Coaching Academics?

A longtime reader and sometime correspondent of mine recently posed some questions to share with FSP readers (if you are still out there). These questions are quite specific, although there are general questions associated with them (more on that below):

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Question 1: Do you have any recommendations for professional coaches who have helped you in your job? It would be especially helpful to know of those who have had success coaching academics, and particularly women in male-dominated fields.

Question 2: Do you know any examples of universities conducting reviews of their own tenure process? Do you have any suggestions for academic experts in judgment & decision-making (or other relevant research areas) who would be good committee members for such a review?

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I have no answers for these particular questions, and instead have questions about the questions. For example: 

 

Even if you don't have any particular recommendations, what do you think of the concept of having a professional coach to help academics? Do you think that would be useful, and if so, with what particular issues? Would this essentially be like a faculty mentor, though one possibly more likely to have actual, useful mentoring skills?

And to the second question: Most of us can likely think of universities that have problematic tenure procedures (and possibly using the term procedures is incorrect in some cases, as it implies a systematic process). Can you think (or better, name) institutions that do this evaluation well? If so, what is so good about the process at these places? Are these positive features exportable to other institutions (peer institutions or otherwise)?

 

Maybe Definitely Give This Person Tenure

By request, this is a follow-up post on last week's musing about being the external letter-writer for someone's tenure/promotion evaluation. Today I will compare the wording of positive letters vs. not-so-positive (but not killer negative) letters (in the US academic system) to demonstrate the differences; some differences are obvious and some are less so. Although some external letter writers evaluating candidates for tenure/promotion write unambiguously negative letters, most letters are either positive or positive-ish.

I don't think the opening sentence is necessarily very indicative, although letters that start by saying that it is a "pleasure" to write the letter (perhaps even a "strong letter of support") of course tend to be very positive. Letters that start with a basic statement and perhaps a description of how the letter-writer has interacted (or not) with the candidate could go either way.

Positive letters tend to start positive and stay that way, with any quibbles buried deep within them. In my experience, lukewarm letters tend to start positive or positive-ish and then decay in magnitude of positiveness for the rest of the letter. I am not sure that I have seen a letter start negative or lukewarm and end up highly positive, although I have seen letters that I thought were quite negative end with a statement that the candidate would get tenure at the letter-writer's (in some cases elite) institution; that can be confusing.

Unambiguous positive statements that might appear in a very positive letter:

Dr. (or Professor) X is a world leader/pioneer/internationally known and respected specialist in [research field].

Dr. X and his/her students/postdocs have published (many) excellent papers on [topic/s].


Faint-praise statements that might appear in a lukewarm letter:

Dr. X is a specialist in [research field].

Dr. X has made contributions to the field of [topic].

Dr. X's research appears to be quite solid. 

Note: To make those statements even more negative, the research field could be described as narrowly as possible.


Examples of very positive words and phrases:

strong (inter)national reputation, novel, creative, major/significant/signal/tremendous/impressive/insightful/brilliant contributions, rigorous, breadth and depth, breakthroughs, widely respected, widely sought as an invited speaker, key player, true scholar, fundamental/leadership role, taking the lead (etc.), groundbreaking, rising star, international star, exceptional, exceptionally strong case for tenure, original/originality, elegant (referring to research, not the person), high profile, swimming at the top of the talent pool, the world beats a path to X's door, having X on your faculty brings renown to your institution.

Note that the hyper-positive adjective-laden letters tend to come from US academics or those very familiar with the US system. Non-US letters tend to be more restrained (the same is true for proposal reviews) and readers of such letters need to calibrate for this. The statement "Dr. X's research is quite good" might translate into Americanish to "Dr. X is the world leader and pioneer in creative and insightful investigation of a wide range of significant research topics."

Lukewarm (US) letters are characterized by fewer adjectives and of course few/no strong-positive adjectives. They may instead have faint-praise type adjectives such as 'solid', 'good' (with or without some other mild adjectives). The mild equivalent of the very-positive description 'has been extraordinarily/very productive' might be something like, 'has apparently been quite busy'; the positive 'focused' and talk of depth/breadth could translate as a negative-ish description of someone's 'varied interests'. Other not-awesome words are 'reasonably' and 'rather'.

Positive letters may actively propose explanations for some perceived weaknesses in the file:

Dr. X's h-index is a bit low even for someone at this early career stage but [sentences about how the h-index is a meaningless indicator of anything useful].

Dr. X does not have as many publications as one might like to see for a tenure candidate but there is too much emphasis these days on number of publications. Dr X's publications are all of very high quality and are all in high-impact and very selective journals. [This may be accompanied by an anti-shingling rant or opining about how Dr. X is a true scholar who waits to publish high-quality results that will stand the test of time.]

Dr. X has worked on a wide variety of topics rather than focusing on any particular thing but this is remarkable confirmation of her/his versatility, breadth, and boundless intellectual curiosity.

Dr. X has mostly been a middle-of-the-pack coauthor on his/her papers rather than the obvious lead author but I happen to know that Dr. X's senior collaborators are very aggressive about promoting their own work and tend to do this to younger coauthors.

Any of the above can of course be turned into a criticism if the reviewer is so inclined.

Or, lukewarm letters might mention some of the same things listed above but the rebuttal would not be as strong:

Dr. X's h-index is a bit low even for someone at this early career stage but it may increase somewhat in the future. (etc.)


Strong positive letters typically end on an emphatic note:

I highly recommend with no reservations whatsoever that Dr. X be awarded tenure.

I have no doubt that Dr. X would be awarded tenure at my institution.
etc.

Lukewarm letters tend to end on an ambiguous note:

I hope that my comments on Dr. X will be helpful to your evaluation of Dr. X for tenure and promotion.


I hope that these comments on tenure and promotion letters are helpful to FSP readers who are curious/anxious about this even if they are rising stars swimming at the top of the talent pool buoyed by their towering intellects.

