Spelling it Out

As I have been writing letters as part of the tenure and promotion evaluation of assistant professors at other institutions, I have been struck by the great variation in the "tenure code" documents I have been sent to help me write my letters. Typically, these documents outline an institution's or a department's criteria for tenure and promotion, but the level of specificity of these documents varies a lot.

At the vague end of the spectrum are documents that state that the candidate must show evidence for "scholarly achievement" (or words to that effect). This is useless for my purposes, and I just write my evaluation however I think best. In my experience, these documents are the most common type.

At the definitive end of the spectrum are documents that state that the candidate must have x papers every n years in "respected journals" and at least y grants from external funding agencies. In these cases, which I rarely encounter, I don't really understand the point of an external letter. If the candidate met the criteria and is going to get tenure, why ask for anyone's opinion? Does it matter if I think the x papers were flawed and uninteresting? If not, then don't waste my time. If it matters, then rewrite the document to include some vague statement about "scholarly achievement".


The definitive tenure criteria likely result in fewer tenure appeals than the vague tenure "criteria", and the vague ones surely result in higher levels of anxiety and uncertainty for tenure-track faculty, but the definitive ones have problems as well. For example, unless there is a way to specify the quality of the "respected journals" (probably by impact factor, for lack of a better measure) and the contribution of the candidate to a multi-author paper and whether it is good or bad to have lots of co-authors (including students), there is little point in specifying the number of papers that must be published in n years unless that really is all that matters.

In that case, these documents might as well just say: To obtain tenure, a candidate must have their name somewhere in the author list of a paper published in some journal that someone respects.

I am actually ambivalent about these documents, speaking from the point of view of a letter writer. I know they must exist, but there really is no good way to construct them to be useful to the letter writer (or the candidate): too vague is useless, and too specific is strange and leads to more questions (most of which can't be answered).

As a candidate, you have to find out the 'unwritten' information by figuring out the norms of your department and institution. This is typically accomplished by having an effective mentor, by talking to other assistant professors, and by having a candid talk with your department chair and mentor at various stages along the road to the tenure evaluation. You can also attend informational talks given by deans or deanlets, although, as an assistant professor, I found such workshops disturbing because the information in them conflicted with what my department chair had told me about some issues (e.g., the selection of letter writers). Even so, I identified these conflicts of information, talked to the chair about them, he talked to the dean, and all was eventually sorted out.


As a letter writer, I don't know the 'unwritten' information, and I'd rather not guess. All I can do is try to write a fair letter based on what is in the record and on my perception of the quality of the candidate's research. The people at the candidate's institution will have to sort the rest out for themselves, depending on what they think my criteria/standards for tenure are likely to be; i.e., they can discount my letter (if my criteria seem too harsh), take it seriously (if they think my opinion is well supported), or pick out the parts that agree with their own opinion.

Mostly, I just need to finish these letters so I can stop obsessing over them (one in particular is much more difficult to write than I expected), and then I can move on to my next adventure in Professional Service Activities.

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(Un)appealing Option

A few weeks ago, I discussed writing letters as part of the tenure evaluation of assistant professors at other universities. Another tenure-related topic is what happens when tenure is denied.

My understanding of how tenure-denial appeals work is limited, but growing by the day, unfortunately. Perhaps the process varies (a lot?) from institution to institution, but here are some things I have learned so far:

The basis for a realistic appeal can be (1) discrimination, or (2) violation of procedure. An appeal based on an "I was misjudged" is less likely to be successful, although I know of some cases in which an appeal of this sort was successful, typically based on the issue of the relative weights given to teaching and research excellence.


Even if there has been blatant discrimination or a violation of procedure, the various stops along the tenure trail designed to catch such things may not catch them, or may even be the source of the problem. Hence the appeal process.

Things can get complicated at large institutions in which there are many intermediate steps along the road to tenure during the evaluation and voting process. At each stage, there is the possibility of a decision that is different from preceding ones, although this gets less likely as the process moves up the administrative food chain.


Nevertheless, voting and decision-making bodies/people at a university can include

• a departmental promotion & tenure committee,

• tenured faculty in the department (perhaps in more than one department for interdisciplinary faculty with multiple tenure homes),

• the department head,

• a committee at the college level (e.g., College of Arts & Sciences, School of Engineering),

• the Dean (± an Associate/Assistant Dean),

• various Provostial Beings ± Vice-Presidents for Whatever,

• the President/Chancellor, and, in some cases,

• a Board of Trustees.

