First Person

A Look at the Record

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By Dennis Baron

Allison Porchnik's tenure and promotion case was typical rather than ideal. It illustrates how tenure happens -- or sometimes doesn't happen -- at my institution. Although her tenure case probably kept her up nights for a year, and it gave me some unquiet moments along the way, I won't keep you in suspense: In the end, she was successful.

In my first installment of this series on the tenure-and-promotion process, I offered my own subjective observations and interpretations of how promotions work in my shop. And I promised to introduce you to some "typical" promotion candidates and follow their cases through the system. That brings us to the case of Allison Porchnik, which is, of course, not her real name.

The tenure process began for Porchnik before we hired her: She used her job interview to show us that she had already produced outstanding scholarship and was already a highly effective instructor. Keeping the bar high from the start means there is less chance of a negative tenure vote six years later.

Once she was hired, annual reviews kept the department informed of Porchnik's developing record of scholarship, teaching, and service. After one review I advised her to stop reviewing books: It takes time away from "real" work, and besides, why make enemies so early in a career? A year later I told her not to volunteer for so many committees. She complied and kept her research program on schedule. Other assistant professors seem less able to budget their time. One told a previous department head that there weren't enough hours in the day for him to teach and to do research. The head told him, "Sleep less." It wasn't long before both of them took other jobs.

I met with Porchnik in the spring of her fifth year to discuss her promotion. This is the tenure profile that she brought to that meeting, together with some comments on that record.

Research

Porchnik's book, accepted by a strong university press, was being copy-edited and would be in print by October, when the department makes its tenure decisions. The book was crucial to the promotion. If Porchnik had finished her manuscript six months sooner, we would have been able to send reviewers the actual published book instead of page proofs. Reviewers who receive a physical book discuss its strengths and shortcomings, evaluating it in the context of recent work being done in the field. But if I send them proofs, or worse yet, a manuscript, some reviewers treat the work as still "in progress," asking for revisions of whole sections or wondering aloud if the author should take an entirely different approach. Such advice may be on target, but it's too late to do the tenure candidate any good.

I have seen assistant professors with weaker records than Porchnik's, and some with stronger ones. Alvy Singer brought to his fifth-year review a publisher's contract for a manuscript only half done. On his vita, he listed the book as "forthcoming." I had to tell him that college promotion committees want the book in production before they'll believe that it is "forthcoming." Forget about the advance contract, I told Singer, write the book.

My discussion with another assistant professor, Carol Lipton, after her third-year review took a different tack: Because her book had been published to rave reviews and she was getting invitations to apply for other jobs, I told her that the department wanted to consider her for early promotion.

In Porchnik's case, her vita showed four articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, in addition to the book. One of the articles was a dissertation chapter that later found its way into her book. It wouldn't do much to enhance her record. Another appeared in the top journal in her field. It's becoming more and more important to crack the top-tier journals. The third presented material from Porchnik's next major research project, offering evidence that she would continue to be a productive scholar. And the fourth had been solicited by an editor for a special issue, a sign that Porchnik was emerging as a presence on the national scene.

Porchnik had also published two book chapters. Book chapters will do less for a tenure case, since promotion committees generally assume that essay collections receive less scrutiny from peer reviewers than journal articles. One of Porchnik's chapters appeared in a collection edited by a friend at another university. It would be treated with suspicion. The other one -- solicited by the editor after he heard Porchnik at a conference -- demonstrates her competence, not her connections, and would at least be received neutrally.

I have found that this is not a message assistant professors want to hear. To them, a publication is a publication, so what's the problem?

But in preparing tenure papers for the college and campuswide tenure committees, I have to comment on the prestige of the journals and the presses where the candidate publishes, and the rigor with which submissions are reviewed. I'm routinely asked, "How good is this journal?" or "What's their rejection rate?" Of course a publication in a "friendly" source -- a chapter in a book edited by the candidate or a friend, for example -- can be groundbreaking, but it must first prove itself in the marketplace of ideas.

I recall a tenure candidate who published just such a chapter, in a book that he edited himself. Although he was promoted on the basis of other work, he remained miffed that promotion committees discounted that book chapter as self-publication. As it turned out, the work was widely cited by other scholars, and quickly became a minor classic in the field.

