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Tenure-track professorship

The tenure-track professorship is intended for young scientists in their early career phase who, after a successful probationary period, can immediately move on to a lifetime professorship. Strengthening the tenure-track procedure at German universities is intended to make the path to a professorship more transparent and easier to plan for young scientists.

The federal and state governments are funding 1000 additional tenure-track professorships at German universities through their tenure-track program. Current announcements of professorships funded by the federal-state program can be found here.

The framework conditions for tenure-track professorships are regulated in each state's higher education act. In the Hessian Higher Education Act, the regulations can be found in § 64.

The tenure-track procedure at JLU

JLU fills 20-30% of all scheduled vacancies as tenure-track professorships. In accordance with the tenure-track concept, JLU is thus actively and permanently changing its personnel structure in the area of professorships.

Goals of the tenure-track procedure

A quality-assured qualification procedure in the form of the JLU tenure track goes hand in hand with a multitude of benefits for the position holder, but also for JLU as a whole. With the tenure-track program, JLU would like to give

  •     offer outstanding postdocs a clear career perspective and a higher degree of predictability for their own career,
  •     strengthen the early scientific and organizational independence and self-responsibility of outstanding postdocs,
  •     create fair and transparent framework conditions under which outstanding postdocs can prove themselves at an early stage,
  •     promote the advancement of female careers in science as well as the compatibility of career and family,
  •     retain outstanding postdocs in the science system and at JLU,
  •     reintegrating young top researchers into the German science system after (longer) stays abroad and (re)attracting them to JLU.

Design of the tenure-track procedure

The JLU tenure-track professorship is based on a transparent, equality-oriented and fair process.

The central starting point of the process is the agreement on appointment objectives, which is negotiated between the Presidential Board and the tenure-track candidate. The defined individual goals relate to research, teaching, promotion of young researchers, further academic commitment, and personal competence development. Proven performance in research and teaching is determined in a two-stage evaluation process with the participation of external scientists. After two and a half years of service, the mid-term evaluation is initiated to determine the progress of probation. The final evaluation is initiated one year before the end of employment. During the period until then, all tenure-track professors receive individual support through annual status meetings with the deans and a representative of the President's Office, as well as a broad range of qualification, coaching, and mentoring services. For more information on the tenure-track process at JLU, the tenure-track support program, and contact persons at JLU, please visit the Human Resources Development page.