Some negative promotion and tenure decisions seem predetermined the moment a newly hired scholar signs a job contract. Chalk it up to a bad institutional match: The job candidate chose the college for the wrong reasons, rejecting another that would have better suited his or her talents. Other negative decisions can be traced to institutional and research variables that many candidates overlook.
Understanding those variables in advance can help you circumvent or cope with promotion and tenure decisions that often have little to do with envious colleagues, hostile work environments, or personal deficiencies. Perhaps more important for those still on the job market, or about to be once again because of a negative decision, acknowledging those factors will help you choose the right position at the best university for your abilities.
Many applicants seek employment at their "ideal" college or university. I don't know of any such place, but based on conversations I have had with job candidates at Iowa State University's Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, which I direct, I can envision its characteristics:
n A top-ranked reputation in research or the liberal arts.
n A starting salary of $75,000 or more, plus research assistants and assurance of no undergraduate advising or committee service.
n A teaching load of three classes a year, scheduled on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon, or 1 to 3 p.m., and taught in seminar format on a topic related to the teacher's professional interest.
n A well-appointed office and/or laboratory complete with a campus view and cutting-edge technology, far from student traffic but close to classrooms.
n For single, childless candidates, an exciting night life with prospects for romantic partners who share the same lifestyle, political affiliation, ethnicity, and religion.
n For attached candidates without children, an exciting cultural milieu near an international airport, plus a tenure-track job for the trailing partner (who may or may not have an advanced degree).
n For attached candidates with children, all of the above plus good public schools and low taxes.
n A location with a warm climate, preferably near an ocean and with decently priced housing.
n An inclusive, collegial department whose senior members are committed to the advancement of junior members by supporting smaller workloads, higher starting salaries, and more startup money for research.
n A gifted and eager student body excited by the candidate's research on sexual deviancy of open-source avatars operating across virtual grids.
In Iowa, we are especially sensitive when our state is depicted as Mr. Rogers's neighborhood. We have had candidates inform us that Iowa State would be their top choice, if they had children. We do have good schools —a fact emblazoned on the Iowa quarter ("Foundation in Education").
But that doesn't make Iowa just a place to raise families. The focus on education here suggests that Iowans understand the value of their public universities, a claim many states cannot make about their taxpayers.
Nevertheless we often lose prospects to weather, and later learn that candidates chose a job in a warmer city where they will spend hours each week driving in traffic jams.
If you related to one or two characteristics on my list, own up to it. Maybe you accepted an offer at a university in a location suited to your lifestyle without fully analyzing if your research was a better fit at another university with less desirable characteristics. Nothing ruins lifestyle as quickly as a tenure denial.
If you want a career with an upward trajectory, think less about your personal ideals and more about their impact at tenure time. Hallmarks of an ideal position have little to do with weather, lifestyle, or socio-political milieu. They begin with a dean, chair, and professors recruiting you enthusiastically because your contributions will serve students or enhance a research program.
The location of a department in a university's college structure can also affect promotion and tenure, especially in professional disciplines such as art and design, engineering, health education, information technology, journalism, and social work, to name a few. Often those fields require some sort of practice or service to the profession, ensuring that academics keep current.
Professional practice complicates the promotion and tenure process. Professors in many of the sciences and liberal arts can focus solely on scholarly research, while their counterparts in professional units must wear the hardhat of industry as well as the cap of academe.
If a professional department is located in a college associated with the professions, practical experience is usually valued in some measure. However, if it is located in a college of liberal arts and sciences, members of college-level tenure panels may not understand or appreciate such experience.
Before signing a contract, request departmental and college governance documents detailing promotion and tenure criteria.
Analyze how, if at all, professional practice is defined and evaluated. Inquire whether it can be included in your position responsibility statement. At many institutions, including my own, that formal document detailing your duties informs college-level reviewers from varied disciplines how your home department views practice and service to the profession.
You won't be promoted and/or tenured on practice alone. However, documenting it in a dossier with peer-reviewed research might even the playing field, clarifying issues of productivity.
Typically, research earns promotion and tenure. Teaching is secondary, and often for good reason: You took a job as an educator. You're expected to be competent in the classroom. If you are not, you're gone on that basis alone unless your research involves grantsmanship or recognition of such high caliber so as to exempt you.
The former institutional categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching —Research I, II; Doctoral I, II; Master's I, II; and so on —are key in predetermining promotion and tenure decisions because they defined the research expectations that awaited you. The foundation revamped its classification system in 2000 and again in 2005, because of concerns that it contributed to a prestige-ranking system. Instead it invites researchers to analyze classifications themselves with a "custom-listing tool" available at its Web site. (You'll need a Research I postdoc to use it.)
Don't be fooled by such talk. Former Carnegie designations are still recognized at many institutions. The reclassifications failed to end rankings, and, in some cases, only blurred them even more.
As proof, read part of the report "How Does Your Department Compare?" available from the American Sociological Association. One passage is particularly telling: "As with many other researchers, we have decided to continue to use the 1994 classification system since it provides a more detailed system that is more useful for the creation of peer institutions than the new system."
A case in point is Ohio University, where I was promoted and tenured in the Scripps College of Communication. The focus on rankings by U.S. News and World Report resulted in a study asserting that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a peer institution. (For Ohio's methodology, see http://www.ohiou.edu/instres/univ/peerstudy/index.html.)
Other Ohio "peers" include Auburn, Clemson, and Washington State Universities, and the Universities of Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana at Bloomington, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. Somehow Ohio missed the fact that eight of 10 of its peers are land-grant universities with different missions —a mission, to be precise, already claimed by Ohio State University.
Over all, I can attest that promotion and tenure requirements at Iowa State University, a Research I institution under the old classification system, are tougher than those at Ohio, a former Research II. Research I universities would typically value grant acquisitions as much as, if not more than, article and book publications, because the institution's reputation, graduate programs, and organizational structure still rely on such financing.
In journalism and communication at Iowa State, even failed grant applications are considered plusses at promotion time, and candidates list them in comprehensive dossiers alongside the usual fare of peer-reviewed publications.
Institutions with lesser Carnegie designations could cite former Research I institutions as peers, but the aspiring university does not change overnight. Former Research I universities usually have lighter teaching loads so that candidates can meet rigorous promotion benchmarks with time to execute grants. Unless your former Research II university acknowledges that, you may be teaching more while being held to higher research standards, a prescription for trouble at promotion time.
In sum, research remains the yardstick that plays a role in reputation, recruitment, and retention of top professors, requiring hefty start-up packages along with the best graduate assistants. Universities earn reputations through external grant acquisition, not by magazine rankings or football teams.
Finally, you'll note that I failed to focus on the importance of committee service in promotion and tenure decisions. A good department chair or governance document should shield you from too much service.
But prepare to do more of it after earning promotion and tenure, including evaluating the dossiers of the next generation of academics, upholding the standards that you worked so hard to achieve.
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