Junior faculty are hired as assistant professors for a four-year term. After which they are usually renewed for an additional three-year term. At the of that second term either they are promoted to associate professor with tenure or their contract is not renewed and they need to find another position.
An assistant professor is hired based on potential and promoted to tenure based on accomplishment.
It is rare to not renew a candidate after the first term, happening only if the department feels there is little chance that the faculty member will received tenure after second term.
Since tenure requires a long-term commitment from the university, the department, the dean and the university put considerable effort in vetting the case. The candidate first puts together a tenure packet, with CV, detailed research and teaching statements, a collection of publications and list of potential letter writers. The department sends the packets to senior people in the field both on and off the list given by the candidate. Ten or more review letters are not uncommon for a tenure case. The tenure case works its way through the system from the senior members of the department through the dean, provost and so on. Many universities have a tenure committee that reviews all cases for the provost or president.
The final decision is based on several parameters including the letters, publications, teaching, grants, service to the university and academic community and how well the faculty member fits in the department. The weights given to each item as well as how high the tenure bar is held differs greatly between universities. You can get a good feeling by how recent tenure cases went in the department.
Can one come up for early tenure? Can one get credit for years as a postdoc, research scientist or an assistant professor elsewhere? Or can one "stop the tenure clock" for illness, a new child or other leaves of absences? Can one be promoted to associate professor without immediate tenure if needed? Can one get an extra year to search for a new job if not promoted? Will the candidate have access to the review letters? If the answers to these or other questions concern you, best to bring them up before you accept the job.
I think that a tenure clock of 6 years, 3 each for the first and second appointments, is a bit more common in the U.S. than the 7 year, 4+3 version Lance mentions, though there are places where the clock has as many as 8 or 9 years. (The latter often includes the possibility of a pre-tenure promotion.)
ReplyDeleteIn Canada, the standard is 5 years and involves a single pre-tenure appointment.
Independent of the length of the clock, splitting the pre-tenure appointment rarely makes a difference. The second appointment is usually decided on more than a year before the appointment comes due (to give a chance for a job search the following year in case it is declined) which is very early and so is made with relatively little data. The reappointment decision becomes primarily a chance for a department to recover from a truly disastrous choice. (Someone who is abysmal in the classroom, doesn't carry out their duties, or doesn't get along with anyone.) This is extremely rare.
Paul is right -- there is a US standard that the evaluation occurs in the sixth year, so that the seventh year is a chance to look for another job if the decision is negative or (often) a sabbatical if it is positive. But a rather small set of the best universities in the US (most or all of the Ivies, Johns Hopkins, Chicago unless Lance is mixed up) have their own procedures that vary slightly, usually by having a longer clock before the tenure decision.
ReplyDeleteAt UMass the last really technical review occurs at the college level, with a faculty committee that advises the Dean of the college. The Dean and Provost then also rule, usually on more programmatic than technical grounds. Tenure decisions, unlike other major personnel decisions, have to also be approved by the Board of Trustees but this is generally pro forma.
We also have a pre-tenure review, now usually done in the third year, to give the candidate feedback on tenure prospects. This is tied to the first reappointment and, as Paul says, is the place where an obviously nonperforming candidate gets identified and not renewed.
and if someone does not make tenure?
ReplyDeleteDo they usually look for jobs at other universities? Is there some industry that looks to scoop people like that up?
Unfortunately, the general rule is that if you do not get tenure at your current university but decide to stay in academia, you will only get an offer at a place that is much lower ranked (if you can get an offer at all).
ReplyDeleteWould you say that UC is a place where pretty much every new hire will get tenure if they don't F it up?
ReplyDeleteOr is it the kind of place that will they let political pressures and capricious fads send otherwise good people winging it into the market of Great Lakes regional teaching colleges, and whatever industrial positions are available to a flopped professor from a school that doesn't even have an engineering college?
to anon 5:
ReplyDeleteWhat new hires?
In general, in CS schools in the US, if your productivity stays at the level it was upon your hire, you get decent teaching ratings, bring in a moderate amount of grant money, and advise a few students, you will likely get tenure. If you don't do these things, you've just ended up wasting a lot of the department's resources.
ReplyDeleteHow common is it that a department
ReplyDeletevotes and recommends tenure but the university decides otherwise ?
Lance said: "An assistant professor is hired based on potential and promoted to tenure based on accomplishment."
ReplyDeleteThis is wrong. The correct statement is that an assistant professor is hired based on potential, and is tenured based on promise of continued high-quality career. Acomplishments are used to evalue the promise.
Just to follow up on one of Janos's comments, tenure also does not guarantee a good job: the classic example of which is that the department may simply freeze your salary for many years. More extreme (and less common), the department could make your life so unpleasant you prefer to leave.
ReplyDelete