I also recall a book chapter by another candidate that had less success. A sound piece of work from all accounts, it never saw the light of day. The collection it was to appear in, edited by the candidate's former partner, was shopped in vain from press to press and eventually dropped from the faculty member's vita.

Porchnik's vita listed four papers presented at professional conferences, and one lecture at another university. Lecturing and conference presentations offer positive evidence of professional energy and engagement beyond the department and the campus. One science department I know of requires its fifth-year assistant professors to go on a lecture tour, which the department organizes and pays for. This increases the chances of getting external tenure reviewers already familiar with the candidate's work.

Unfortunately, most English departments can't underwrite that kind of professional exposure. Porchnik also guest-lectured in a class at Illinois, and helped to organize a local conference. However, local work, which typically undergoes less rigorous evaluation, does not count as scholarship for the purposes of a promotion bid. I advised Porchnik to move these two items from the research section of her vita to the teaching and service sections.

Teaching

Students regularly placed Porchnik on the university's list of instructors rated excellent by their students, and members of the department who had observed her classes were uniformly impressed with her teaching. She served on several dissertation committees. Teaching was clearly not a problem. While many students found her demanding, she was also supportive, and she motivated students to do their best work in her classes.

By contrast, another tenure candidate -- let's call her Professor Mellish -- was also a demanding teacher, but appealed only to the top students in her classes. Her student ratings were low, and while her peer observers commented favorably on the high standards she set, they expressed concern over Mellish's unwillingness to address the needs of the other two-thirds of the class. When I tried to discuss this with Mellish, she proved intractable. She let me know that she operated on a high intellectual level because students needed it, and she had no sympathy for students who couldn't keep up. Mellish's scholarship was unassailable, but though she did manage to bring her student scores up to the average range, her tenure case almost foundered on the teaching record.

At one time, weak teaching got by with little more than a hiccup. A science department once presented to the college promotion committee a tenure candidate -- a big grant-getter and active publisher -- who regularly garnered the lowest possible teaching scores. The department head explained, "He's teaching a required course; we all get lousy scores in that course." When I asked him if it was also possible that his department could place more emphasis on effective undergraduate teaching, he said, "Well yes, that too."

Research universities like mine have a reputation for not valuing teaching, and for expecting humanities faculty members to teach better than their counterparts in science and math. Illinois has done a lot in recent years to reverse that situation by offering pedagogical mentoring. Our goal is to hire a faculty of cutting-edge researchers in all fields who are also first-class teachers, and the fact that promotion committees now scrutinize teaching assessments conveys this important message to the entire faculty, not just the new kids.

Service

Porchnik served on the department's graduate admissions committee and was an elected representative to the department's advisory committee. She helped out with a faculty search and was a member of the committee on women in the profession for one of the professional societies she belonged to.

My department tries to protect junior faculty members from heavy committee loads so that they can establish their research programs and become confident instructors. But we must also foster a sense of departmental citizenship so that when faculty members are promoted they willingly take on their share of service, and professional visibility will foster the development of a national reputation for the scholar.

Porchnik's service is very satisfactory, but other departments in the college assign junior scholars significantly more committee work, and that means I routinely have to explain why our promotion candidates present such a "thin" service record.

After going over her vita at our spring pretenure meeting, I shifted to the nuts and bolts of promotion. I would need from Porchnik the names of five external reviewers, all of them full professors at peer or better institutions. Senior department members also provide a list. I would then secure two reviewers from Porchnik's list and three from the department list.

Finding external reviewers is no easy task. Even though I start earlier each year, I still get told, "I've already taken on as many reviews as I can handle." One person I asked to review Porchnik told me, "I can't do this because my life is falling apart right now." Tenure candidates may find it reassuring that even full professors at peer institutions are living on the edge. Although I almost blurted out a ghoulish, "Tell me more," because inquiring minds do want to know, I muttered an apology and moved on to the next person on my list.

The external reviewers read and reported on the tenure materials that Porchnik helped prepare: a vita, copies of her publications, and a three-page statement about her scholarship, divided evenly between accomplishments to date and the next research project. Porchnik also prepared a three-page statement of her teaching philosophy. We sent the materials to external reviewers by mid-June, asking them to report by September 30. All of Porchnik's reviewers reported on time, and in my next column I'll describe the kinds of things reviewers said in their letters on Porchnik, as well as on some other cases, and how tenure committees read those letters.