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[barred_owl]

Not to hijack this thread with an already "asked and answered" question - but I feel as though I've never really gotten a clear answer on the following.  It relates to the OP's question and this is a useful thread, so here it goes.

I'm in the humanities, FWIW.

Let's say you publish an article or two in a peer-reviewed journal while in graduate school, hoping that doing so will help you land a job.  You magically get hired and your tenure requirement is something like the OP's college or university. 

You turn your dissertation into a book (with a snazzy, glossy cover).

Here is the perhaps familiar question - Do your articles published in graduate school contribute to your remaining requirement for three additional peer-reviewed articles?

I feel like the answer on this has been, "it depends on the school or job."  I'd like to get a little better feel on this, if possible.  Is this something to remember if you ever get a chance to negotiate with a school on a job offer?  Can you ask a hiring committee to count one of your articles toward tenure?   

Minorleaguer--The answer, generally, is "It depends."  At my university, the pre-hire pubs counted toward the hire, but the expectation was that later tenure decisions were based, in conjunction with teaching and service record, on the pubs that were produced post-hire. 

Generally, you do not ask the hiring committee to consider your book/article/creative work as part of a future tenure decision.  For one thing, the hiring committee members are not necessarily the same people who will be reviewing your case for tenure, plus a search committee's purpose is to recommend someone to be hired, the T&P committee's mission is deciding on tenure.  Two different things.

There are rare cases in which an applicant with extensive teaching experience and significant publication record might negotiate with a dean for a shortened tenure clock once an offer has been made, but those cases are rare and are not usually discussed, at least not right off the bat, with the search committee. 

[toothpaste]

History here. My research oriented department at a regional state university requires a book. Period. I think that's high enough for us.

I think that gonehiking's mention of the Least Publishable Unit is key. Scientists are trained (as I understand it) how to parcel off their research into small pieces that get featured separately. History is book-driven, in part, I think, because once you understand something well enough to write about it, you've pretty much assembled a book's worth of research. To write an article, you still have to understand a huge volume (archive!) of information first.

[timurid]

I wonder if the inflated qualifications expected by employers and the growing need to publish as a grad student will cause problems down the road.
If you have a finite pool of possible articles based on your dissertation and other graduate work... and you have to publish and expend a substantial portion of that just to get the position... then there is less remaining to go into your tenure portfolio and more new work and catching up required once you're on the job.

[heywhynots]

Scientists are trained (as I understand it) how to parcel off their research into small pieces that get featured separately. History is book-driven, in part, I think, because once you understand something well enough to write about it, you've pretty much assembled a book's worth of research. To write an article, you still have to understand a huge volume (archive!) of information first.

For scientists, it is not just training to "parcel off" our "research into small pieces" but also part of the scientific process.  You put your research and hypotheses out into the larger scientific community to be critiqued, tested, and verified.  This leads to new hypotheses to be tested and additional experiments, as well as refinement of some models and theories, and discarding of others.  In its ideal, publishing is about saying "Hey look at what I found, I think it means X, Y, and Z. What do you think?".  Waiting to publish lessens this important dynamic in the sciences. 

[airball]

I wonder if the inflated qualifications expected by employers and the growing need to publish as a grad student will cause problems down the road.
If you have a finite pool of possible articles based on your dissertation and other graduate work... and you have to publish and expend a substantial portion of that just to get the position... then there is less remaining to go into your tenure portfolio and more new work and catching up required once you're on the job.

Maybe. What amuses me is that the glut of talent (esp. in the humanities) means that second- and third-tier universities have tenure standards for new hires that many senior faculty could not meet.

I think that academia is so competitive that faculty will have to produce. It's not as if people who study Shakespeare are hard to replace.

airball

[erzuliefreda]

The market in U.S. history is ... intense. The university that hired me to a TT position is not at all remarkable. 4-4 teaching load. 3 of those courses each term are 40+ student survey core classes. No pre-tenure leave.

