Five years ago I wrote a series of blog posts reflecting on my time as a member of Duke's committee on Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure. This committee drew a collection of senior scholars from across campus to review tenure and promotion dossiers for both internal and external candidates in almost every corner of the university. These posts included some thoughts on the institution of tenure itself, some advice for assistant professors, some advice for newly tenured professors, and some advice for scholars playing the role of an external letter writer.
This fifth entry in the series is inspired by the case of Donna Strickland, one of the recipients of the 2018 Nobel prize for physics, who earned this recognition while holding the title of associate professor. While this might not mean much to a layperson, it poses a key question for those of us in the academy. What does it say about our promotion practices and policy that a scholar receiving global recognition for advancing her field would not have first received recognition from her employer?
The title of associate professor is intended to be a temporary position. Scholars are promoted to that rank if they have convinced their colleagues that they have been and will continue to be productive and impactful researchers. If they realize that expectation, they earn their next promotion. But the second promotion in the academic hierarchy operates by different rules than the first. Scholars are reviewed for promotion to associate professor on a predetermined timetable. While the tenure clock can be a source of stress, its use ensures some degree of fairness across candidates.
There is no timetable for the second promotion. A scholar might earn the second promotion in as little as one year -- in rare cases, a particularly precocious assistant professor might be promoted directly to full rank. But the time between promotions can stretch into decades. And sometimes the second promotion might not happen at all, even when a scholar continues to be a productive and impactful researcher.
The problem is that scholars typically need to speak up for themselves to initiate the second promotion review. For some, this comes easily and naturally. For others it does not. Perhaps for this reason, there are significant disparities in outcomes. During my time on the APT committee, we'd occasionally review a dossier for a scholar who was clearly overdue for their second promotion. Their external letters would say things like "I had no idea that this scholar was not already a full professor." These cases disproportionately involved female candidates.
Five years ago, I wrote about some basic signs that a scholar is ready for that second promotion. What I didn't say but should have: these are benchmarks that can help you, the associate professor, make the case that it's time your colleagues reviewed you for promotion to full. Let's review.
- In book writing disciplines, where tenure is typically granted to scholars who have published a first book and made headway on a second, publication of the second book along with progress on at least one more is the basic standard.
- In journal article disciplines, things are not quite so clear-cut. I've seen letter writers in multiple disciplines reference h=20 (where h is a measure based on citation counts) as a rough guide. This includes writers in both the social and natural sciences.
- Across the board, there is typically an expectation that the candidate will have published some new material after being promoted to associate. At some institutions, research standards might be relaxed for a candidate who has devoted significant effort to teaching and service.
Here's one piece of advice that cuts across all disciplines and all universities. If you are an associate professor, ask at least two people every year whether your record warrants a promotion review. One person should be an insider to your institution: a department chair, a senior colleague, a dean. The other should be an outsider to your institution. Ask one of your former mentors. Ask a trusted senior colleague from another institution. Ask me (I'll keep any inquiries completely confidential; I'm most informed in the fields of applied microeconomics and other empirical social sciences, but have reviewed plenty of dossiers in other disciplines).
If you receive encouraging responses when you ask, but anticipate some pushback when you formally request your review, initiate the conversation after doing some background research. Identify some scholars in your field who have recently been promoted to full professor. How does your record compare to theirs? Your former mentors or other senior colleagues in the field can help with this -- they've likely been writing letters for some of these scholars.
If you receive discouraging responses, solicit feedback. What benchmarks should you focus on to earn consideration next year?
Some of you readers may be in a position to implement institutional policies that foster greater fairness and equity in promotion to full professor. Here's the simplest suggestion: institute a clock. The "tenure clock" is a stressful concept because tenure decisions are typically up-or-out. Since associate professors typically already have tenure, introducing a new clock would not introduce the same degree of stress.
Postscript
I should mention that there's an "old-fashioned" way to earn your promotion to full professor, namely bringing in an outside offer. If you don't mind the time and distraction of putting yourself on the market, where most senior search committees will be doing their best to sniff out candidates that are just trying to play them to score a counteroffer at home, by all means play this game. But it is a game that disadvantages scholars with a spouse or partner pursuing their own career, or those with family ties that mitigate against long-distance moves. That's where much of the gender gap in promotion comes from.
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