Many of these steps are necessary to provide checks-and-balances. For example, departments might be "too close" to a candidate, using criteria that are not objective or fair. This can work for or against a candidate; e.g., a well-liked mediocre candidate might get a yes vote. It's not supposed to work that way, of course, but since the evaluation metrics are typically not spelled out (more on that tomorrow), variability is inevitable.

If all of these people/committees vote overwhelmingly no, that's not good (and makes an appeal very unlikely to succeed), but what if some say yes and some say no, or what if there are mixed votes in certain committees?

According to legend, once you get past the department and college/school committee with a positive vote, you're fine, but there are rumors of candidates who had positive votes up to the Dean or Provost or President and then.. zap. There are also sad stories of people with majority positive votes at various stages but not a supermajority of positive votes, leading to cascades of negative votes at later stages of the process.

The appeal process appears to be highly structured (= bureaucratic), with lots of steps and lawyers and invocation of an institution's "tenure code" or criteria by both sides.

If the process leading up to the tenure evaluation works as it should, the results of the tenure evaluation itself should not be a big surprise. There can be a discrepancy between what a department/institution thinks of a candidate vs. what is expressed in the external letters, but even this should be evident in advance if the pre-tenure evaluation process works as it should.

Whether evaluation of probationary faculty is at one intermediate time (e.g., 3rd year) or every year, there should (ideally) be a paper trail that documents how an assistant professor is doing in terms of the various job components, with specific suggestions for improvement if there is a problem, and additional assistance/mentoring given where needed.

Having a well-functioning, fair, and informative system is essential to the tenure-track faculty member and to the rest of the institution. When that system breaks down, owing to incompetence, indifference, or malevolence, and the tenure decision is negative, the grounds for an appeal are laid.

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Early Birds

Recent discussions about tenure raised some interesting questions, at least one of which is going to result in a poll:

At your institution, are candidates for early tenure held to a higher standard than those being evaluated at the 'normal' time, or is the standard the same? In the former case, is it official policy that early tenure cases are held to a higher standard or is this just how it works (in your experience/opinion)?

And what about candidates who are evaluated for tenure later than normal (e.g., because their tenure clock was stopped owing to childbirth, illness, or other life-interrupting events)? Clearly they are not supposed to be held to a different standard than those without tenure clock stoppage, but, in your opinion, does it work that way?

What is the basis for your opinion?

The poll:

Compared to faculty evaluated for tenure at a 'normal' time..

candidates for early tenure are
	held to a higher standard
	held to the same standard
	held to a lower standard
pollcode.com free polls

.. at your institution.

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Difficult Cases

Requests for letters of evaluation for tenure candidates started arriving during the summer. The process typically starts in the late spring or summer, when the dossier is assembled and the letters are requested, with letter due dates in the early fall so that departments can vote and pass their recommendations along up the administrative chain.

I almost always say yes to requests to write letters for tenure cases. In fact, I think I have only said no once, for someone who was too far outside my field and who had (in my opinion) been quite unproductive. I thought it best if people who were more expert in that field evaluated whether the quality of the papers more than made up for the low quantity of papers; I did not feel confident that I could do this.

Also, I was given a very short amount of time to write the letter, and could not have done a thorough job. I think it is important for these letters to contain something new and informative that cannot be gleaned from reading the CV, so writing these letters can take time.

Declining to write a letter for someone's tenure evaluation can be seen as a blot on their record unless you have a really really good reason for declining. Department and university P&T committees may pore over decline-to-provide-a-letter explanations, trying to determine if the declination reflects a negative opinion. It may not, but some suspicious faculty may still wonder: OK, so this person is really busy preparing for their Senate confirmation hearing, but if they really thought the candidate was great, wouldn't they take the time to write the letter anyway?

So I try to write the letter if it seems at all reasonable to do so in terms of my expertise and/or time.

Although most letters are easy to write in terms of content, some letters involve a bit of agonizing over wording and tone. For me, the most difficult letters to write are:

1. letters that are not entirely positive. In these cases, there is always a question of whether to accept or decline writing the letter in the first place. I think it is important to be certain that a negative letter is also a fair letter. If my opinion is not positive, is there a good reason for this? Do I have the necessary expertise to evaluate an individual's record? Can I be objective, or am I unduly influenced by an irrelevant dislike of the individual or his/her research topics?

