by Gary Lackmann

When I started as an assistant professor at North Carolina State University in 1999, I felt anxious, apprehensive, and yet confident about securing tenure. I had heard about some recent unsuccessful tenure decisions, and the process seemed vague and daunting.  During my first year, I had a paper rejected, and this did nothing to assuage my tenure fears!  Looking back a few decades later, everything turned out well, and I have absolutely loved my job as a professor.  I have also learned a great deal about the process of tenure and promotion.  For a 5-year stretch, I was the Director of Graduate Programs in my department, and I both served on and chaired the reappointment, promotion, and tenure committee for my college.  For one year, I served on the university-level tenure review committee. I have also written quite a few external tenure-evaluation and promotion letters for colleagues at other institutions.  Through these experiences and many conversations with friends and colleagues, I have learned a lot about the process.  I was thus pleased to receive an invitation from the AMS to share my perspectives on tenure. Here I offer some “tips”, in no particular order, to those beginning or considering careers in academia.

 

  1.) Before signing on the dotted line…

"For any institution, seek information about their tenure and promotion process, and be ready to discuss this with faculty members or the dean during your interview."

There exists a wide spectrum of colleges and universities, and tenure requirements and emphases vary accordingly. Recently, some states have weakened tenure protections in their public university systems. Undergraduate-focused institutions typically emphasize teaching over publishing, relative to research- oriented universities. For such an institution, prospective faculty members should ask about the specific requirements for teaching quantity and quality.  How is the quality of teaching measured, and how is this integrated into the tenure and promotion process?  For doctoral-granting “R1” institutions, faculty should ask for specifics regarding expectations for funding, publications, and teaching requirements.  For any institution, seek information about their tenure and promotion process, and be ready to discuss this with faculty members or the dean during your interview. Review the departmental website to see what fraction of faculty members are at various ranks (assistant, associate, full). Is the department successful in promoting its faculty?  Do junior faculty members have adequate mentoring? Do they have a clear picture of the tenure and promotion process?

When negotiating an offer, ask detailed questions about start-up funds, early-career mentoring structures, computing infrastructure, field facilities, how student recruiting works, etc.  You can use “start-up funds” to support graduate students before you have your own extramural grant funding.  Ask for everything you need to be successful, and think creatively about this.  Do you need funds to purchase lab equipment, computers, furniture, etc. for your students, postdocs, or lab technicians?  Request funds to support travel for prospective graduate students.  If you are the top candidate, asking for what you need should not result in retraction of the job offer!

 

  2.) Build and maintain mentoring relationships

We can all benefit greatly from mentoring relationships at any career stage.  Even as a nearly “late-career” academic, I still have valuable mentors, and I clearly recognize the significant role that several of my mentors have played in the advancement of my career.  Some departments may assign incoming faculty members a senior faculty mentor.  As a newcomer to an academic department, you should strive to identify one or more “local mentors” who can coach you on “how things work” in the department, college, and university. Try to grab lunch, coffee, or an after-work beverage with this person (or these people) once every month or two.  It is also helpful to have an “external mentor”, someone who can provide broader perspectives beyond your university.  Of course, you will be a mentor to your students and others, so be ready to engage in mentoring in all directions. Having mentors and mentees makes the new-faculty experience less isolating and more fun! 

"As a newcomer to an academic department, you should strive to identify one or more “local mentors” who can coach you on “how things work” in the department, college, and university.”

 

  3.) Learn when and how to say “no”.

As faculty members, we encounter a plethora of opportunities and invitations: research collaborations, committees, speaking engagements, outreach activities, professional service, and more. Be protective of your time.  Learn precisely how much time is involved before agreeing to an opportunity, and assess whether you can “afford” it in terms of your bandwidth.  Speak to your local mentor(s) if you are unsure, and they can offer their perspectives on a given opportunity.  For new opportunities, consider which other activities must be eliminated or diminished to make the time.  As one colleague puts it, “spend time on what leads to successes; avoid what craters productivity.”

   

  4.) Time management

“Be protective of your time. Learn precisely how much time is involved before agreeing to an opportunity, and assess whether you can “afford” it in terms of your bandwidth.”

Related to the preceding point, be sure to block out time for reading, writing, thinking, computing, deriving, class preparation, etc.  These are the activities that will help you gain tenure.  Whether it is writing a grant proposal or journal article, block out useful chunks of time on your calendar (electronic or otherwise) for this process.  If you schedule this time like any other meeting, then you can be sure to complete the tasks needed to be productive.  You would do well to schedule these activities during your most productive times of day; for example, if you are a “morning person”, then add the time blocks then.  

  5.) Always remember the students

At colleges and universities, our “product” is students.  Make time for them.  Mentor them.  Listen to them, and care about their career advancement and wellbeing. Faculty should never view student research or teaching assistants as “inexpensive labor”, rather, students are our most important responsibility. Student success is what makes faculty jobs rewarding, and post-graduation student achievements are an important reflection on the quality and success of departments and universities.  

If you only want to focus on research, and not be “bothered” with teaching and mentoring students, consider a different career path!  At universities, happy, productive students make faculty positions enjoyable, and pave the way for academic and professional success.  Conversely, poor mentoring reflects badly on all involved, and can have severe negative impacts on student careers.  Personally, I would like to see mentoring metrics weighted much more heavily in tenure and promotion decisions.

