What's in a title

I have been updating information in the database that contains records for all the folks who are on the campus here. For the past couple of days, I have been updating information provided by Dallas International University (DIU). They provided me with corrected information, among other things, for the position titles of the staff of the university.

Now, as I was going through this, I was bemused to think that this is yet another language - one that has great meaning and significance to those in the university realm, but... not so much to commoners such as me!

Here is an alphabetized list of the positions that I gathered from the data updates:

Adjunct Faculty
Assistant Instructor
Assistant Professor
Associate Instructor
Associate Professor
Chair
Dean
Department Head
Instructor
Professor
Teacher

So... what do the different titles mean? Who outranks whom? Make your guesses!

I am not sure that I can answer my own question... and I'm not sure that the answers are always consistent from one university to another...

In considering differences, one concept that comes up in the definition is "tenure". According to Wikepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_tenure):

Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Tenure is a means of defending the principle of academic freedom, which holds that it is beneficial for society in the long run if scholars are free to hold and examine a variety of views.

Looking for an explanation between Instructor and Professor, I found this site: https://tophat.com/blog/instructor-vs-professor/

Most of the time, “professor” refers to a tenure-track professorship appointment. “Instructor,” similar to “lecturer,” covers everybody else who teaches in universities, with jobs that are contract, full time or part time.

For Assistant vs Associate vs "full":

For most universities and colleges, an assistant professor is the first rank. She or he will be able to call themselves ‘professor’ but must achieve tenure within a set number of years (usually a maximum of seven) to rise to the next rank. An associate professor is someone who is promoted when they achieve tenure; the title of professor is then granted to somebody when their university has decided they are distinguished within their discipline.

What about "Adjunct"?

On the other hand, adjunct professors are not part of faculty, but depending on their school’s policies, they may able to use the title “professor” as a courtesy title—namely, one that doesn’t carry any legal weight. Adjuncts are paid per course taught instead of a salary: instructors can be salaried and have formal positions, but often aren’t eligible for tenure.

Definition of adjunct: "something added to another thing but not essential to it." (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/adjunct)

As a side note, while at the Welcome Desk this afternoon, I was talking with one of the professors about my thoughts on writing this blog, and I shared with her that "adjunct" is not a word that I commonly use, but I thought it would be interesting to see if I could use it several times this weekend and see if anyone notices. She mentioned that there could be an "adjunct" seating area, and I suggested an "adjunct" to my dining table... of course, that got us talking about the "junk" that might be on top of that "adjunct" table... but... I digress...

And then there are the "Chair", "Dean", and "Department Head" terms... These seem to have a lot less defined commonality between different institutions. I saw several postings that seemed to equate a "Department Chair" and "Department Head". Others indicated that "Head" is more administrative and "Chair" is more academically oriented. And then, "Dean" is over a "college" which may include multiple "departments".

So, going from lowest ranking to highest ranking, I *think* would be:

Adjunct Faculty

Assistant Instructor
Associate Instructor
Instructor/Teacher
Assistant Professor
Associate ProfessorProfessor
Department Head
Chair
Dean

I am not at all sure how Adjunct "ranks", but since they seem to be, by definition, part-time, and Instructors can be full time, I put it lowest.
I put "Teacher" at the same level as "Instructor" because of the article that mentioned "lecturer" with "Instructor", but my gut feel is that "Teacher" might be a lower level term, and again, may be institution dependent.
I also found a 34 page document of academic titles from Cornell: https://hr.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/documents/academic_titles.pdf

If anyone has corrections to this, please let me know, and I will issue a corrected post!!!