A week ago I had my first tenure meeting with the chair of our department. She had been, according to my three colleagues currently undergoing the ordeal, extremely helpful, supportive and reassuring during their last year. I assumed that all was going well for them, there was general calm and optimism by all concerned, senior faculty included.

We all should have been more mistaken.

The tenure process has multiple stages, they vary subtily in makeup of committees (departmental/college/university) and timing (tenure and promotion to associate aren't always concomitant), but are all generally the same. We start out on a three year contract with a probationary first year. At the end of the third year we are evaluated by our department and the dean's office for renewal to another three year contract. Presumably this is the quality control level, much like the doctoral qualifying exam / masters degree in graduate school. People that don't look like they're going to make it in the tenure process are let go here. Presumably.

If you pass your third-year review at Skidmore, you're given a pre-tenure sabbatical (which I took last year, a full year at NYU and Ohio State). Then, you come back for another two years (the first of which I'm on) and in the second year the tenure decision is made. This year I spend preparing my case- a significant investment of time at the liberal arts institution due to the make up of the committee.

At Skidmore this committee is a faculty group called CAPT (the committee on promotion and tenure). It is made up of faculty college wide-- artists, economists, biologists, you name it. The process is bottom up- our department makes a recomendation to CAPT who make a recomendation that is passed on to the administration (president / board of trustees) for final approval.

If you are granted tenure you are promoted to Assiociate Professor and are assured a position in the department until retirement. If you are denied you are given another year (some call it the `mercy year') and you must leave.

Our department has, in the past 15 years, hasn't tenured anyone on their first try. It is a strange boneyard for psychology professors so it would seem.

In this particular go-round, all three candidates had unanimous departmental support. On the all-holy `three axes' (scholarship, teaching, service) they were all at the perceived standard of the institution and each had exceptional performance on one or two. The department's recomendation to CAPT was to grant all three tenure.

Personally I thought there would be no question in these three cases. It actually made me a bit nervous for my chances next year, since there are a total of five junior people in the department- you can't tenure all of us can you?

Well, according to CAPT - yes, you can.

Unfortunately, it appears that this is not the case this time. Of the three, only one was granted tenure, the other two were denied and in one case, told to not to bother to appeal.

This marks the second time in five years the department's position on candidates has been overruled by CAPT and its associated appeal committees. Needless to say this has the senior folks angry, their opinions not being respected, and the remaining junior folks (well, like me) terrified. There is an apparent non-linearity in the tenure process and this is finally starting to bother me a bit.
12:03:33 PM    

"If you can't say something nice about somebody, come sit here beside me." Roger Kimball dishes on Eisenman and Krier. Remind me to tell you some time about the psycho-ego-fest that was the design competition for the Wexner Center.
11:29:38 AM