Career Mobility – Preparing for the Tenure Process

1. Career Mobility –Preparing for the Tenure Process Professor Michael D. Kimbrough University of Maryland

2. Guiding Principle • The best way to get tenure at your current institution is to be an attractive candidate for tenure outside your institution.

3. What goes in a tenure packet? • Curriculum Vitae – Summarizes research record and other scholarly contributions • Personal Statement – Summarizes scholarly activities and their contribution/impact • Outside Letters – Assessments of your scholarly contributions by acknowledged experts in your field • Teaching Evaluations • Summary of Service

4. Curriculum Vitae • Key section is the publication record • Research record is assessed based on productivity (# of hits) and impact (citations, subjective assessment). • Productivity is usually emphasized in the promotion from assistant to associate. • # of hits is the first people thing look at and likely colors their overall perception. • Schools vary in the specificity of their targets. • Manage pipeline. • Understand that it can take years to publish a paper. • Frontload your efforts.

5. Curriculum Vitae • It is good to have one or two papers that are more ambitious or display some individuality to demonstrate your potential to be a thought leader.

6. Personal Statement • Your chance to make your case. • Put research in context • Highlight the contributions/impacts • Opportunity to show the mind behind the papers. • Get feedback from senior faculty inside and outside your institution. • They can help you make the most effective case/avoid likely criticism based on their experience in the “big room”. • Gets people invested in supporting your case.

7. Outside Letters • Institutions have outside experts in your area review your case and comment on the strengths and weaknesses of your contributions to the field. • You generally are allowed to nominate some people as letter writers and the school will nominate a pool of their own. • Letter writers will be sent your CV, your personal statement, and a selection of papers to form an assessment.

8. Outside Letters • You want to maximize the chances that the letter writers chosen will be familiar with and have a favorable impression of you and your work. • This requires using every interaction as an opportunity to create a favorable impression in people’s minds.

9. Outside Letters • Opportunities • Invited Presentations at other schools • Presentations/Discussions at conferences • Interactions with guest speakers to your own school • Invite top scholars in your research area • Join them for meals • Actively participate in their workshops • Provide written comments on their papers • Reviewing for journals • Informal settings

10. Teaching • Most schools have a binary threshold for acceptable teaching. • Beyond that, being a superstar teacher is unlikely to get you tenure or to compensate for deficiencies in the research record. • Poor teaching can scuttle a tenure case.

11. Service/Institution-Specific Activities • Recall guiding principle. • Ideally, you will be protected from activities that detract from research productivity. • However, you may be asked to do things to enhance your institution's mission but that may not enhance your external market value. • While being a good citizen, maintain focus on activities that will be rewarded externally.