On taking care not to make tenure a horse race (or senior faculty should choose their words with care).
Two critical incidents changed my tenure process when I was an assistant professor.
The first occurred within days of starting my job.
The chair of our tenure committee told me & my colleagues that we needed twice as many papers to tenure than we had been led to believe.
The chair outlined two non-competing paths to tenure, & suggested that we sort out which we would take.
This created tremendous pressure on us.
We left the meeting, commented on how crazy this was, selected separate paths so that we could not be unfairly compared, and stayed friends (albeit under pressure to do more work than expected.
The second occurred when the chair of my department informed the assistant professors that rarely did everyone earn tenure - bc some of us were better than others.
This started a mostly quiet competition among the assistant professors.
Collegiality suffered.
We made comparisons, sometimes derogated each other, and were much less happy.
For my cohort of assistant professors, the department became toxic.
Where we had felt pressure, we now felt rivalry.
In the end, two were tenured, and one did not.
I will always wonder what would have happened if tenure expectations had not changed and the rivalry had not been sparked.
I suspect we all would have made it.
I still feel lost and remorse for how those years unfolded.
When I became a Full Professor and participated in tenure decisions, I thought a lot about the dynamic created by those conversations.
The message of either was not wrong bc tenure expectations have risen and not everyone earns tenure.
I have come to realize that there are better ways of communicating that message.
First, senior faculty should avoid public comparisons among assistant professors at their place.
It stimulates an unhealthy dynamic.
Such assessments should be private & kept to committee meetings.
Second, senior faculty should communicate realistic paths to tenure.
While I think we must value many different contributions, not all schools agree.
Research is necessary, but many other activities can add heft to a portfolio- and if they really are valued - that should be shared in plain language.
Doing so gives assistant professors more control & lets them play to their strengths.
Third, senior faculty should not inflate requirements, even in jest.
Tenure is hard enough without adding ambiguity.
If you comment on tenure, always keep your group’s rubric in mind - not as it was or as you think it should be.
Finally, senior faculty must be aware of the power of their words.
Neither chair was malicious at the start of this post.
But their not well-thought-through delivery caused pain & turmoil.
If senior faculty think through how they communicate, tenure doesn’t have to be a horse race & we can build stronger academic communities.
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