Hero origin stories are all the rage these days. It seems the prequel is the most popular genre for Hollywood these days. As I began working on How to Get Tenure: Strategies for Successfully Navigating the Process, I thought back a great deal to my time on the tenure track. I begin the book by discussing the day that I found out that I was receiving tenure. It not only seemed appropriate to begin here, but in many ways the book comes directly from my own experiences. I have tried hard in the book to merge my own experiences with the higher education scholarship to provide a practical guide for pre-tenure faculty. My last day as a pre-tenure faculty members is the origin story for How to Get Tenure.
It was about 2 o’clock on a Friday afternoon when I decided to stand up and stretch my legs. I have always enjoyed working in the office on Fridays because ittends to be quiet and I can be productive, and I had spent the last couple of hours editing a manuscript that I needed to finish. I walked down the hall to the department office to check my mailbox. I rarely received much more than junk mail, but checking gave me an excuse to get out of my office for a few minutes and say hello to the department administrative assistants before returning to work for another couple of hours. This time, my mailbox was not holding junk mail; instead, there was an envelope on the University’s official stationery that noted it was from the Provost’s office. I immediately knew what was inside. While the earlier stages of the tenure review process had meant I was getting regular updates about my progress, once my tenure file went to the university level it was almost like falling into a black hole. I knew I would hear at some point before the end of April, but I had no idea when to expect the letter to arrive.
I was now holding in my hand an envelope that would have profound implications for my career as well as my personal life. Everything I had worked for in the last six years—longer than that, really—came down to the evaluation and decision contained in this letter. Having received positive reviews earlier in the process, I was confident that this decision would be in my favor, but you can never really know until you read the fate you have been assigned. I started to open the envelope immediately but quickly decided that, if the news was not good, I did not want to be standing in the middle of the department. I started walking back down the hall, but about halfway back to my office the suspense became too much for me and I opened the envelope. It was a formal letter on stationery signed by the provost. Yes, this was indeed my tenure letter. I read the first line: “After a careful review of your promotion and tenure file, I am pleased to inform you that you will be awarded tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor.
I had done it. The long hours, the stress, the hard work had paid off. I was a tenured associate professor. It is hard to describe the emotions of receiving that letter. On one hand, I was confident that I had done what had been asked and feltI deserved the investment the university was placing in me. On the other hand, the tenure process could be vague and, in many ways, I never fully knew where I stood. I was relieved. I was grateful. I was happy. This was the longest and hardest I had ever worked for anything in my life, up to that point or since. Fortunately, my story had a positive ending.
However, this outcome was neither guaranteed nor without challenges. At one point, I was not sure if I wanted to continue and even interviewed for a non- faculty job. As I look back on my pre-tenure years, I remember feeling the uncertainty, apprehension, and lack of confidence in my ability to succeed as a faculty member. Yet, I also know I had some significant advantages. My area of expertise and research is in the organization and governance of higher education, and I study colleges and universities, faculty, and administrators as part of my research agenda. Even with all these advantages, tenure was intense and, at times, a real struggle. In talking with my fellow higher education colleagues, we would often say, “We’re scholars of this stuff! If this is hard for us, what about those faculty who are going through the same process as we are, but without the scholarly background of higher education and knowledge of the tenure process?”
Years later, I find myself directing my university’s teaching center and thinking about the current state of pre-tenure faculty. As part of my role, I spend a lot of time meeting with, mentoring, and discussing tenure issues with assistant professors across campus. Through these discussions, I hear about the many challenges pre-tenure faculty face today. Some of these are the same as those I faced, while others are different given the current context of higher education. In this book, I hope to bring together my experience as a researcher of higher education, as a faculty member who survived the tenure process, and as someone who works regularly with assistant professors. My goal is to provide strategies and information based on the most recent literature on faculty and higher education, in order for pre-tenure faculty to be successful in their pursuit of tenure. There are multiple books on tenure that provide advice and suggestions for pre-tenure faculty. These resources can be extremely beneficial, and I reference many of them throughout the chapters here. As a scholar of higher education, however, I also realize that many of these books fail to leverage the growing higher education research base to benefit faculty across a variety of disciplines on campus.
