Questions to Ask on Your Way to Earning Tenure (2012)

Aimless drifting won't get you a tenured faculty position. What will? Curious graduate students, post-docs and assistant professors gathered in West Lafayette IN in September 2012 for the third annual Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women. Dr. Wendy C. Crone, professor of engineering physics and associate dean for graduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, opened with the keynote, “How to Survive and Thrive by Asking the Right Questions.” Each conference participant received a copy of her book, Survive and Thrive: A Guide for Untenured Faculty (Morgan & Claypool 2010). Designed to facilitate mentoring, it's largely a series of questions. It also offers essays and exercises but few answers. Some questions are for individual reflection, while most are for exploration in mentor/mentee pairs. Mentoring programs at some universities work through the book systematically, skipping the questions that don't apply. “You will have a different set of questions and a different set of answers, depending on where you are,” she told WIHE. As you progress along your personal path toward a scholarly career, it is important to form a clear sense of the scholar you want to be. The question can have many right answers. You need to find the one that is right for you. Self-authorship is Marcia Baxter Magolda's term for internal identity, which has cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects. “Over the course of time, your goal is to be developing your professional identity,” Crone said. What work-life balance would you like to have? You may not achieve it right away, but it is worth identifying the ideal you would like to reach eventually. Women often ask if it's possible to do it all. One answer is yes, but not all at once. Before tenure most faculty get off balance on the side of work. That may be your preference throughout your career, or you may have some periods when you choose to give more time and attention to personal or community life. Which aspects of work-life balance matter most to you right now? Is there a bottom line for self-care that you will try not to cross? Do you need to get enough sleep, limit out-of-town travel or minimize evening meetings? Her three-year-old once told her, “Mommy, don't bother me. I'm writing my proposal.” If we don't notice when work is crowding out the rest of what we care about in life, we may need a toddler to remind us. If you have a life partner, explore questions about the “two-body problem” together. How do your goals complement each other? Is one of you prepared to sacrifice for the other's career if necessary, and will the answer to this change over time? Maintain an ongoing conversation about your mutual priorities and preferences. Then when a hard choice is upon you, the groundwork for a decision will already be in place. This leads to a question she recommends discussing with your mentor: If you are looking for a job, what is the best stage in the process to bring up the issue of a possible job for your spouse or partner? Your school may have a structured mentoring program. A mentor may be assigned or someone may volunteer to mentor you. Whether or not any of these things happen, they will probably not be enough. You will almost surely need more than one mentoring relationship to meet your varied needs. Researching mentoring in relation to long-term career success, Monica Higgins and David Thomas of Harvard University MA found that the people who were most successful were those who had a constellation of supportive individuals in roles that represent different aspects of mentoring. If you are a woman of color, another woman of color can offer a different sort of guidance from a white man; ideally your constellation includes both. A near-peer who started the year before you did can answer some kinds of questions, while other questions need the perspective of someone in a senior position who has broad experience navigating the campus overall. Having a mentor in your own or a closely related discipline is important, since each field has distinct traditions and expectations. For example, the required evidence of making a scholarly contribution means a book in some fields and a series of peer-reviewed journal publications in another. Some disciplines expect team projects while others devalue co-authorship. While those in your field help you learn to be a member of your discipline, it also helps to have mentors with a different perspective. “We academics tend to get a little narrow in what we study and who we interact with,” Crone said. We think ours is the only way. It can broaden our horizons to learn about possibilities that may be commonplace in other parts of campus. Before entering into any new mentoring relationship, think about what you hope and expect to receive from it. In an article in Academic Medicine in 2009, J.T. Zerzan et al suggested ways mentees can “manage up,” taking responsibility for their part in the relationship instead of leaving the initiative entirely to the mentor. They recommend a regular meeting schedule with an agenda. The mentee can set goals and expectations and direct the flow of information. At the same time, the mentee needs to stay flexible and responsive to input from the mentor. Mentors often describe what they gain from the relationship: a sense of contribution, a renewed enthusiasm for their work and a broader vision of their school and field. Nevertheless, many mentors make a substantial time commitment to their mentees, whether the relationship is formal or informal. Find ways to express your appreciation for the mentoring they give you. If you are a graduate student or post-doc hoping to become part of the faculty in a department, network to help establish yourself as a member of your discipline. Learn about the skills you will need in order to be an attractive job candidate. Going to conferences and connecting with a broader community will strengthen you in the job market. She experienced a different sort of network or peer mentoring: a group of faculty women in her college who had their first children within about two years of each other. They meet monthly for lunch and keep in touch with email, comparing notes on concerns from stopping the tenure clock to attending conferences with children in tow. Consider the pros and cons of building a supportive network unrelated to your career. It takes time to volunteer, cultivate relationships in the community or participate in a sports team or a religious organization. But it's sometimes helpful to have input from people outside your work situation who care about you. “Regardless of your stage in your career, you are really in charge of your career trajectory,” she said. The lead-up to tenure is not just a matter of checking off a series of boxes. Your school may be more flexible than that. While many universities require that you establish yourself in your research area, the balance among teaching, research and service may vary from person to person. A department needs a variety of faculty styles to run well. Women and minorities are often called on to do more committee service than others, and more students may come to them for counsel. Some questions for reflection about any service opportunity: How would this affect the issues I care about? How would it affect my career? Will it energize me or drain me? What kind of time am I willing and able to afford for this service? “There is no one path, and that's a good thing,” Crone said. Certainly you need to find out your school's tenure requirements; if you don't know, it's an important question to ask. But once you know the requirements, focusing too narrowly on meeting them can be self-defeating. When you focus mainly on the numbers instead of what excites you about your work, you risk losing momentum and impact. Losing excitement makes burnout more likely, and producing scholarship is harder when you feel burned out. Ask instead what excites you, what energizes you and where your passion lies. Why did you get into this field? How do your scholarly interests intersect with the tenure requirements? What can you do that will allow you to maintain zest for your work? “If you're doing something you're excited about and producing in a way people engage with, you will get known,” she said. In the process you will need to produce the required number of papers, books or conference presentations—and you will probably do so, because your enthusiasm will feed you the energy to keep producing. Tenure is only a means to an end. What is your goal? Is your dream to teach students, to promote social justice, to build a better mousetrap or to become a scholar in a community of scholars? Suppose the path you envision is to become a scholar in a community of scholars. The majority of professors who have reached that point found it slow and hard at first. “Most people in academia realize that the early stage of career can be really angst-ridden,” Crone said. Know that you are not alone and that there are many paths to success. Getting from where you are now to having a tenure packet assembled is a non-linear process, different for each individual. If you focus on the mechanics, they can bog you down and burn you out. But if you keep plugging away at what you love, bringing your own approach and enthusiasm to your work, the slogging will begin to energize and engage you. “What you have to focus on is building that momentum. Eventually it's going to catch and roll,” she said. Contact her at wcrone@wisc.edu. Purchase Survive and Thrive: A Guide for Untenured Faculty by Wendy C. Crone at http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/eng/1/1