CV Gap Years

Every year I get asked to write letters for the evaluation of faculty at other institutions for tenure and/or promotion. My typical thought process on being asked to write a letter for someone I don't know well is: "OK, I've heard of that person/read their papers/seen them at conferences. Sure, I'll write a letter." Then I note the due date and send off a quick e-mail agreeing to write the letter. Most often the request arrives in the summer and I write the letters in summer or early fall. [If you click on the 'tenure' label in the frame on the right -- perhaps after scrolling down a bit -- you will see my previous comments on writing tenure letters.]

When it gets to be time to study in detail the materials relevant to the evaluation -- for example: CV, selected publications -- in many recent cases I have dealt with (recent = past 5 years) -- there have been complications. Example complications: unexplained gaps in the publication record (at least, unexplained to outside reviewers), lack of advisees and lack of publications with advisees, and/or few to no grants (and no research proposals pending with the individual as PI). In a recent example, I was asked to comment specifically on publication quality and quantity, grants, and other research aspects, but I found this difficult owing to some of these complications.

I can think of 'good' explanations for all of those complications. A gap in publications could be related to a massive time commitment setting up a lab and preparing new classes; it could also be related to personal issues that would not trigger an official extension of the probationary period and that would not be explained in a cover letter to external letter writers. Lack of advisees could be caused by unsuccessful attempts at advising students who quit or failed for reasons completely unrelated to the advising ability or practices of the faculty member. And we all know that it is difficult to get grants these days (although we still have to try, so a lack of pending research proposals is troubling).

The host institution is of course aware of all these issues, knows the context, and will likely do what it wants about them -- ignore them completely and focus on the individual's potential or treat them as fatal flaws that justify denial of tenure/promotion -- no matter what my letter says. And there are other significant factors (teaching ability) that are typically not known by outside letter-writers who are asked to comment on scholarship.

Sometimes I think that these letters are just a necessary formality and there is nothing useful that I can say in my letter. It's not constructive to think about that while working on one of these letters, so I try to think about how -- as a faculty member reading other people's letters for colleagues -- I find some letters to be quite useful. These letters can be useful not so much for whether the individual thinks the candidate should or should not be tenured and/or promoted but for the perspective they provide about the person's body of work.

So I try to focus on that aspect of my letters. After (re)reading some of the candidate's publications and thinking about their ideas and work and trajectory, I try to express what I think about that person's scholarship and their impact on the field. (I have written before about how I do not like to do comparisons with others in the field and I do not like to answer the question of whether someone would get tenure at my institution.) Writing in detail about the candidate's research may or may not be of interest to faculty and administrators but I think it's the best contribution I can make to the process, more so than any detailed comments about the data in the CV.

Tenure Times

A mid-career reader wants advice about writing a letter as part of the tenure evaluation of a candidate at another institution. In particular:

.. I don't know what the usual length, format, etc. is, and if/how tenure committees "read between lines" for certain cues, i.e. what do I need to do so that I send the intended message without inadvertently compromising it?

I have touched on this topic before, but I don't think I have ever discussed the specific information of length, format etc. My earlier posts on this topic started in 2007, then skipped a few years, then picked up again in 2010 with not one, not two, not three, but four posts on this general topic, then decreased to one in 2011.

Here are my answers to the reader's questions, although of course I hope that others will provide alternative information and suggestions from other disciplines:

Length: One page is too short, but how far you go beyond one page depends on how much substantive information you can provide -- this may or may not be a function of how well you know the candidate and/or the candidate's work. I think it may also be discipline-dependent. In several of the physical science and engineering fields with which I am familiar (and for which I have read external letters as part of the tenure evaluation), 2-3 pages (single spaced, on letterhead, 11-12 point font) is pretty standard, unless someone has really detailed knowledge of a candidate, in which case the letters may be slightly longer (but not by much). In a few other fields, however, very long letters seem to be the norm. For example, I have seen some astoundingly long letters for candidates in the math department. In these letters, the evaluators provided detailed descriptions of every article or other type of work produced by the candidate, in some cases taking us through proofs step by step. Some of these letters have lots of equations and read like lectures. I am not sure that happens in m/any other discipline (?).

Format/content: The request-for-letter cover-letter might provide some clues as to the desired format. Do they want you to address specific questions or topics? If so, you can do this if you want, using the questions as your framework for the letter. Or you can ignore the specific requests and write what you want. One thing that is good to address up-front, even if you are going to be a loose cannon with the rest of the letter/format, is how well and in what capacity you know the candidate. This sets the context for you letter, and is important information for people who will be reading the letter. If you don't have any other specific guides about format and are wondering what to write next, you could pick out a few publications (articles, conference proceedings, or whatever is most relevant) and explain why these are interesting and/or significant.

Something I do look for in the cover letter is whether those requesting the letter want me to comment only on research or also on other things. I may not feel that I have sufficient knowledge of the candidate's teaching and service (the typical 'other things' besides research), so I may not provide an opinion about this, even if asked, but at least I will know what the expectations are. This can be important, for example, if the request is strictly for comments on research/scholarship, in which case you may want to avoid mention of how great this person was on the organizing committee for the Science Conference Workshop Panel Thing. 

I wouldn't worry too much about the reading-between-the-lines issue. Some people do this no matter how you write the letter, and there's no point in getting psyched out about something you can't predict. I have seen letters that I thought were an unambiguous endorsement of a candidate -- letters packed with strong positive statements and substantive examples -- only to have a fellow committee member say But if they really thought X should get tenure, they would have put the word "very" in front of "spectacularly outstanding pioneering genius superstar".

So, don't worry about it. If you want to send a mixed message with both positives and negatives, just be clear about this and about your final opinion (Do you endorse this person for tenure or not?). If you want to be entirely positive, use lots of awesomely positive adjectives. And if you think the candidate does appallingly bad and pointless work, I am sure you can find some equally awesome adjectives to convey that. If you think they are mediocre, say so.

Probably the biggest pitfall -- in terms of sending a message you don't intend -- is if you compare the candidate to so-called peers. You may be asked to do this, or you may want to do this even if not asked. I refuse to do this because I think it is nearly impossible to do it in a fair way, and I have seen a few examples in which a letter-writer wrote X is a spectacularly outstanding pioneering genius superstar just like Z at Other Great University and I therefore support X 100% for tenure at Your University, only to have a committee member say But I think Z is an idiot..

