workload level. The Committee was composed of members of the Faculty and the Administration. Its co-chairs were Judith Shapiro (Professor of Anthropology and Provost from 1986 to 1994) and Dale Kinney (History of Art). Three members were liaisons from the Curriculum Committee, the Committee on Appointments, and the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research (GSSWSR). The six additional members included three colleagues elected from the floor of the faculty and the Deans of the Undergraduate College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the GSSWSR. During its first semester of meetings, the Committee indicated its interest in and concern about merging departments (thus deciding to oversee the Bi-College French merger, after that of German had occurred without any input from College committees), “increasing faculty participation in academic decision making and setting of policy”, as well as catalyzing discussion of issues and policy in faculty meetings. Members of this first year of the Ad Hoc Academic Planning Committee were Dale Kinney, Jane Caplan (History), Noel Farley (Economics), Frank Mallory (Chemistry), Al Albano (Physics), James Wright (Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology), Jane Kronick (Social Work and Social Research), the Deans of the Undergraduate College, the GSAS, and the GSSWSR and Provost Judith Shapiro.

This experiment having proved a success, the faculty voted to change the bylaws, make this committee a permanent part of the institution, and re-conceptualize it as a faculty committee only, consisting of five tenured members of the faculty elected from its floor with a view to representation from the various divisions and schools. The duly elected and newly named Committee on Academic Priorities first met in March 1989 and its first five members were Dale Kinney, Jane Kronick, James Wright, Penny Armstrong (French), and Margaret Hollyday (Biology).  Its charge, as articulated in the minutes of May 15, 1989, was “to engage academic priorities for the College”. In these early working meetings, Committee members agreed to study the following issues: the structure of fulltime tenure lines, part-timelines, non-tenure lines; minimum and maximum enrollments; the definition of a full-time teaching load and examination of decisions based on these figures; study of how workload credits were counted; analysis of courses within departments by numbers of students and levels of courses; study of the Arts program, its rationale and status. The Committee also decided to take responsibility for recommendations to the President regarding search requests submitted by departments and programs. CAP also indicated its desire to have input in the external reviews of departments and programs. We note with interest the continuing relevance of the issues identified by the first CAP.

(June 2007)

 

 

 

 

 

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