Tenure at Illinois: a Learning and Labor of Love Letter
By: Ranjitha Kumar
Tags: Computer Science, Academia, Tenure, Hci, University Of Illinois

2020 was a Dickensian year for me: it was the worst of times, it was the best of times. It was the year of the pandemic, widespread civil injustice, raging forest fires, and an election that tested the fabric of American democracy. It was also the year I got tenure.

My parents and I in my office in Siebel Center, on my first day as a faculty member in 2014.

A close mentor at MIT once told me, “tenure shouldn’t exist…so if you get it, never give it up.” Academic tenure is one of the last, inviolate bastions of intellectual freedom in modern society. I’m extremely lucky — and privileged — to be granted the opportunities it affords.

So how will tenure change my approach to my work? Very little, thanks to the Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois.

Starting my academic career, I was impatient: there were dozens of weird, unconventional ideas I wanted to explore. When I’d talk about them with colleagues, a common refrain quickly developed: “you should wait until you get tenure.” But my department never said that to me: not once. As a junior faculty member, I probably did everything the unwritten tenure playbook says you are not supposed to do: start a company, create your own field, work on multi-year research projects, spend almost no time writing grants, wear couture pajamas to class, collaborate closely with your significant other.

When I was on the job market, I asked all the schools I interviewed at how they made tenure decisions. Most mentioned publication records, reference letters, and metrics like citation count and h-index. When I visited Illinois, John Hart said something different:

“It’s simple. We award tenure based on impact: we want to see that you’ve put your unique stamp on the world. As long as you do that, we’ll be happy…and there are lots of ways to measure it.”

I’ve never forgotten what John said, but what’s even more striking in hindsight is that it turned out to be true. I was always a reluctant academic: the inexorable “publish or perish” rat race held little allure for me. The idea of putting my passions on hold for six or nine years to garner citations seemed to vitiate the very freedoms a tenure-track job promised. But I could get behind measuring impact.

My research is about design. David Kelley, the founder of IDEO, defines design as “a process of making impact on the world by doing this kind of creation of something new to the world and then getting it out there.” The last bit — getting it out there — is the hardest part: it requires constant vigilance, doesn’t increase your publication/citation count, and often results in failure (after three years and two-and-a-half million dollars, I had to shut my startup down). But that’s the impact I care about: creating things that real people use, and derive value from.

In my career, I’ve found a number of ways for an academic to get work out there: found a startup, open-source code and data, release an app, partner with industrial researchers, or productize your research at an established company. I’m fortunate that my department has been my loudest cheerleader along the way: publicizing my startup’s fundraise, my collaboration with Jeff Nichols at Google to release the world’s largest repository of mobile app designs, and even the proposal that resulted in the addition of the bubble tea emoji 🧋 to the Unicode 13 standard. When I requested leave this year to join UserTesting as their Chief Research Scientist to productionize my latest design-mining work, my department chair never suggested that I should wait until my tenure case had been decided.

Academia is a paradox. Contrarian ideas are so often the kernel of innovation, but the academy’s pressure to conform is real. So why go against the grain? ’Cause it was all that rang true. The truth is, this is the only way I know how to be.

During this season of giving thanks — in a year where things to be thankful for are in short supply — I want to express my gratitude to the University of Illinois, my department, my students, and my colleagues, for encouraging me to be a faculty member on my own terms.

Founded in 1867, the University’s motto is “Learning and Labor.” For me, it has been a labor of love. 💌