If X is greater than or equal to Z, and Z is an idiot, then X must be.. some answer that depends on who is doing the math. Yes, I realize that this is contradicting my previous suggestion to forget about predicting what letter-readers might do, but I think this particular issue -- that of comparing people -- is a real mine-field.

Is anyone freaking out? Please don't. These are outlier examples that occur and are typically stomped on by the sane faculty members, who, believe it or not, have outnumbered the others in every case with which I have personally been involved in STEM disciplines. That is, I have not seen the outcome veer negative because of irrational read-between-the-liners.

My main advice is: just write a sincere ~2-page letter that has substance to it (examples, incidents) and an unambiguous statement of your opinion at the end and/or beginning of the letter.

Too Much of Too Many Things

Not long ago, I was informally looking at someone's research and teaching record, as a prelude to their tenure evaluation. This was not in any official evaluation capacity (I was not writing a letter), and this was not someone at my own university. It was more of a "take a look at this CV and see if you think this person has a chance" kind of thing.

Based only on what I saw in the research record, this person has little or no chance of receiving tenure at their university, which expects a certain amount of activity with respect to publications and grants.

But then I looked at what this person has done in terms of teaching and advising, just in terms of time spent on these activities (I had no information about quality), and it was a lot. It was immense, considering that the university also had moderate research expectations of its science faculty.

I am missing some important information about this situation, such as whether this person could have decreased the number of courses taught by obtaining grants and 'buying' out teaching time, but just from what I saw, it seemed like there was a huge mismatch between expectations (by the university) and what was humanly possible (for the tenure-track professor).

I have written before about how I feel fortunate that my job has a good balance of teaching-research-service in terms of expectations/time for each. If all of these components of the job are valued by the university, and if we are evaluated based on how well we do with each of them, then we need time to do them. That seems obvious, but I know there is disagreement in the land about how professors should spend their time.

I should note that my positive view of the teaching-research-service balance in my current job is not just based on how I feel now, as a tenured professor; I felt the same way as an assistant professor, at least in terms of teaching and research expectations. I did feel that I was doing more service work, particularly in the department, than some of my peers, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle (and I believed that I could have said no to some of the committee work, without consequences, if I had wanted to).

I also realize that just because I think my job has a good balance (and I would say the same thing for my job at my previous university), that doesn't mean that everyone else thinks the same thing about their similar professor-jobs in my department/university. The reasons why I have this positive view are many and complex, including my being happy to work a lot, enjoying doing many different things (though not necessarily too many or all at the same time), and the flexibility of of my department in determining teaching schedules.

So:

Do you feel that you have a good (reasonable) balance of what your institution expects you to do? Or is there a big mismatch between, say, teaching load and research expectations? (It would be helpful to specify career stage, discipline, general type of institution.)

If you do feel there is a big mismatch, do you think this is a general feeling shared by your colleagues in your department/institution, or is there a lot of variability within your unit? Is there anything that can be done about this mismatch, or is it hopeless in the face of widespread belief that professors don't teach enough, and yet should also be pulling in the big grants and publishing in Nature or Science every few months, while serving on 9 committees and doing outreach?

If you feel that there is a good balance in your job, is this also a widespread view in your department/institution, and is there someone in particular responsible for creating this good work environment? (dept chair, college dean, provost, president..).

Bloom Watch

Last week, in a post that touched on the topic of post-tenure emotions (empowered vs. entrapped), I wrote this:

.. I have done my best work after getting tenure. I am not one of those genius-people who did her best work by age 30 (or 35). Some of us get tenure based in part on our accomplishments, such as they are at the time of the tenure evaluation, but also largely on a gamble about our potential. (I am going to explore an aspect of this more in a near-future post.)

The kernel of the idea I want to explore relates to what we do after tenure, no matter what we did before tenure. In this case, the "what" mostly refers to research because I am basing this discussion on my MRU*-centric point of view, but, with some modifications, this classification scheme could perhaps be exported to other situations. I think that probably most of us in academia can easily think of examples of each of these Types listed below, although some are more common than others. [* Major Research University]

Type S: steep upward trajectory in career from day 1; S1: productive before and after tenure, but even more productive and creative after tenure; S2: flatline at high level after tenure;

TYPE M: moderate upward trajectory from day 1 to tenure (enough to get tenure), but then M1: a steep upward trajectory after tenure, similar to Type S1 but this person was slower to bloom, or M2: flatline at a moderate level after tenure;

Type F: flat trajectory before and after tenure, but at a high enough level to get tenure (maybe just skimming over and along the tenure bar) and high enough to escape the label of "deadwood" after tenure; not awesome, but steady and better than Type L..;

Type L: steep (L1) or moderate (L2) trajectory pre-tenure; other trajectories possible, e.g., intercept with vertical tenure-line may be just about anywhere, but the key to the L path is that it involves the total transformation to deadwood not long after tenure (that is, not decades after tenure, but instead it happens while still at the early/mid-career stage).

OMG I think I am going to have to graph this.

Note that there is no significance to the y-intercept. The Type S line could start above or below some of the other lines, for example, but I am imagining this type of person as making a strong start.

I think it is also important to note that I don't just mean 'number of publications' (or grants) in my definition of productivity. I mentioned creativity in my definition of Type S, and this is an important element of 'blooming' in my classification scheme. The post-tenure 'bloom' in this case is not just a churning out of a stupendous number of publications, but involves making new and interesting discoveries or advances, having new and creative ideas, and all that kind of good thing.

Also, there is no criticism attached to (some) of this. Some faculty who flatline at a moderate to low level, for example, have taken a different career path, such as one involving more teaching and/or service. That may or may not be fine, depending on circumstances and expectations.

Do you see yourself here, or did I leave out some important trajectories? Feel free to suggest significantly different trajectories (yours or your favorite/hated colleague's) and I may modify the graph later.