2. letters for institutions that are not peer institutions. It is common to be asked to comment on whether the candidate would receive tenure at our own institution. If the candidate is at a peer institution, this is not typically a difficult evaluation to make. For candidates at institutions that have less emphasis on research and/or that have less awesome facilities and/or a smaller graduate program (and rare or no postdocs), this evaluation is more difficult. I've written before about how it can be challenging to state that the individual in question would probably not receive tenure at my institution, but is a good candidate for tenure at Lesser University. By definition, that's a rather patronizing and obnoxious statement. I have seen P&T Committees agonize over such statements, even if the rest of the letter is positive and even if the letter writer is at a university that is famous for eating its young (faculty). These statements are not to be made lightly or without justification.

3. letters for candidates up for early tenure for reasons that are not obvious. Faculty up for early tenure are evaluated by the same criteria and standards as those up for tenure at the normal time; you can't give them a break for not having as much time, nor can you hold them to a higher standard. Some assistant professor superstars get early tenure because they have such outstanding records; it's easy to write glowing letters for them. But what do you do if you get a dossier for someone who looks like they are on track but could really use another year or two to demonstrate that better? What if you look at someone's CV etc. and you have no idea why they are up for early tenure? Unless you are totally off-base with your criteria and standards, perhaps there are some departmental politics at work and you don't know what these are. These are difficult letters to write because you might have been able to write a really positive letter in another year or two, but as it is, you can realistically only write a somewhat vague letter about how this person shows some promise. In these situations, I just write what I think anyway, and let the department sort out its own political situation however it wants.

The letters from senior faculty at other institutions are just one element of a tenure dossier. I think it is worth putting effort into writing the letters, I don't believe that any one letter will either sink or save a candidate. It's just another data point, so I might as well make it a useful and interesting data point, without either over- or under-estimating the value of my opinion.

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Required Suffering?

An offhand comment in an e-mail from a colleague contained the sentiment that it would be uncool to appear to enjoy the tenure-track and that nowadays it would be "suspicious" if someone made it obvious that they were not suffering before getting tenure.

Does anyone agree with that?

To agree with that opinion, you first have to believe that it is possible to enjoy being an Assistant Professor on the tenure track. Just based on my own experience, I know that it is possible to enjoy work and life before getting tenure. Enjoying your pre-tenure existence doesn't mean you aren't stressed out -- i.e., it doesn't mean you are totally confident and think you are a Gift to Science (or whatever) -- it just means that you aren't miserable most/all of the time, perhaps even questioning why you have devoted so many years to this stressful job that you might lose.

I was somewhat stressed out about getting tenure, especially since I changed institutions (to one with a higher standard for tenure), had a baby, had a series of dysfunctional graduate students and postdocs, and knew that at least one of my tenure letter-writers did not think much of my work. Overall, though, I enjoyed my work and life, and cannot say that I suffered unduly.

Of course I had to publish and get grants and have an international reputation and juggle live flaming iguanas while doing cartwheels, so I don't think the standards or general experience of attaining tenure have changed in the last ~10 years. Nevertheless, I found much to enjoy about my research and teaching, and most of my pre-tenure fellow travelers also seemed to share my mostly-positive attitude.

Have things changed? Would this semi-enjoyment of the pre-tenure life be totally uncool these days?

That is, does anyone agree with my colleague? When I was thinking about this, I wondered if our impressions are colored by the blogosphere. The prevalence of my-tenure-track-life blogs gives us all a much broader exposure to the varied experiences of tenure-track faculty in various fields and at various institutions, and blogs are a good place to rant, vent, complain, express outrage, share the stress etc. (and this blog is obviously no exception).

So, do blogs like this give us a more accurate impression of the tenure-track life or do they amplify the negative, leading some people to conclude that pre-tenure suffering is de rigueur?

There are several questions embedded in this discussion:

(1) Can one enjoy the tenure-track life? I say yes.

(2) Is it uncool or suspicious if you are not visibly suffering? I don't know, but sometimes it seems that way from reading various blogs.

(3) Is the blog-view of the tenure-track life a good representation of the typical experience (especially if you read a lot of blogs) or is the view skewed toward the negative owing to the nature of blogs and the people who write them? I don't know, but can anyone suggest a few mostly-uplifting, I-am-having-fun pre-tenure blogs -- and perhaps also their opposite? That is, which pre-tenure academic bloggers are having the most fun and which are the most miserable? Feel free to nominate your choices of blogs that characterize the ends of the pre-tenure blog spectrum.

