Dr. Timothy Fritz will soon become the chair of the history department. This comes after his recent tenure and promotion to Associate Professor from Assistant Professor.
Fritz is not new to the Mount and has been at the university since Jan. 2015. He received his Ph.D. in early American history from the University of Florida in 2014, and started at the Mount three weeks later.
Fritz has an M.A. in History from a Joint Graduate Program from the College of Charleston and the Citadel and a B.A. in History from North Carolina A&T State University. His areas of interest include early American history, Atlantic history, slavery, southern studies, borderlands and Native American history.
Tenure is the elevation of a university professor to the rank of Associate Professor. There are three ranks to a tenured professor, the first is Assistant Professor, the second is Associate Professor and the third and final is (Full) Professor. Contracts depend on what level of professorship someone may be at, but typically it is a rolling contract until you get tenure. Tenure essentially means that a professor has permanent employment at a school and is accepted into the community as a professor. “Think of it, if you’re a lawyer, it’s like becoming a partner,” says Fritz.
“To get tenure, the requirement for every department is different, but one thing that remains constant is that there is a certain number of expected publications in peer-reviewed journals or writing a book, usually it is a specified number of journal articles or a book,” he added.
Tenure also includes being involved in the community outside of the department in which a professor may work. Fritz serves as the Director of Mount 101, which is the university’s bridge program that takes place during summers.
One of Fritz’s duties as in charge will be scheduling courses. “I will be hearing from my colleagues and seeing what courses they want to teach that semester and working that out, anything we can’t cover, helping to fill that. That might be hiring adjunct professors or working with other department chairs to have them count towards the major,” Fritz said of his new responsibilities as chair. He will also have to attend meetings with chairs of other departments of the university.
“I am most excited for figuring out new ways to help out students, coming up with new courses and working with fellow department chairs to further diversify our curriculum.” Fritz will be replacing Dr. Gregory Murry as Murry will be moving onto a new administrative role in Bradley Hall.
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