The Faculty Senate voted to modify the criteria used to evaluate faculty for promotion and tenure after about 45 minutes of discussion yesterday. Some faculty senators said it would not be a big change.

"People are not going to be evaluated any less stringently," said John H. Sulzer, subcommittee member on tenure, promotion, appointments and leave. "It will just cut down on the confusion."

Sulzer said the Faculty Senate is still working on a plan to implement the system.

The change would condense the four-cell system of evaluation to a three-cell system. The original criteria judged the faculty on teaching ability and effectiveness; research or creative accomplishment; scholarship and mastery of subject matter; and service to the University, the public and the profession. The new system would combine scholarship and research into one category because they often overlap, Sulzer said.

It is not clear that the modification would be a benefit, said Christopher K. McKenna, subcommittee chair, adding the most common support for the change is that other schools are doing it. But the counterargument is that the current system has worked for the University in the past.

McKenna said faculty members would be evaluated using the plan under which they earned tenure. The three-cell plan would only affect new faculty members and those now in the tenure process for the 1995-96 school year. McKenna said this would be about a six-year transition process. But the transition period for faculty members awaiting promotions would be a little longer.

Caroline Eckhardt, professor of comparative literature, said she did not have strong feelings about the modification, but was concerned about having two tenure tracks during the transition period.

"It could be confusing," she said. "It could be confusing if we have to maintain three- and four-cell systems for many years."

But Sulzer said the new system would only be a modification. The change was suggested because scholarship and research sometimes overlap. A faculty member could write a paper, and that would be considered scholarship. But if that paper were to be published, it would also count as research, he said.

In addition to combining the research and scholarship categories, Sulzer said the system would reduce the amount of confusion for tenure candidates and the administration. Other institutions use the three-cell model with success, he said.