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Tenure/Snake Dilemma

Last week's post on Tenure and how certain media outlets choose to portray the issues related to tenure reminded me of an incident and made me wonder about the role of tenure in our daily lives.

My decision to write about this incident and cast it in a tenure context also made me wonder whether I may have finally reached a pinnacle of bizarreness with this blog, but I shall not let such concerns deter me from presenting, for discussion, a Tenure/Snake Dilemma. My secret desire is that this anecdote will one day become part of the "ethics" training most of us must now endure.

Some context: Numerous media outlets seem to like to portray the Pursuit of Tenure as a very delicate undertaking, possibly undermined by the slightest of slights against a senior (voting) colleague. If we don't laugh at their jokes, share their hobbies, agree with their opinions on topics of debate in and beyond faculty meetings, and do their bidding when it comes to committee work, research collaborations, and/or teaching, our chances for tenure are doomed, or at least seriously imperiled. If tenure can be denied for such petty and political reasons, tenure must be a flawed concept that is harmful to so-called 'academic freedom' that is frequently mentioned as the reason why professors need tenure.

This view of tenure does not match my experiences nor that of any of my close colleagues at a wide range of institutions. Perhaps it happens somewhere (in fact, someone I know in an education-related field is having tenure-pursuit experiences that would be surreal in my department or related science/engineering departments), but I don't think such situations are the norm.

Even so, before we get tenure, we do make decisions about our activities and speech in the context of being as-yet tenureless. Even though we know that we don't actually have to sit and politely listen to a senior colleague tell us how tanned and muscular he looks without a shirt [true story], and we would still (probably) get tenure even if we retched on his (leather) shoes, we may nevertheless be a bit more polite, quiet, and nice before tenure is secured.

With that in mind, consider the following real but not-entirely-serious situation, and decide whether you would make the same decision about the given scenario before vs. after tenure:

A particular person, who is professor of a non-biological science, is extremely phobic about snakes.* This person is terrified of snakes and, although appreciating from afar the valuable role they play in the ecosystem, does not ever want to see one or knowingly be within 50 m of one, not even if the snake is secured in some sort of escape-proof snake habitat. This person cannot even look at pictures of snakes without shuddering and feeling sick.

This same person is very fond of cats.

This snake-o-phobe, felinophile has a senior colleague who is also a neighbor. That is, these two people work in the same department at the same university and also live near each other.

They occasionally trade cat-care when one of them is away. The snake-o-phobe adores the colleague's cat and is happy to take care of this very affectionate and charismatic beast.

Imagine that at a particular time in the summer, the colleague planned to go away on vacation and needed some cat care. The felinophile agreed to take care of the cat.

Then, almost as an aside, the colleague sends an e-mail that says: "Oh by the way, we also now have a snake. You will need to change his/her water** and you may also need to go to the pet store and get a freshly killed mouse to feed the snake."

Question for discussion, keeping in mind the intense level of snake-phobia of the person in question and imagining that this is you, even if you think snakes are beautiful and interesting and you long to get a pit viper as a pet (and/or you already have one):

Do you take care of the snake despite your horror of it? Does your agreeing vs. declining to take care of the snake have anything to do with your tenure status and your wish to be agreeable to your senior colleague?

Is there anyone who would say yes if you did not have tenure and no if you did? Or would you say no, even if untenured, because you don't believe that the tenure system is so warped that refusal to take care of a colleague's snake would make him turn against you in the tenure vote?

Sorry, but saying yes because you are really eager to work on your snake phobia and/or you just want to be a good neighbor is not a realistic or acceptable answer in this situation. You can, however, say yes and then find someone else to do the job for you, but that answer would be boring, even though it is what the person in question actually did.


* As a youth, this person did not mind snakes and even sought them out, thinking they were kind of cool. This person then had a sustained experience living in a place with many many poisonous snakes, some of which entered the home of this person on a routine basis so that s/he never knew when there would be lethal snakes under the bed or sitting on a chair, as happened from time to time. A snake phobia, acquired during this time of extreme snake interaction, became well entrenched through multiple terrifying encounters with snakes and the observation of horrifying things that happened to friends and neighbors who were bitten by snakes, and it has not abated over the years.

** This is not some weird "let's not specify the gender of the snake" thing; the neighbor-colleague wrote "his/her" because he does not know if the snake is a he or a she***.

*** Comments explaining how to tell male from female snakes are not welcome.

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