Last year, members of the SC who hired me told me about how I almost didn't get a campus interview because I was nowhere near as advanced as some of the other candidates. The committee was especially smitten with one person who had a book in production. Not just under contract. This candidate was not already on the TT anywhere. Hu just had a book already in production. Hu almost beat me out for this very teaching-intensive job.

The standards are rising around us and there is no turning back.

[pinkmouse]

I wonder if the inflated qualifications expected by employers and the growing need to publish as a grad student will cause problems down the road.
If you have a finite pool of possible articles based on your dissertation and other graduate work... and you have to publish and expend a substantial portion of that just to get the position... then there is less remaining to go into your tenure portfolio and more new work and catching up required once you're on the job.

Maybe. What amuses me is that the glut of talent (esp. in the humanities) means that second- and third-tier universities have tenure standards for new hires that many senior faculty could not meet.

Is the solution then to slack back the standards to "1 book review" or whatever some of these oldtimers have produced, OR make tenure a renewable concept: every 7 years you have to prove your worth again, with what you've published since the last review. (I can think of a few people who'd be out of a job, but that might be a good thing, given how many talented new PhDs are fighting for jobs - with better publication records than many of the currently safely tenured)

[the_honey_badger]

I wonder if the inflated qualifications expected by employers and the growing need to publish as a grad student will cause problems down the road.
If you have a finite pool of possible articles based on your dissertation and other graduate work... and you have to publish and expend a substantial portion of that just to get the position... then there is less remaining to go into your tenure portfolio and more new work and catching up required once you're on the job.

Maybe. What amuses me is that the glut of talent (esp. in the humanities) means that second- and third-tier universities have tenure standards for new hires that many senior faculty could not meet.

Is the solution then to slack back the standards to "1 book review" or whatever some of these oldtimers have produced, OR make tenure a renewable concept: every 7 years you have to prove your worth again, with what you've published since the last review. (I can think of a few people who'd be out of a job, but that might be a good thing, given how many talented new PhDs are fighting for jobs - with better publication records than many of the currently safely tenured)

Being at one of those second or third tier universities, I think it only fair to recall that when some of my colleagues near retirement were hired, we were a absolutely a *teaching* school and publishing was not only not 'pushed' it was often punished.  It isn't my most senior colleagues who pushed for excessive standards for hire and tenure but administrators who want national ranking. At schools like mine with vague rules about showing "impact on the field through publications" we even saw *creep* between my hire in 2003 and my tenure year.  "Evidence of scholarly impact on the field" can be interpreted any way they want. I easily met the expectations but even I was surprised at how much trouble a colleague had who had slightly less in print but definitely had what they described to us in person in our first year.

Yet, still we are a 3/3 with 3 preps a semester schedule and the most they have ever given for "research and travel" in a year is 500.00 --with a requirement that we attend at least two conferences a year and present research. None of my professional organizations have ever met in the same region I'm in so guess who pays the balance on just conference travel?    I didn't thank the university in my book because they never gave me a dime toward its research or a day off to get it done. I did thank many of the individual senior faculty by name because those 'low producing' men and women generously encouraged me, sympathized with the rising standards, and read draft portions in true collegial fashion.

[pinkmouse]

As I said upthread, I thought the OP's tenure requirements were fair.

But the issue of equity is a valid one, and a more valid issue is the one raised about funding for the expected research. Surely this type of mission-creep at teaching-focused schools just ends up shortchanging the students. People who are panicking to put together a tenure file with the clock ticking are not going to be the best teachers they can be.

[erzuliefreda]

Ah, but they are also observing our classes, reading our student evaluations with interest, and studying our grade distributions. And did I mention the insightfully introspective narratives of self-assessment in the classroom we must produce each year, in which we detail our pedagogical growth?

We just work all the damn time.

[the_honey_badger]

Ah, but they are also observing our classes, reading our student evaluations with interest, and studying our grade distributions. And did I mention the insightfully introspective narratives of self-assessment in the classroom we must produce each year, in which we detail our pedagogical growth?

We just work all the damn time.

