Technische Universität Darmstadt has been using the assistant professorships as an alternate career path to a professorship for some time. The first tenure procedure was successfully completed in 2012, since then four more have followed. By means of the Tenure-Track Programme, TU Darmstadt would like to establish this career path permanently and throughout the entire university.
TU Darmstadt has developed its guideline for tenure-track professorships further on the basis of its previous experiences. The guideline includes an individual target agreement upon appointment as well as a mid-term review as an important point of reference during the term of the professorship. Furthermore, each assistant professorship will be assigned a non-specialist mentor upon request.
New assistant professorships with tenure-track are generally filled as W2 professorships with a six-year term. The 20 professorships which were granted are scheduled to be established within all three clusters of the university (Engineering, Natural Sciences and Humanities). By implementing tenure-track broadly across the university the course is set for a comprehensive structural and cultural change in professorial appointment procedures. At the same time the university aims to use the tenure-track professorships to further increase the number of female professors.
In the medium term, the tenure-track professorship shall become an accepted alternative to the “classical” appointment: In 2030, TU Darmstadt will recruit about half of its professors through a W2 assistant professorship with tenure-track.