These Happy After-Tenure Years

Some of my friends got -- or seem to be getting -- tenure this year. Yay for all of them! They are thrilled and I am thrilled for them.

This is a happy occasion for most, and the only reason I add "for most" is because I have read essays (including a recent one in The Chronicle of Higher Education) by or about people who feel depressed and/or "trapped" by tenure. Unlike some who left critical comments on the CHE essay, I do not subscribe to the "You should be happy because there are even unhappier people in the world" philosophy. If you don't like many things about your job, you aren't going to like them once your employment position becomes (essentially) permanent, even if others in academia have less job security than you do. I feel sympathy for these depressed-by-tenure people, even if I don't really understand the phenomenon. I hope those depressed by tenure find a way to recover, perhaps by changing something about their career paths or goals (but not necessarily by becoming a depressed administrator).

I am fortunate that getting tenure was a happy, empowering thing for me. Although tenure was of course a necessary goal in my academic career path, my primary job satisfaction has involved the doing of research, teaching, and other professional activities -- developing new research projects, working with students, teaching new courses or improving old ones, and so on. Tenure gave me the chance to keep doing what I loved and also provided new opportunities, so I have never felt "trapped" by tenure.

Also, I have done my best work after getting tenure. I am not one of those genius-people who did her best work by age 30 (or 35). Some of us get tenure based in part on our accomplishments, such as they are at the time of the tenure evaluation, but also largely on a gamble about our potential. (I am going to explore an aspect of this more in a near-future post.) In letters supporting tenure cases, it is common to see phrases like "rising star" or "steep upward trajectory" to describe the tenure candidate, in recognition of the fact that there is only so much that can be done in the tenure-track years, even by those who work 24/7.

Perhaps this mostly applies to fields in which the tenure-track years involve building labs and research groups and other time-intensive activities that are necessary for new and exciting research projects to be launched and for at least some research goals achieved. I bet, however, that it also applies to any field in which more ambitious research can only be undertaken once you have developed a certain network of colleagues and contacts and attained the awesome knowledge that only comes with experience (says middle-aged me).

People who feel trapped by tenure probably dislike quite a few things about their job (colleagues, students, location etc.) and are likely a bit burned out by exhaustion and stress. For most of us, though, I hope that it is not the case that the best, most productive years are over once tenure is secured. Tenure gives us the security to pursue more risky research ideas, lets us build a larger research group (if that is desirable), and gives us the chance to serve on even more committees (<-- sarcasm).

Tenured readers: Do you feel "trapped" by tenure? Or empowered? Both? Neither? Something else?

Should She Do It?

Today in Scientopia, I reluctantly sort of give some advice about intra-department relationships, in response to a reader's e-mail about her particular situation, but mostly I request comments from readers on this general topic and/or specific situation.

On Denial

A reader who was recently denied tenure at a major research university has some questions about how to deal with day-to-day life after the negative decision has been handed down; specifically, in the 'extra' year following the decision but before having to leave the university.

It is good that institutions provide this transition year, especially since some decisions are handed down at the end of the academic year, but the final year can be very difficult/awkward/stressful for the individual denied tenure.

There are of course resources available, online and in print, from the point of view of those who have experienced tenure denial. I am writing from the point of view of a tenured professor who has seen friends and colleagues experience tenure denial or termination during pre-tenure reviews, and who has worked with colleagues who were denied tenure (before I met them) at a previous institution.

The Questions

What does a person [the one denied tenure] say in these situations during their last two semesters?
.. when meeting another faculty member in the hall?
.. when meeting their graduate students?

My question back is: What do you want to say?

Do you want to mention your situation proactively or would you rather not talk about it? I think you should do whatever you want in this situation. If you want to talk about it, you could say something like "I suppose you heard.." or "Did you hear my bad news?" and then just say as much or as little as you want. Some people won't have any reply that will be of any comfort or use to you, but perhaps some will be kind and/or have insights. If you don't want to talk about it, either don't say anything or talk about something else unless asked, in which case you can say "I don't want to talk about it."

I know that some colleagues may be uncomfortable with you for a while (especially if they voted against you), won't look you in the eye, and may seem to avoid you. If you want to try to break the ice and gets things on a more normal footing, you can try to do that with casual conversation. However, it's not your responsibility to make us feel better (you're the one who has been hurt), so this is just a suggestion for getting past the initial awkwardness.

..when someone asks: Why didn't you get tenure?
(I don't actually know why, just some vague rumors, which seem to vary a lot depending on the source, because it's all confidential, right?)

The parenthetical statement surprised me a lot, although I will be the first to admit that I don't know how all universities work. Is it really confidential? Isn't there supposed to be a letter explaining something about the basis for the decision? What information did you get, and how did you get it? Just a "no"? In a letter or in person, with nothing else? This is worth looking into. What was your publication, grant, teaching/advising record compared to peers? Do you have a way to figure this out? Was there no information in pre-tenure reviews that there was a problem, or was the negative decision a complete surprise?

But back to the original question, if you don't know, I guess you just say "I don't know." You don't have to elaborate, even if you heard rumors. If you know, then it's up to you whether you explain what the official reason is, and what kind of editorial comments you add about the fairness/unfairness of the decision and evaluation process.

.. when a potential employer during an interview asks: Why didn't you get tenure?

Again, if you don't know, you can only say "I don't know" and explain that you were not told. If you know (or can guess), just be open about it, e.g., "I didn't publish enough" or "I didn't have as many grants as I should have" (mention expectations vs record).

Keep it factual in an interview, as much as possible, so your potential employers/colleagues can make their own decision. If your record would have been sufficient for tenure at the institution that is interviewing you, the tenure denial won't be held against you. Several of the most successful people in my field were denied tenure at an PrestigeU and went on to have outstanding careers as researchers and educators at AnotherU.

.. when meeting with a group of female faculty and graduate students in a Women in Science meeting when the topic is "What advice do you have for graduate students for achieving success?"

