Organizational theorists have long observed that institutions have both written policies to guide internal behaviors but also customs, cultural norms, and common practices. Similarly, professions and academic fields have a set of norms, often unwritten, which determine what actions are honored and which are viewed as less highly valued. Successful careers in these collectivities require understanding both the written rules and the norms.
Discerning the culture of a profession and an institution is most important for a young academic’s success. Indeed, during the initial years of academics’ careers, their department, university, and profession are making decisions regarding their contributions. As with all human endeavors, the definition of “what is good performance” is constantly changing. This is especially true among PhD academics where fields are constantly pushing the edges of understanding.
I’ve now completed one full year’s cycle of department reviews, tenure and promotion reviews, faculty awards, visits to departments and programs, and research town halls. I’ve formed some impressions.
An earlier blog commented on my concern about the disproportionate number of associate professors at Georgetown fulfilling administrative roles that threaten their career progression (see “Academic Leadership,” the January 23, 2013 post). I further noticed a harmful misconception that research/scholarship was antithetical to good teaching, so we’ve established the new “presidential fellows” award program that shines a spotlight on colleagues who are extraordinary teachers and researchers simultaneously. The provost’s office now has a faculty advisory group to help it make decisions on salary equity and extraordinary merit (hopefully leading to more transparency). Georgetown will soon have new faculty roles in the vice-provosts for education, research, and faculty – again to increase faculty input into administrative decisions in hopes of removing some of the “black box” character of university administration. We are reorganizing the research administrative functions to make it easier to develop research proposals.
I think we can also get better at some other aspects of academic culture.
It appears that most units have some mentoring process in place for assistant professors. A common feature is that one or two tenured members of the department/program meet with the assistant to review their scholarship, teaching, and service activities. In combination with mid-probationary reviews, these are designed to give explicit feedback to the assistant professor. Their focus is wider than that used by departmental annual merit review committees, which are often focused on last year’s performance only.
These mentorships seem to have value when all parties take them seriously. Senior colleagues, especially those who have recently experienced promotion review, can give personal assessments of whether the newer colleague is “on track” in their research, teaching, and service. They can offer remediation ideas when the colleague needs to shift focus.
Based on my visits to different departments, I get the sense that the mentorships for assistant professors, coupled with the mid-probationary reviews, are serving important needs. Some, as you might expect, are more effective than others. Different units can probably benefit from exchanging best practices and doing the normal continuous improvement interventions. But on the whole, Georgetown is addressing the nurturance of assistant professors as they move toward the tenure decision.
However, there seems to be much less formal support for associate professors, in supporting their progress toward full professorships. One of the key career issues for associate professors tends to be the selection of new lines of inquiry, taking on bigger, riskier areas of study, expanding the breadth of scholarship without losing depth, increasing professional or publicly-visible roles without losing deep intellectual contributions, and taking on service roles versus scholarship. There are great payoffs and great risks in these various choices. Associate professors who have honest conversations with successful others can often make wiser decisions.
Some universities have established programs that assist associate professors at this moment in their careers. The role of mentor is the same, but played by full professors. A few universities encourage full professors outside the department of the associate to play a role. Sometimes these “external” faculty act more as coaches than mentors. Since they will not be part of the later evaluation process for promotion, they can be more blatantly supportive. Some associates like the idea of a coach, one who unambiguously wants them to succeed.
I think there may be multiple right answers to doing better on this issue. It’s worth discussing how to support our associate professors to maximize their chance of promotion to full professor.
1, Re the promotion of assistant professors: It is probably correct that TT assistant professors get adequate mentorship and midprobationary reviews in most departments. The problem is in schools and programs which have a multi-disciplinary faculty such as SFS, where there does not seem to be clear, uniform standards for attaining tenure, and who is supposed to provide the mentoring and mid tenure clock review, Over the last year or two, three previously promissing assistant professors failed to obtain tenure at SFS, and it is unclear whether they received timely advice and feedback as to how they were progressing towards tenure. Who was supposed to provide them with such feedback? The SFS Faculty Chair? The Senior Associate Dean? Did they do it?
2. Re the advancement of Associate Professors: In principle Dr. Groves has a point. However, some departments are so small that there are very few if any full professors who would be willing and be suitable to be Chairperson (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology, Art/Art Hstory, Classics). In such cases it is almost inevitable that sooner or later an associate professor would become Chair. Administrative duties, including chairmanship, would be better performed in small departments if they had a larger faculty. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing for an associate professor to be chairperson provided it is for limited period of time. Some may enjoy it for a while, and be good at it. Of course, credit should be given when considering promoting those faculty members having served in academic administration positions.
3. Re what research and publications should count towards tenure and promotions: There is now a proliferation of new on-line academic and professional journals such as the Berkeley Electronic Economics Journals. These are professional and often peer-reviewed and should in my view count even though they do not use a traditional medium. Also, major policy journals such Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy now post on-line articles. Should these recieve some weight when considering tenure and promotion of a assistant professor at a policy school or program such as SFS or GPPI? The question should be examined.
“a harmful misconception that research/scholarship was antithetical to good teaching”
I think the idea here is that you have a limited time-budget. There are extraordinary individuals who are both excellent teachers and researchers, but some people are not as skilled. PhD students do not get any teacher training and my view is that even ‘real’ research training can be absent depending on the advisor (you *do* work for someone but might not learn to do independent research).
So you end up with different skills: people who both teach/research, do one of them well, or do neither.
Teaching is hard to evaluate and –again, in my experience– counts all of butkis towards tenure which focuses heavily on research production and money you bring to a school.
so then you have a time-budget. the more time you spend on teaching, the less you have for research. this generates the view that teaching is not worth the time. you only need to do it well enough that no one notices, i.e. you need to not cause problems. we settle for mediocre to focus on efforts which have a clear reward.
of course, we could always change this by putting our money where our mouth is and pay someone a high salary (like an administrator’s or sports coach’s salary) for only teaching…