next »

[graceunderfire]

I have a question for the forum.  What do you all think about having two tt married faculty in the same department that do almost all their work as a team.  In laboratory sciences, they co-advise all their students and postdocs, they teach together about 20% of the time, they publish together about 80% of the time (with each taking turns to be "senior" author), write 90% of their grant proposals together, and vote as a monolithic block on all departmental affairs.  Would it make a difference if one or both was tenured versus tenure track?  Would it make a difference if they produced super high quality versus just OK research?  Would it make a difference if the department was very small versus very big?  Do any of you have such academic husband-wife (or SO-SO) teams in your departments, and if so how has it worked out?  If you have these teams, how are the individuals evaluated, do they both get to count the joint work equally?  How about if one is tenured and the other isn't, is it likely to be a problem for the junior when they go up for tenure?  I'm just trying to figure out if I'm out of touch or not....

[mouseman]

All I can say is - how are they still married? 

Now, regarding the question itself - if they're producing high quality publications, bringing in grant money, getting good teaching evaluations, graduating students, and doing their share of service, I can't imagine it being a problem.  Except if this means that they did not collaborate with anybody else in the department, which creates issues of collegiality.  Additionally, this assumes that their total output is that of two people not one person. 

Well, unless somebody like Amnirov is part of the department (interthreaduality alert). 

[graceunderfire]

Thanks for your thoughts mouseman.  They seem to get along really well.  One is tenured and the other one will go up for tenure soon.  Do you think the one going up is going to have a hard time since so much of the record is joint with their spouse?  As a team they are very productive, but perhaps not twice as productive as the average...probably about 1.5-1.75 times as productive.

I'd still love to hear about other academic couples like this in other departments.  I'm especially interested in any negative effects on departmental collegiality and I'd like to know how joint work is evaluated: here they are each given full credit for the things they produce together which seems a bit like "double-dipping" to me.

[larryc]

It sounds like you don't like them and are fishing for a justification.

[msparticularity]

Thanks for your thoughts mouseman.  They seem to get along really well.  One is tenured and the other one will go up for tenure soon.  Do you think the one going up is going to have a hard time since so much of the record is joint with their spouse?  As a team they are very productive, but perhaps not twice as productive as the average...probably about 1.5-1.75 times as productive.

I'd still love to hear about other academic couples like this in other departments.  I'm especially interested in any negative effects on departmental collegiality and I'd like to know how joint work is evaluated: here they are each given full credit for the things they produce together which seems a bit like "double-dipping" to me.

I know (and know of) several teams like this in the humanities and the social sciences, and in every case they are evaluated in exactly the same way as if they had done all of this work with any other individual (other than a partner, I mean). Working in a teamed situation is totally normal for the sciences, for example, so why would you penalize a couple for working with each other, when it would have been completely acceptable for them to work together if they weren't married?

Similarly, if the expectation for publications in the field is that they will be jointly authored, then why does it matter with whom they wrote? There are some humanities fields where jointly-authored work is definitely not the norm and would be given less weight, but again it seem to me that the fact that these are spouses is completely extraneous.

[graceunderfire]

Actually I like them both very much.  I have been worried about the one going up for tenure but my dept. head and my colleague who is going up both think I am worried over nothing.  It sounds like everyone on the fora agrees.  OK, thank you.  I guess I really am out of touch. 

[aprilmay]

People, in my field at least, would be very skeptical about any partnership in which 2 people publish together "about 80% of the time (with each taking turns to be "senior" author), write 90% of their grant proposals together" whether they were married or not. In this situation, it is difficult to evaluate who is the brains behind this team and whether they could function independently. Such a CV would never make it through the tenure review process here. But clearly these persons know they have done this with one achieving tenure already, so maybe things are different in your field or university and it is appropriate there.

[mozman]

I know an academic couple like this.  The wife just got promoted to full prof, the husband is going up for associate soon.  They work completely as a team, a joint lab - almost 100% of their papers and grants are joint.  They are very productive - not in terms of quantity (they have plenty of publications, but I don't think they have 2X as many), but their publication quality is very high - Nature, Science, PNAS etc.

 The department and university considers them, as a team, a serious asset. 

[bluezebracat]

Ooo...I've seen these partnerships, but have never seen one broken up.  That must be a disaster.

[graceunderfire]

Just a clarification: spouse going up for tenure now was not tt when other spouse got tenure.  Spouse going up for tenure now was a tech in other spouses lab, and all the joint work counted toward tenure bid of other spouse, who at that time was clearly senior and assumed to be in charge (though they have always been equal partners).