If you don't know the reason you were denied tenure, it's hard for you to give any perspective on your situation in terms of what you should have done that you didn't do. I suppose you could tell graduate students (female or male) about what you think the expectations for the job were and whether those were reasonable/fair, including whether you were fairly evaluated. If you had no feedback along the way, including now, perhaps that is something that can be discussed as a challenge and problem that should be addressed.

I think/hope it is unusual to have no information other than rumors -- both during the tenure-track years and following a negative decision -- so some advice could be about the importance of mentors, communication, knowing expectations/criteria. In some cases, having all that information doesn't help in the end anyway, but at least you would have more insight into the evaluation.

.. when at the faculty retreat.. We interrupt this question to answer it now: Don't go to the faculty retreat. Just don't go. You will only be miserable and it is not a good use of your time or emotional energy. Even if you are planning to stay as a 100% soft-money researcher or adjunct teaching faculty, you do not need to go to faculty meetings or retreats anymore unless there is some very specific and constructive reason to do so.

.. when your graduate student asks the department head about what their future is without asking the question directly to you first.

Well, I would try to be understanding that this is a stressful and anxious time for your grad student as well. I don't know what the timing was of the conversation with the department head, but if you had time to talk to your student and didn't (because you were too upset), then it makes sense that the student would try to get information that they need. If it's not too late, have a frank conversation with them now about their and your options.

.. when someone else's graduate student whose committee you are on asks you to approve their plan of study when you won't be available (or eligible?) to service on the committee by the time the student graduates?

If there are official actions (like signing a form) that you can do now to help a student, in the post-tenure decision year that you are still a faculty member, you should do them. The student and their advisor can decide whether to replace you or keep you on the committee in some capacity (and if the latter, how do to that administratively). Presumably the advisor knows that they need to deal with this, but if they are in another department or if you are in different units of a large department, just tell them.

My correspondent asked for suggestions on handling these situations "gracefully". I think it is good to remain professional, especially if you will be interviewing elsewhere and trying to remain in the field, but I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about whether you are making other people feel bad or uncomfortable. Perhaps some people are disappointed in you, but it's not as if you committed a crime against humanity. Fair or unfair, you have lost your job and so you need to take care of yourself (and your students), get as much information as you can, consider your options (including appealing the decision), and move on however you think best.

Waiting for the Final Word

At many universities, the tenure evaluation year may actually take most of a year, starting with the soliciting of external evaluation letters (perhaps in the summer, with due dates in the fall), and then proceeding through all the various stages of votes and decisions, from the department on up to the overlords. Although there are exceptions, most of which are terrifying, it's typically the first few decision stages that matter. If you've got positive votes all the way past the dean, the grand vizier, and up to the czar and/or the ruling junta, you're probably going to get some good news in the spring or early summer.

Even so, many tenure candidates are anxious all the way through to the final stages and don't feel comfortable counting on tenure until the final official step. By that point, though, celebrating seems somewhat anti-climactic because of the protracted process and because others considered tenure a done-deal at some earlier stage of the process, so it might be hard to get anyone but your mother and maybe your dog excited about the final final decision.

I remember wanting to know the results on the day of the final final decision, but all those who could actually tell me the result thought I was being weird and in fact had no plans to find out the result. According to them, the results, which would surely be positive, would be announced eventually, so why worry about it? Why?: because it was really really important to me and I wanted to know. I wanted the whole process to be over, officially over.

If you have been through the tenure process (successfully), when did you celebrate (if ever)? Did you celebrate after each intermediate step, did you celebrate only after the decision stage(s) that you considered to be most crucial, or did you wait until the very end? By the very end, did anyone else but you even care?

Out With The Old?

A question arose recently about an early career scientist* who has been slow to publish results from their PhD research. Now that this person is on the tenure track (TT), they have to make decisions about how best to spend their limited time: pursuing new research vs. finishing old projects.

(*someone completely unrelated to my research group, just in case anyone is getting paranoid)

I am not talking about unreasonable expectations by former advisors regarding post-graduation or post-postdoctoral publication; i.e., I am not referring to cases in which someone published the key papers from their previous work but their advisor would like them to publish even more. In that case, new work clearly must rule.

The tricky cases are when there are still major papers that should come out of the pre-TT years, but these have not yet been written/submitted.

Yet, if a TT professor spends time writing up old projects, there is less time for the new projects. There are only so many hours in a day and there are only so many years until the tenure evaluation. And there are an infinite number of important things to do in that time.

Factors in the decision about how to apportion time between old and new work include:

- It's important to initiate and publish results from new work that is identified specifically with the time at the TT institution and that does not involve the TT professor's PhD advisor(s) or postdoctoral mentor(s).

but:

- It's important to finish what you started, especially if your PhD and/or postdoctoral research was particularly interesting. Your visibility and reputation derive from the totality of your work, not just what you accomplish in your TT years.

Ultimately, I think that new work (research done entirely at the TT university) is more important than old work (research done during a PhD and/or postdoc), so if you have to choose one over the other, the new work is what the TT university will want to see at tenure evaluation time. Some people do get tenure based primarily on work done with their famous PhD and postdoctoral advisors, but this is not a good strategy for getting tenure and for establishing a respected research program.

As an advisor, I am not objective about this matter. Although I can write -- and even convince myself to believe -- that new work should prevail over the old in terms of publication priority -- I also feel that it's very not cool to leave advisors and other colleagues in the lurch with unpublished work, even if that was never the intention. Also, some institutions request letters from former advisors and postdoc mentors for tenure evaluations.

When I was a postdoc, I had published a few papers from my PhD, but I had some more to write. I spent most of my postdoc time on my postdoctoral research, but I systematically carved out some time for writing up the rest of my PhD research, so eventually it was all published. This turned out to be excellent preparation for being a professor and working on multiple projects at once; i.e., many of us, as professors, always have some projects in the writing-up stage and some in the data-gathering stage and some in the idea development stage and some in the glimmer-in-our-eye stage. It should therefore be possible to finish the old work without sacrificing the new work.

How's that for a mixed message?: In reality, you have to prioritize your time and probably should favor the new projects over the old projects, but, ultimately, you need to get everything done, old and new.

