I had a couple of conversations at DAMOP last week about career issues, and I just want to note that I will never get used to the idea that I’m a respected elder anything, whose advice would be valued. I basically feel like I lucked into my whole career, so I hesitate to advise others… Continue reading Pre-Tenure and Post-Hoc
Category: Tenure Chase
The Seven-Year Postdoc
I’m starting to think that maybe I need to add “Work-life Balance” to the tagline of this blog, given all the recent posting about such things (but then, one of the benefits of having done this blogging thing for eleven years is that I know this is just a phase, and I’ll drift on to… Continue reading The Seven-Year Postdoc
What Does It Take to Evaluate Teaching?
In which we compare a couple of different systems for evaluating teachers, looking at what’s involved in doing a fair assessment of a teacher’s performance. ——– Another casualty of the great blog upgrade, in the sense of a post that was delayed until the inspiration for it has been forgotten by most of the people… Continue reading What Does It Take to Evaluate Teaching?
Filtering Isn’t the Problem
Via Twitter, Daniel Lemire has a mini-manifesto advocating “social media” alternatives for academic publishing, citing “disastrous consequences” of the “filter-then-publish” model in use by traditional journals. The problem is, as with most such things, I’m not convinced that social media style publication really fixes all these problems. For example, one of his points is: The… Continue reading Filtering Isn’t the Problem
Career Guidance
A comment I made at a meeting yesterday that I think is worth reproducing out of context: A big part of making it from junior faculty to tenure is deciding which bits of unsolicited contradictory advice you’re going to ignore.
Unseemly Self-Congratulations
The final step in the tenure process here is the Very Nice Letter. I’m not sure that it’s an official step, as opposed to an established tradition, but whichever it actually is, at the end of the process, a candidate who passes the tenure review gets a letter from the faculty committee that handles tenure… Continue reading Unseemly Self-Congratulations
Officially Official
In my campus mailbox this morning: Dear Chad: I am pleased to report that on Februrary 10, 2007 the Board of Trustees approved our recommendation that you be tenured effective September 1, 2007 at the rank of Associate Professor. Woo-hoo! It took about half a second to decide to sign the copy indicating my acceptance,… Continue reading Officially Official
Statement on Teaching
One of the standard elements of most academic hiring and promotion applications, at least at a small liberal arts college, is some sort of statement from the candidate about teaching. This is called different things at different places– “statement of teaching philosophy” is a common term for it, and the tenure process here calls for… Continue reading Statement on Teaching
All That I Want
A few weeks back, I was talking to my parents on the phone, and my mother asked “What do you want for Christmas?” “Tenure,” I said. Because, well, that’s what’s been on my mind.
The MLA on Tenure
Inside Higher Ed had a story on Friday about a Modern Language Association study on tenure and promotion. The study group just released its final report (available for download here. Given that I’m waiting to hear the results of my own tenure case (a decision could come at any time, starting this week), there’s no… Continue reading The MLA on Tenure