Tenure track professorships

Tenure track professorships at Leuphana

With the tenure-track professorship, Leuphana offers excellent young researchers an attractive and predictable career perspective with optimal development opportunities on the career path to a lifetime professorship. The aim is to retain outstanding young researchers at Leuphana at an early stage of their career.

A tenure track professorship is initially limited to six years as a junior professorship or five years as a professorship. However, subject to a positive evaluation at the end of the tenure-track professorship, the transition to a lifetime professorship is held out. The evaluation based on a quality-assured procedure replaces the usual appointment procedure.

Procedure

1. Appointment of the junior professorship with tenure track

In a first stage, the tenure track professorship is to be filled according to the appointment regulations of Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
Details on the appointment procedure at Leuphana can be found here.

Special aspects of the procedures for filling tenure track professorships:

  • The appointment procedure is always carried out with a grand appointment committee.
  •  External reviews are always obtained.
  •  The reviewers are internationally renowned university professors.

2. Junior professorship with tenure track leading to W2

  • Taking up the junior professorship for three years (first phase).
  • Interim evaluation in the third year.
  • Second phase of the junior professorship for another three years.

3. Tenure evaluation

In the sixth year of the junior professorship, the tenure evaluation takes place. In this quality-assured procedure, it is reviewed whether the candidate has fulfilled the evaluation criteria and whether the permanent professorship can be given.

 

Timeline junior professorship with tenure track

Appointment procedure
for filling the junior professorship

Junior professorship
1. phase
1. year 
2. year 
3. yearInterim evaluation
junior professorship
2. phase
4. year 
5. year 
6. yearTenure evaluation

Tenure Track Programme

Leuphana University of Lüneburg is one of the universities funded by the Joint Federal Government-Länder Funding Programme for Junior Academics (Tenure Track Programme).

Brief information about Leuphana University of Lüneburg from the Tenure Track Programme:

The creative capacity of our professors and the desire of our young scientists to develop their talents are the key to our innovative strength. In order to qualify our young scientists for a long-term scientific career and to promote them in the best possible way, Leuphana University has established a transparent career system in which the various career paths, the personnel development concept and specific support measures have been jointly developed with the relevant committees. Based on tenure-track procedures, goals that promise a successful intermediate or final tenure evaluation are early on discussed with junior professors in the course of their appointment, then jointly adapted to the respective subject culture and individual situation and finally recorded. Thus, Leuphana University already ensures transparency of this process. In addition, Leuphana University offers a comprehensive and coherent funding system. It is based on its personnel development concept adopted in 2016 as part of its university development planning. In order to further improve work-family balance, Leuphana University continuously advances its family-friendly tradition by expanding its comprehensive childcare and by promoting the various career paths of female academics.
Academic achievement is the foundation of academic careers at Leuphana University. Young scientists are encouraged at an early stage to realistically assess their career prospects on the basis of transparent criteria, guided by collegial and professional advice.
In order to enable promising young scientists to pursue a reliable career in the academic system, Leuphana University creates 3 new professorships within the framework of the Tenure Track Programme. The project permanently establishes the Leuphana tenure-track professorship as an independent career path in its personnel structure. These junior professorships are intended to attract highly qualified researchers nationally and internationally. The international competitive capacity of these professorships will be increased with offers of research development and competence promotion.

Tracks for Growing

The Leuphana University offers as an important part of its human resource development a funding structure based on international standards to qualify junior researchers for an academic carrier and to encourage them in the best way possible. For this purpose, the University created interdependent measures for professional qualification, international networking, the improvement of interdisciplinary and methodological competences and it enables young researchers to form their individual scope of work.