Do You Care?

Prof-Like Substance has compiled a handy list of what advisors can and cannot expect of their "trainees" (graduate students, postdocs). Among the items under the CAN'T EXPECT heading is this:

3) Trainees to care about your promotion and tenure.

Well, I can agree with that to some extent. We certainly can't (and shouldn't) expect our students and others to care as much as we do. And, although to some extent the promotion and tenure of the professor does depend on how well their research group functions, ultimately the responsibility of managing a functioning, productive research group is the tenure-track professor's.

BUT:

It is to the benefit of advisees if their advisor gets tenure for a number of reasons, including:

- A tenured advisor has a greater chance of staying around for the completion of graduate degrees and postdoctoral contracts.

- A tenured advisor's letter of reference for advisees might be more respected than a similar letter from a person who was denied tenure.

Those are practical reasons, but the most important one for me relates to my view of what a research group is: A research group is a community, and the various members of that community should help and respect each other. That includes everyone, from the PI to the new undergrad intern. Some have more responsibility than others, but the actions of each individual to some extent affect others.

I am not arguing against the essence of PLS's main point. Trainees can't really be expected to care about our promotion and tenure. I guess I hope that they care, in the sense of caring for the research team in general or even caring about how it affects their own careers in the near- or long-term.

It is time for a poll! Do you care?

Actually, the question is:

Do/did you care whether your advisor gets/got tenure and/or is/was promoted?

That's a lot of / options, but I am trying to be inclusive here. You can answer this question based on your current experience as the trainee of a tenure-track advisor or you can reminisce about how you felt in the past as the trainee of a tenure-track advisor. You can even answer if your advisor had tenure but an important committee member was tenure-track. Or, just so no one feels left out, not even postdocs, you can answer based on how you think you would feel if you were in the situation of having an advisor or mentor who was tenure-track, or if you weren't actually a cat.

Do You Care?
	Yes
	No
	Ambivalent
pollcode.com free polls

And, if you are so moved, you can explain your vote in the comments.

The Clock Stops Here

On Friday, I asked readers to name universities that do not have a policy that allows for tenure-track faculty to 'stop the (tenure) clock' for the birth or adoption of a child. There may well be such institutions that are not known to FSP readers, but so far, no one has named any university or college in North America that does not have such a policy.

If that is an accurate reflection of the situation, then it is time to stop calling for this policy as a means to increase the number of women scientists in academia. The policy is widespread, but it either hasn't had time to have a positive effect or it is not being implemented in a useful and fair way.

Universities and colleges need to make the existence of such policies widely known to faculty and administrators, make clock-stoppage easy to implement for faculty and administrators, and ensure that there is no stigma or punishment attached to stopping the clock. For example, no one should be held to a higher standard because they chose to stop the tenure clock, and no one should be made to feel awkward or guilty for taking this option.

There will likely be some abuses of the clock-stoppage option, but the good will outweigh the bad. If the policy works as intended and is a routine option, perhaps academia will be a more viable option for more women scientists (and others), and tenure will not be seen as incompatible with having kids. I don't know if this will solve the continuing disparities described in report such as the one that motivated this series of blog posts, but it might help.

I have already seen much progress on this front. I have served on committees in which tenure-clock-stoppage is seen as routine -- just a useful piece of information to explain the date of hiring relative to date of tenure review -- and has no other meaning. That's as it should be. And from what I've seen, committee members who did not stop the clock (by choice), don't hold it against those who did make this choice.

It is clear, however, from comments to this blog that some individuals, departments, and/or institutions are reluctant to let go of the traditional tenure clock, as if this is time frame that cannot possibly be altered and maintain high standards. What if less qualified people start getting tenure because they had "extra" time? (or something like that)

Those who think clock-stoppage is an assault on sacred academic practices are kindred spirits to those who still routinely ask interviewees about their personal lives (marital status, kids) in an attempt to exclude those who stray from the traditional mode of the professor undistracted by ancillary issues (children, spouse, spouse's career). There has been progress in reducing the use of marital and parental status as a consideration in hiring, but it has never entirely gone away.

As usual, the problem ends up being a bit circular. It will be easier to increase the number of tenured FSPs with families when there are (significantly) more tenured FSPs with families. Perhaps as the number of MSPs in two-career couples increases and clock-stoppage becomes more of a general issue for men and women, universities will adjust to this important new reality.

Is that last statement cynical or hopeful?

Where the Clocks Never Stop

In the recent NY Times article on "Keeping Women in Science on a Tenure Track", already noted elsewhere in the blogosphere, part of a report (released last fall) by Berkeley researchers is summarized as follows:

"It recommends .. “stopping the clock” on tenure for women scientists who give birth, perhaps by giving an extra year before making tenure decisions, in effect giving them extra time to do research and publish."

Well, I guess we could discuss whether stopping the tenure clock gives women "extra" time or effectively gives them the same time as those who have not given birth or adopted a child during their tenure-track years, and I could also mention that clock-stoppage, where it exists, is also an option for men, but what I want to know is:

What North American universities do not yet have this policy?

Can anyone name names? Can we make a list? I think there should be a list, easily accessible by an internet search, of universities that do not provide for tenure clock-stoppage for the birth or adoption of a child. Does such a list exist? If not, let's start one here.

Are there many universities that don't allow tenure clock stoppage for birth/adoption of a child (or any other reason)? If it's only a few places, perhaps reports wouldn't keep calling for this as step to take to improve the disturbing statistics of the rates at which mother/professors receive tenure relative to father/professors.

I hope it is not a very long list, but even if it is, I'd like to take a stab at compiling at least some information; i.e., names of institutions that do not allow tenure-clock-stoppage. Even better would be a link to a list, if such a list already exists, but either way, it would be useful to get an idea about institutions (especially universities) that do not have such a policy.

Family Planning

A friendly memo to tenure-track faculty who don't have as many publications as they think they might need for tenure and are getting stressed out about this:

Don't blame your lack of productivity on the fact that the wife of one of your male graduate students or postdocs had a baby or even on the fact that one of your female graduate students or postdocs had a baby during your probationary years.

