Your research agenda plays a critical role in designing and planning your scholarly research and publication activities. Establishing your research agenda means deciding which research areas you will explore and the methodologies you will employ, then letting these guide your research activities. As we have all probably heard from our own graduate school professors, it is impossible to study everything in your field, and you must focus on topics that prove interesting to you and present solid publishing opportunities. Tenure committees generally like andriol bodybuilding to see assistant professors establish a consistent line of research or a few complementary lines of research, comprising their research agenda. Because of this, you should avoid a scattershot approach to research by developing a clear agenda and following it in your scholarly activities. In today’s post, I will describe the value of a research agenda and how to go about developing a research agenda.

There are several philosophical and practical reasons to establish your research agenda early in your career.

First, universities want to see that you are working toward or have achieved a national reputation in your field of expertise. A tightly focused research agenda helps achieve this desired prominence through specialty in a specific area. If your research bounces around among a variety of relatively disconnected projects, it becomes difficult for your committee, and particularly external reviewers, to establish and validate your areas of expertise.

Additionally, your work on multiple similar research studies creates significant efficiencies for you. For example, you do not need to learn a new body of research in order to write your literature reviews, and you are already familiar with journals that publish on your topic. Overall, if you maintain consistency with your topic, you can more easily and quickly publish your research. 

Many early career faculty that I have worked with do not have a single line of inquiry forming their research agenda.

Tenure committees and external reviewers understand this; they know that you may not have a single, isolated line of academic exploration. They realize that prospective candidates may have, for example, two related concepts that they studied extensively in graduate school, worked on as part of a laboratory, or which were part of their dissertation.  

As long as you can articulate each line of inquiry, describe the relationships between each line, and demonstrate your expertise in the two (or at most three) lines of academic inquiry, most review committees will find this appropriate.

However, if your research appears to be a collection of random projects lacking a common thread, tenure committees may rightly question whether you have demonstrated expertise and developed the level of national reputation necessary to achieve tenure.

For pre-tenure faculty struggling to articulate their own research agendas, I recommend studying the careers of major researchers in your field.

To do this, get a copy of the vita of a significant and well-respected researcher.

Next, look at the years prior to when this established scholar received tenure–you will see how their line of research progressed throughout their career.

In academic research, it takes a while to build up the knowledge and data to answer specific questions. Over time, as an academic’s methodologies advance and their knowledge base grows, you will likely see their research questions change.

When looking at a full professor with 25 years of research experience, for example, many pre-tenure faculty fail to fully appreciate how research agendas evolve. These professors did not magically exit graduate school with the focus and expertise they possess today. By studying the early years of prominent researchers, you can learn how their agendas evolved and grew over time, which can help you compose your own research agenda.

In addition, examining the research agenda of a senior colleague in your field can help show how they bring disparate ideas together.

Think about it: There are many ideas that may seem inseparable today, but this may not have been the case at the early part of the expert’s career.

When studying a senior professor’s research agenda, you can begin to see the connections and the concepts that anchor an entire research career.

While the context, the theoretical framing, and methodological approaches may be different throughout the years, the common underlying themes that form the foundation of their research agenda will become apparent.

Pre-tenure faculty should take time to delineate these central concepts in their own work early in their careers, working to both articulate and foreground them in the research they will undertake during the pre-tenure years.

Just as a meeting agenda provides a list of decision points for discussion, a research agenda provides a framework for making decisions about research activities.

During the first few years as a faculty member, it is tempting to jump at any research opportunity that comes along. When you are worried about having a significant number of publications, any potential promise of publication looks attractive. You will need a lens through which to determine whether to pursue any given opportunity.

A strong and clearly articulated research agenda can serve this purpose, providing boundaries for scholarly activities and publishing.

New projects and initiatives may easily capture your attention, but evaluating a new research opportunity’s relationship to the research agenda will help you better consider the worthiness of a project.

Only if a new opportunity isin line with your research agenda should you then ask more nuanced questions such as the amount of time it requires or the its value to tenure review committees.  

Even if the opportunity provides access to the top journal in your field or to a prestigious conference, I would recommend thinking twice and discussing with mentors before pursuing a publication not in line with your research agenda.

Establishing a research agenda and sharing it with colleagues lays the groundwork for all the research activities you will undertake during your pre-tenure years.

This post is an excerpt from my book, How to Get Tenure: Strategies for Successfully Navigating the Process (Routledge, 2019).