First Person

Why I Gave Up Tenure

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By David Rivers

At no time in my professional or personal life have I ever been accused of making sound decisions. Nowhere is this better exemplified than last fall, when I decided to leave the institution where I had spent the last seven years and instead seek employment closer to family and friends in my home state, in the heartland of America, God's country ... yes, the Midwest.

Perhaps for a junior faculty member, such a move would cause relatively little anguish; after all, they are still building ties to academe, and tenure seems so distant. My decision to leave, however, was substantially different. I was no longer a junior faculty member; I was a newly tenured and promoted associate professor at Loyola College in Maryland.

The marketability of someone with tenure drops significantly by comparison to a junior faculty member. Far more positions are advertised for assistant and full professors than for those at the associate rank. And of course the "WTHWWTG Factor" kicks in -- i.e., the What the Hell's Wrong With This Guy Factor. Because who in their right mind would give up tenure and promotion knowing that they would most likely have to start over as a junior faculty member?

For me, another wrinkle in changing jobs was that I held tenure at an institution I dearly loved: The students were (and are) not only bright and highly motivated, but also interested in transforming into young adults (and yes I have recently taught some students with much different desires!). The faculty of the college as a whole, and my department specifically, are as good as it gets in terms of dedication to undergraduate education, collegiality, and commitment to the mission of the college. I had just moved into a new office -- with windows that open -- and into a new research laboratory specifically designed to meet the current and future needs of myself and my students.

It seemed highly unlikely that I could move to a college or university that would duplicate my experience of the past seven years -- an admittedly dismal view to begin a job search.

So why on earth attempt to leave a place that sounds so great? Good question. I could simply refer you back to the opening sentence of this column. The truth is, I do not want my whole life to center around my profession. For the last 14 years, most of the important decisions affecting my family life were made based on what best suited my pursuit of a Ph.D. and an academic career. It was time to think about what matters most.

I am married with four children. If I did not want to change my academic lifestyle, they at least wanted to be closer to our extended family. To visit either my family or my wife's, we have had to undergo meditation and sedation to load the minivan with four disgruntled children, usually at 6 a.m. on December 26; travel a wind-aided 11 hours to Indiana, or 13 to 14 hours with detours in place. If you know the main route of travel to Indiana from Pennsylvania, then you are familiar with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If not, drive it during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday season. The experience is life changing. The drama alone associated with taking a child into a restroom at a roadside oasis will probably stunt the growth of my two sons. And I don't care if Burger King does make the nation's best french fries, after 59,721.4 fries (I threw up before finishing the last one) over the course of many, many journeys, I could not take it anymore!

We had minimized the number of times a year we made the trip, with the unhappy result that my children saw their grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and incarcerated family members only once or twice a year. They are still young and naïve, so they want to visit with these people much more than a few times a year. My wife has always been very close to her parents, and she has made enormous sacrifices to be with me through graduate school, a postdoctoral experience, and a job on the East Coast that put her 600 miles away from "home." For once in my life, I made a sound decision; to consider my family's needs above my own career wants. The decision to leave my wonderful job, then, was not about academics, job advancement, or huge salary gains. It was something quite simple, yet sometimes disregarded in academia: I wanted my family to be happy.

With my decision to leave made, the question became, Where to go? Which Midwestern states would be close enough to family? Did I want a college with the same mission as the one I was leaving, or should I try for a Research I institution? If the move is all that matters, then do I simply try for any college close to home? I had to wrestle with all of these issues before coming to the conclusion that my passion is for teaching undergraduate students in a liberal-arts setting. I knew, then, that a place like Loyola was what I wanted.

With this revelation, my worry shifted to my academic background. I am trained as an entomologist with a specialty in invertebrate physiology. While there are hundreds if not thousands of positions advertised each year seeking an expert in "bug" physiology, I had to accept the possibility that I might not find one that would involve using my expertise (and my passion) to the fullest extent.

And so the search began. Every week, I checked the usual sources for job postings. Since my search criteria were relatively specific, I routinely came up empty. When I did find interesting positions, I went to the college's Web site to examine its mission, goals, admission standards, and expectations for faculty members (e.g., Are the faculty members to be teachers only, or are they scholars as well?). If I was happy with what I found, I then searched for statistics, such as salary comparisons, rankings, location, stability of endowment, and size of the college and the department. All of this information collectively formed the basis for whether to apply for the open position.

In the end, I applied to six colleges, all of which, ironically, wanted an animal physiologist with an expertise in invertebrates (talk about the planets being aligned!). I made the shortlist at all six, interviewed by telephone with three, and was invited for campus interviews at four. My first campus visit, and ultimately the only one I went on, was in early November at Butler University in Indianapolis. As a bona fide Hoosier, I knew the campus well and was quite excited about the possibility of living in Indianapolis. The university has an impressive reputation and the biological-sciences department has historically been one of the major strengths of Butler. Best of all, it's located only an hour from both sets of families.

In an effort to enhance my interview, I decided to bring a flu virus along with me. Of course, for maximum effectiveness, I waited to express the full effects of the virus until the wee hours of the morning before my interview. I must say that I became quite intimate with the porcelain fixtures located in the wash room. Ten pounds lost and three shades lighter, I arrived on campus that morning to begin a full day of intensive interviewing. I can honestly say that I have no idea what I said to anyone at Butler nor what they indicated to me. Nonetheless, it must have gone well because two weeks later, I was offered the job.

Nothing to complain about, right? Well, yes and no. The folks at Butler wanted to have an answer within the next couple of weeks. None of the other colleges were that far along. If I accepted the position at Butler, I was going to make substantially less money, at least initially, than I had been making back East. I also was going to relinquish both rank and tenure. Should I wait for other interviews, and possible offers?

I could not take that chance. I decided to leave Loyola for family reasons. If I turned down the job at Butler in anticipation of higher gains, then I was ignoring my family again. I called the dean of arts and sciences at Butler a week later with my decision: I will see you in the fall!

Next: Starting over as a new assistant professor.