There are various reasons why this is not cool, but the main one in my opinion is that many of us (male and female) have advised unproductive graduate students and/or postdocs (male and female) for a stunning array of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with starting a family.

It is indeed difficult for assistant professors who have to deal with unproductive research group members, no matter what the reason, especially if the unproductive ones are supported by a grant involving a finite amount of time and money (as grants tend to be). I definitely feel the pain of anyone who has experienced this. If you are in this situation as a tenure-track faculty member, it is important to communicate with mentors and/or your department chair and try to figure out the best strategy for moving forward with the research despite dysfunctional research group members.

Even so, the birth or adoption of a child is typically an anticipated event, so, assuming that your advisees inform you of the upcoming event, you can try to plan for the disruption of your research program. If possible, avoid organizing your research program so that your entire future depends on your research group members and their significant others remaining childless throughout your probationary period.

Another reason why it's not cool to blame your lack of productivity on the reproductive activities of those in and associated with your research group is that it's hard to avoid appearing to accuse women specifically for causing your problems. Your suspicion that other people's babies are incompatible with your tenure won't make up for a weak tenure file (which might not even be as weak as you think/fear it is).

If you are stressed out and just feel like ranting about research group (re)productivity to a friend while you're at a cafe, in the gym, blogging, or wandering the halls of academe, that's fine. Go for it. If, however, you are considering making your hypothesis part of your tenure dossier, first consider the people who are going to be reading your file: your faculty colleagues, various administrators, promotion & tenure committees, and so on. Some of these people might even be women and men who had (or have) babies themselves, not to mention that most, if not all, have likely had a wide range of advising experiences. Some may sympathize with you, but I'm guessing (perhaps incorrectly) that many will not.

Actually, We Don't Hate You

Although many faculty survive the tenure review process with unanimous positive votes from their department on up, it is also not unusual for there to be a few negative votes at the stages involving the department or higher level committees, particularly in large departments. That is, although the candidate receives a positive recommendation for tenure, and all votes are a strong majority endorsement of tenure, there might be a few outlier 'no' votes.

Aside from being psychologically painful and perhaps semi- to very devastating to the tenure candidate, despite their ultimate tenure success:

What do these negative votes mean?

There are many possible explanations for the outlier negative votes, but, if this happens to you, one thing these negative votes do not automatically mean is that there are people in your department or on your campus who think you should be denied tenure.

It is possible that the votes mean that, but, from what I've seen, it is more common for there to be a few no votes, even for an overall strong candidate for tenure, for other reasons, including:

The reflexive 'no' vote. Some professors just do this, knowing they will be outvoted, wanting to be outvoted, and proud to be the flag-bearer for impossibly high standards. They don't really want you to lose your job; they just don't want you to think you're so great that you deserve a unanimous positive vote. My advice: Forget the 'no' vote(s), focus on the many 'yes' votes, and don't be a reflexive 'no' voter once you have tenure.

The mini-protest 'no' vote. These voters also don't want you to be thrown out. They think you deserve tenure, but there is something about your record that they don't like, and they are sending you a message about this. This 'something' does not rise to the level of being a cause for tenure denial, so they vote 'no', counting on being in the minority. Ideally, these 'no' voters will indicate what their criticism is (albeit not attributed to anyone in particular) in the letter summarizing the department or committee vote. That way, you will know that one or more faculty had a (small) problem with the number/quality/venues of your publications, think you should put more effort into teaching, or are distressed that you didn't have the right number or type of grants (for example). My advice: Forget the 'no' vote(s), focus on the many 'yes' votes, and try to fix whatever issue has been identified (if you agree that it is a reasonable criticism).

These explanations might not take the sting out of having one or more people vote 'no' in your tenure evaluation, but I think it might be psychologically important for some tenure candidates to know that these outlier 'no' votes do not automatically mean that someone thinks you should be denied tenure. So, if this happens (or has happened) to you, I hope you won't feel (too) paranoid as you wander the corridors or campus byways, that you don't spend hours (years) wondering who voted no, and especially that you won't think about it during faculty meetings, unless it helps pass the time in a more interesting way for you and your suspects, in which case, do whatever it takes to survive.

File Time : The Question

Through various conversations in the past few months, I have tried to figure something out:

How much time do tenure and promotion committees typically spend on each candidate's file? I am speaking here of the P&T committee that is at the college/school level of a university or the equivalent at a smaller institution (i.e., above the department level).

If you have not (yet) been on such a committee: What is your guess for the range of typical duration of file-gazing/discussing?

If you are tenure-track faculty, do you hope this is a long time or a short time?

If you have been on such a committee: How much time did you spend on a typical file, and/or what is the total range of time, from the easy cases to the difficult cases?

Do you think or know that your experience differs from that of colleagues on similar committees in other parts of your institution or at different institutions?

Today I am posing these questions to see what kind of comments come in. Ideally, there will be comments with guesses from the uncommitteed as well as data from P&T committee members.

For now, I will just say that the results of my informal, statistically meaningless, anecdotal investigations surprised me.

Spelling it Out

As I have been writing letters as part of the tenure and promotion evaluation of assistant professors at other institutions, I have been struck by the great variation in the "tenure code" documents I have been sent to help me write my letters. Typically, these documents outline an institution's or a department's criteria for tenure and promotion, but the level of specificity of these documents varies a lot.

At the vague end of the spectrum are documents that state that the candidate must show evidence for "scholarly achievement" (or words to that effect). This is useless for my purposes, and I just write my evaluation however I think best. In my experience, these documents are the most common type.

At the definitive end of the spectrum are documents that state that the candidate must have x papers every n years in "respected journals" and at least y grants from external funding agencies. In these cases, which I rarely encounter, I don't really understand the point of an external letter. If the candidate met the criteria and is going to get tenure, why ask for anyone's opinion? Does it matter if I think the x papers were flawed and uninteresting? If not, then don't waste my time. If it matters, then rewrite the document to include some vague statement about "scholarly achievement".

