Summary of Dean Goldenbaum's lecture on "How To Get Tenure ? "

 
 

When one leaves graduate school with a doctorate, one is most likely be applying for one of three positions at the university level: Assistant professor, Research Scientist or Postdoctoral Researcher (in order of likelihood no doubt).

According to Goldenbaum, it is imperative that one find out exactly what a given department is looking for in a candidate. In his opinion, it is not worth your time writing an application if it won't even be considered. A visit, a phone call or a letter were all acceptable forms of inquiry.

An application must, of course, include a curriculum vitae. According to the Faculty Handbook at UMD, a CV may include some or all of the following items (a laundry list):

1) Personal Information - Name, Dept, Educational background, Jobs held, Current position
2) Evidence of Research, scholarly and creative activities:

a) Books authored, edited
b) Chapters authored, edited
c) Articles in refereed journals
d) Monographs, reports
e) Talks, abstracts and other professional papers presented - always state whether talk was invited or contributed
f) Conference proceedings - indicate whether they were refereed or not
g) Inventions, patents, instruments designed etc.
h) PI on contracts or grants
i) Fellowships, awards, grants
j) Review activities - i.e. if you have reviewed articles etc.
k) Teaching and Advising - actual lectures, course and curriculum development, manuals or notes developed etc.
                                                             Also include TA awards or other specific recognition for teaching abilities.
l) Advising - if you have advised someone officially
m) Service - e.g., Officer in SPS
n) Unpaid professional service like review activity for some agency - proposals, chapters, anything!
o) University committees etc.
p) Paid consultancy

 

While a CV is important for the initial hire, it is only one of many items considered for tenure or promotion within the university. At this point, the dean focussed more on the original title of his talk and began to emphasize the process towards promotion to tenured faculty or tenured researcher.

He said that by agreement between all universities and colleges, an assistant professor was reviewed for promotion to tenure within six years after initial hire. If the university would not promote the professor, s/he would be fired. The reason for this seemingly harsh and binary decision making agreement was to prevent universities from keeping low wage labour around for long periods of time and to insist on employing only the very best candidates.

The process of promotion at UMD involves several steps beginning with a descriptive report written by a two or three person committee describing objectively your research over the past few years. This report is generally 6-7 pages long and also includes a description of your teaching activities and service record. You, as the candidate, have the option of reviewing the report and adding to it in a personal statement of 2-3 pages if you see that as necessary. This report is supposed to be unbiased and completely objective. The subjective part come later.

In addition to these reports, the department chair solicits letters of reference from experts in your field. You are asked to suggest a list of possible references and the dept. cmte. or chair. Half of your letters of reference come from this list while the other half come from other experts in the field not included in your list. The department chair generally writes a letter soliciting the recommendation letter with the following questions:

1) Are the qualities and quantitity of Doc X 's research at a level appropriate for this position ?
2) Would you recommend this person for a position in your department ?
3) Rank this person in expertise and list others at the same level and then compare them (Implicit in here is that a dept. knows who is good and who is not)
4) Can you identify major contributions this person has made ?

Along with this letter the chair often sends a collection of papers you may have written. At UMD, at least 4 letters of reference are required at the assistant professor level of which only two can come from people you suggested.

In addition, you need to provide a list of your publications. This list is supposed to also have some ranking of the journals in which you have published. A peer review of your teaching activities is also required at UMD along with the class evaluations etc.

Now, all of this material is discussed amongst the senior faculty in the department who vote and their vote is recorded as number of ayes, nays and abstentions. In addition to this, the department chair gets his/her own vote which is also recorded.

Regardless of the vote, the package goes to the dean's office. If both the department and the chair have voted the promotion down, it is highly unlikely that the dean will say yes and the process ends at that point. On the other hand, if there have been enough ayes until now (a bit vague here), the process continues and everything is repeated with the dean and an APT committee which is comprised of senior faculty from all departments and colleges around the university. this APT committee may have someone from your department that year and in that case, s/he is not supposed to recommend or disapprove of the promotion. S/he can only answer questions posed to them by the committee. The APT committee also recieves biographies (generally from a Who's Who catalog) of the people who have included letters of reference. Now, it is true that some departments do better at promotions than others so this process is very important and a department's ability to handle the process may affect the outcome. Again, at this level votes are recorded with the dean getting a separate vote like the chair.

At all levels, the university is looking for expertise - that is the bottom line. It pays to know people in your field and have good contacts with them and it pays to advertise your research as much as possible.

My snail mail address is:
Kartik Sheth
Department of Astronomy
University of Maryland - College Park
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405-1533

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at kartik@astro.umd.edu