“Faculty should never view student research or teaching assistants as “inexpensive labor”, rather, students are our most important responsibility.”

 

  6.) Publish or perish?  Or a professional development opportunity?

Publishing is obviously critical to faculty success.  For grant-funded research, often supported by tax dollars, this is one way to demonstrate return on taxpayer investment.  More broadly, the peer-review publication process is a cornerstone in scientific advance. [While avoiding review overload, bear in mind that you should perform two or three reviews for every paper you publish! This will not count for tenure; it is just the right thing to do.] Student projects, theses, and dissertations should ideally result in publications (but not all of them do).

The closer to “submission ready” a student’s MS thesis or PhD dissertation is when they graduate, the greater the likelihood of the paper being published. There is also merit in submitting the student’s work for publication even before they graduate. Experience with the publication process is valuable for students, especially doctoral students.  Over my career, there have been some excellent MS theses that were never published, due to a lack of insistence on getting them publication ready before the student left, and also to students who “don’t look back” once they graduate!

 

7.) Funding:  Less is more 

Like it or not, the ability to secure extramural funding is critical for tenure and promotion at R1 universities.  Some may disagree with me here, but my strategy for securing funding is to write a relatively small number of proposals.  But I put a lot of time into writing proposals that include “proof of concept” results and lots of citations of prior work.  The proposal should demonstrate (a) that you and your team are fully capable of doing the work you propose, both in expertise and facilities, (b) that you have identified an important, relevant problem with broader implications for society, and (c) that the proposed work is very likely to produce new and exciting results.  For untenured faculty, it may be helpful to gravitate towards your areas of expertise for at least one or two proposals, to maximize your chances of securing funding. At the same time, pursue a few collaborative proposals with other investigators that perhaps broaden your horizons.  Once you have written a draft proposal, ask a mentor or friend in your department to review it, and allow time to incorporate their feedback prior to the submission deadline.  Finally, consider attending a grant-writing workshop, if available.

  8.) Be productive and collaborative 

In these days of h-index driven hiring and promotion decisions, you would do well to collaborate and involve yourself with research that extends beyond your own immediate area of expertise.  I am not suggesting that you “game” the h-index, but when deciding on collaborations, as a pre-tenure faculty member, you should gravitate towards projects that are likely to result in peer-reviewed publications, because at the end of the day, publications are a key measure of your productivity. When invited to join collaborative projects, consider whether all members of the team will pull their weight, and whether meaningful publications and presentations will result (see #3 above).  What are the best-case, worst-case, and most likely outcomes of the project? How much of your time will be required?  And publication is not the end of the story for your research projects.  Give seminars, conference talks, media interviews, and guest lectures to make your work more widely known, increasing visibility and citations. This recognition can prove helpful when external reviewers are invited to provide letters for your tenure dossier.

  9.) Embrace constructive criticism

“When invited to join collaborative projects, consider whether all members of the team will pull their weight, and whether meaningful publications and presentations will result.”

If you have a paper or proposal rejected, try not to let it take you off your game!  If you get roughed up by a reviewer, embrace it!  Remember that reviewers are unpaid volunteers who are donating their time to provide you with feedback and suggestions on how to improve your work.  Rather than getting defensive and angry, realize that they are helping you.  Much of what we do as faculty members involves evaluation.  Students evaluate the quality of our teaching.  Reviewers determine whether our papers are published, or our proposals funded. The community will either cite, or not cite, our publications.  As scientists, we have to learn to disconnect emotions and personal feelings from the scientific evaluative processes, and turn constructive feedback into positive outcomes. This will help you to maintain happiness while at the same time strengthening your work as a scientist.

  10.) Maintain perspective and balance

Tenure is not the be-all, end-all.  If you become overly obsessed about getting tenure at the expense of time for socializing, hobbies, friends, family, vacation, exercise, sleep, “fun”, relaxation, and your personal mental health, you must ask yourself “is this worth it?”  If you enjoy your work as a faculty member and are passionate about what you do, odds are that you will get tenure. If you find that you are not enjoying your work, consider a career change!  Also be aware that when you get tenure, your life won’t change much.  There will be one less thing to worry about, an upgraded title, and hopefully a nice salary bump, but your day-to-day life won’t be drastically different. Devise whatever strategies you need to maintain perspective, work-life balance, mental health, and avoid burnout and good things will happen.  

Reflecting on my career, I have not always followed all of the advice listed above.  I was not as collaborative as I should have been early in my career, and I failed to maintain some important mentoring relationships.  My time-management was not always optimal.  We failed to submit some excellent student theses for publication. My work-life balance was out-of-whack at times.  However, I always maintained focus on students and teaching, in addition to research and publication.  I have enjoyed success as a teacher, researcher, and mentor.  I credit my mentors, collaborators, and advisors for playing a major role in this.  

If teaching and mentoring students and directing research are things you find rewarding, then a faculty career is an attractive option. While the tenure and promotion process can be daunting, in my view the positives far outweigh the negative aspects of a faculty position. In the end, ten different academics would probably each list ten different or additional tips, but these are mine.  I hope that you find them useful!