The definitive tenure criteria likely result in fewer tenure appeals than the vague tenure "criteria", and the vague ones surely result in higher levels of anxiety and uncertainty for tenure-track faculty, but the definitive ones have problems as well. For example, unless there is a way to specify the quality of the "respected journals" (probably by impact factor, for lack of a better measure) and the contribution of the candidate to a multi-author paper and whether it is good or bad to have lots of co-authors (including students), there is little point in specifying the number of papers that must be published in n years unless that really is all that matters.

In that case, these documents might as well just say: To obtain tenure, a candidate must have their name somewhere in the author list of a paper published in some journal that someone respects.

I am actually ambivalent about these documents, speaking from the point of view of a letter writer. I know they must exist, but there really is no good way to construct them to be useful to the letter writer (or the candidate): too vague is useless, and too specific is strange and leads to more questions (most of which can't be answered).

As a candidate, you have to find out the 'unwritten' information by figuring out the norms of your department and institution. This is typically accomplished by having an effective mentor, by talking to other assistant professors, and by having a candid talk with your department chair and mentor at various stages along the road to the tenure evaluation. You can also attend informational talks given by deans or deanlets, although, as an assistant professor, I found such workshops disturbing because the information in them conflicted with what my department chair had told me about some issues (e.g., the selection of letter writers). Even so, I identified these conflicts of information, talked to the chair about them, he talked to the dean, and all was eventually sorted out.

As a letter writer, I don't know the 'unwritten' information, and I'd rather not guess. All I can do is try to write a fair letter based on what is in the record and on my perception of the quality of the candidate's research. The people at the candidate's institution will have to sort the rest out for themselves, depending on what they think my criteria/standards for tenure are likely to be; i.e., they can discount my letter (if my criteria seem too harsh), take it seriously (if they think my opinion is well supported), or pick out the parts that agree with their own opinion.

Mostly, I just need to finish these letters so I can stop obsessing over them (one in particular is much more difficult to write than I expected), and then I can move on to my next adventure in Professional Service Activities.

(Un)appealing Option

A few weeks ago, I discussed writing letters as part of the tenure evaluation of assistant professors at other universities. Another tenure-related topic is what happens when tenure is denied.

My understanding of how tenure-denial appeals work is limited, but growing by the day, unfortunately. Perhaps the process varies (a lot?) from institution to institution, but here are some things I have learned so far:

The basis for a realistic appeal can be (1) discrimination, or (2) violation of procedure. An appeal based on an "I was misjudged" is less likely to be successful, although I know of some cases in which an appeal of this sort was successful, typically based on the issue of the relative weights given to teaching and research excellence.

Even if there has been blatant discrimination or a violation of procedure, the various stops along the tenure trail designed to catch such things may not catch them, or may even be the source of the problem. Hence the appeal process.

Things can get complicated at large institutions in which there are many intermediate steps along the road to tenure during the evaluation and voting process. At each stage, there is the possibility of a decision that is different from preceding ones, although this gets less likely as the process moves up the administrative food chain.

Nevertheless, voting and decision-making bodies/people at a university can include

• a departmental promotion & tenure committee,

• tenured faculty in the department (perhaps in more than one department for interdisciplinary faculty with multiple tenure homes),

• the department head,

• a committee at the college level (e.g., College of Arts & Sciences, School of Engineering),

• the Dean (± an Associate/Assistant Dean),

• various Provostial Beings ± Vice-Presidents for Whatever,

• the President/Chancellor, and, in some cases,

• a Board of Trustees.

Many of these steps are necessary to provide checks-and-balances. For example, departments might be "too close" to a candidate, using criteria that are not objective or fair. This can work for or against a candidate; e.g., a well-liked mediocre candidate might get a yes vote. It's not supposed to work that way, of course, but since the evaluation metrics are typically not spelled out (more on that tomorrow), variability is inevitable.

If all of these people/committees vote overwhelmingly no, that's not good (and makes an appeal very unlikely to succeed), but what if some say yes and some say no, or what if there are mixed votes in certain committees?

According to legend, once you get past the department and college/school committee with a positive vote, you're fine, but there are rumors of candidates who had positive votes up to the Dean or Provost or President and then.. zap. There are also sad stories of people with majority positive votes at various stages but not a supermajority of positive votes, leading to cascades of negative votes at later stages of the process.

The appeal process appears to be highly structured (= bureaucratic), with lots of steps and lawyers and invocation of an institution's "tenure code" or criteria by both sides.

If the process leading up to the tenure evaluation works as it should, the results of the tenure evaluation itself should not be a big surprise. There can be a discrepancy between what a department/institution thinks of a candidate vs. what is expressed in the external letters, but even this should be evident in advance if the pre-tenure evaluation process works as it should.

Whether evaluation of probationary faculty is at one intermediate time (e.g., 3rd year) or every year, there should (ideally) be a paper trail that documents how an assistant professor is doing in terms of the various job components, with specific suggestions for improvement if there is a problem, and additional assistance/mentoring given where needed.

Having a well-functioning, fair, and informative system is essential to the tenure-track faculty member and to the rest of the institution. When that system breaks down, owing to incompetence, indifference, or malevolence, and the tenure decision is negative, the grounds for an appeal are laid.

Early Birds

Recent discussions about tenure raised some interesting questions, at least one of which is going to result in a poll:

At your institution, are candidates for early tenure held to a higher standard than those being evaluated at the 'normal' time, or is the standard the same? In the former case, is it official policy that early tenure cases are held to a higher standard or is this just how it works (in your experience/opinion)?

And what about candidates who are evaluated for tenure later than normal (e.g., because their tenure clock was stopped owing to childbirth, illness, or other life-interrupting events)? Clearly they are not supposed to be held to a different standard than those without tenure clock stoppage, but, in your opinion, does it work that way?

What is the basis for your opinion?

The poll:

Compared to faculty evaluated for tenure at a 'normal' time..

candidates for early tenure are
	held to a higher standard
	held to the same standard
	held to a lower standard
pollcode.com free polls

.. at your institution.