The University of Stuttgart has been filling junior professorships with and without tenure-track since 2006. Its statutes contain provisions to ensure the quality of the appointment and performance assessment procedures. Based on the positive experience gained with junior professorships, the University of Stuttgart aims to further promote young academics. Hence, in accordance with a binding fundamental decision, the sustainable and university-wide implementation of tenure-track professorships as an equal career path is currently in progress. There will be three categories of professorships in future: Full Professorship (W3), Tenure-Track Professorship (W1) and temporary Junior Professorship (W1).
Tenure-track professorships are advertised with the guaranteed conversion to a full professorship depending solely on a positive final evaluation that usually takes place after five years. The tenure-track professorship will be implemented pursuant to the university’s overall strategy and its objectives in the promotion of junior academic staff. These include improving the reliability, transparency and predictability of career paths, strengthening early academic independence, increasing the international competitiveness as well as encouraging equal opportunities and the compatibility of family and career.
During the course of the funding programme, the University of Stuttgart will successively establish additional tenure-track professorships from its own resources and pledges to advertise up to 20% of all W3 professorships as tenure-track professorships (W1) in the long term.
Apart from the envisaged structural and cultural change, the profile contents will also be promoted, on the one hand in the University of Stuttgart’s main strategic fields of research, and on the other hand in the new university-wide vision “Intelligent systems for a sustainable society”.