Yes, and its a playground for the immoral and bitter that is for sure.

But, on the "work all the damn time" statement I have to say that one year after tenure I'm still working all the *damn* time---the annual report requires evidence of "activity" in all areas (especially those stupid self-assessment sections).

 Where I find terror striking my heart is the idea that every seven years (as someone just suggested) we essentially have to apply for tenure again. I'm definitely moving on book two and have plenty of "smaller" things at various stages but I will say that I looked forward to NOT making the sorts of compromises I did on the first book to push it out on a timeline for tenure but to do something that was more thoughtful. And, if the bar is raised constantly for those entering the field, what do you think they will do for the bar for "re-tenure" once some genius figures that "well, now you know how to write a book so this one and the next and the next should be produced faster!"  Oh, and I'm still paying credit card debt on researching the last one and for all those conferences.

[pinkmouse]

I was actually joking with my two "options" to solve the raised expectations for tenure over time. It's market forces that create the situation.  

But the plan of "renewable" tenure, if anyone actually put it into play, would go the other way I think. Suddenly expectations would be relaxed. Nobody would be suggesting requirements for tenure that they couldn't reach themselves. So in fact the requirements would probably slide back, and you wouldn't be having to break your back to do what you did to get tenure the first time.

On the one hand, no school should be expecting a book (or two!) if they give neither money nor time for research. But since there are people who achieve it (the occasional hardworking genius who manages to crank out books while teaching a 5-5), it becomes the expectation.

[the_honey_badger]

I agree on a lot of this.  Where I am skeptical is that standards would recede---my Dean is convinced that "once you learn how to write a book by publishing one, you should pump one out every two years!"  (He is not in a "book" field)  That guy would love to raise the bar even higher because you can always find a nut willing to try to jump over it and then some would find ways around the publications bar because they were 'excused' for doing "significant administrative work"  or these other boondoggles that some find to avoid work.  (We have that "admin" option for all sorts of nonsense positions like officers in the faculty senate...)

[emerson_scholar]

... I'm definitely moving on book two and have plenty of "smaller" things at various stages but I will say that I looked forward to NOT making the sorts of compromises I did on the first book to push it out on a timeline for tenure but to do something that was more thoughtful. ...

Cui bono?

This sums it up, at least in my mind. Why are we killing ourselves (dissing our students along the way) and hurting our respective fields by producing scholarship that, by our own lights, is inferior because of arbitrary time pressures? Moreover, there is simply too much stuff produced that shouldn't be. Books that should be articles. Articles that should be notes, public lectures, or bird-cage liners. Why doesn't the MLA/AHA/XXX step forward and issue a statement demanding that institutions put the brakes on this idiocy? At the very least outside reviewers could put the interests of their field ahead of the interests of deans and tenured faculty on the P&T com. who don't understand what it takes to do meaningful research in particular areas. I find this whole system absolutely baffling. Books should take a long, long time. Articles should take a long time. We all know teaching should take an extraordinary amount of time and energy. How did we get in this mess?

Here we all are in a locked, water-tight room, each holding a hose attached to a faucet with the water turned on full blast. We are all complaining about the fact that we are all going to drown. But everybody insists on keeping hus faucet going... Absolutely nuts.

[galway]

I'm sure this is flogging a dead horse and clearly it's a thread hijack (continued from above though) but it's just hard to ignore how little we understand each other in different fields.  In my area of science publication can be slow because we often travel to remote locations and then stay there for months.  Once there we have to find rare plants or animals, deal with weather that can affect the ability to find those organisms, and then if we're experimentalists keep those animals alive long enough for those experiments.  It's tough to figure out what to feed an insect you've never even seen before.  After that we write papers that have to integrate the work of the last hundred years to tell a new story about how the world functions.  That's ignoring figuring out Bayesian analysis, getting permits, and actually having interesting experimental results.  This isn't to say history isn't hard - my assumption is we all work pretty comparably hard - but it's good to know more about how other academics work and not make too many assumptions.  Ok back to reasonable advice for the OP...