Heeding New Voices:
Implications for Early Career Faculty
Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing (AIM)
Stanford University
June 17, 2004
Mary Deane Sorcinelli
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Session Assumptions:
• Best practices for early career faculty are context
and campus sensitive
• Time constraints will limit the breath and depth of
our conversations
• Written resources for post-session reading,
reflection and sharing will be provided
Guiding Questions:
 How is the academic workplace changing?
 How do doctoral students and early career
faculty experience the job search process and
the tenure track?
 What practices can support you as a teacher,
scholar, and citizen of campus?
 What practices might senior colleagues, chairs,
and other academic leaders consider to
support early career faculty?
Introductions
Turn to one person seated nearby. Introduce
yourself and share one or two aspects of your
academic career that are truly satisfying and
one or two aspects that are the most
challenging/least satisfying.
Let’s Hear It For The “Good Old Days”
 Earn a Ph.D. from a good place
 Hone research skills with guidance from mentor
 Seek and find a tenure track job
 Engage in “on the job learning” and “one size
fits all teaching”
 If students don’t learn, presume its their fault
 Live happily (with tenure) ever after
Taylor, 2003
Academic Careers in the 21st Century
 Most jobs in non-research universities
 Dramatic growth in non-tenure track
positions
 Increased stresses related to tenure track
 Heightened pressures for research and
teaching productivity—what about quality?
 For many doctoral students, training may not
prepare them for workplace they will enter
Finkelstein, 2003
Workplace Graduates Will Enter
 Changing approaches to teaching/learning
 Increasing diversity of students
 New technologies
 Focus on assessment/performance measures
 Changing faculty roles
 Institutional competitiveness, financing
Austin, 2003
Doctoral Candidates:
What Factors Go Into Making Choices
About Faculty Positions
and Where To Work?
What Job Factors Are Most Important?
Trower, 2000-01
Top Factors Exercise
Directions: Working individually for the next five
minutes, please:
Check up to 10 factors that are most important to
you in your academic position.
Doctoral Students: Top 10 Job Factors
in Choice of Academic Post
6.
13.
16.
2.
12.
10.
1.
9.
18.
17.
Institutional support for my research
Time for family or other obligation/interests
Quality of department
Number of courses and preps
Flexibility of my work schedule
Opportunity to work collaboratively
The content of courses I would teach
Opportunity to work independently
Geographic location of institution
The quality of the institution
Importance of Job Factors to
Minority Students
In making job choices, Minority students placed
significantly more importance than Caucasian
students on:
1. Having institutional support for my research
2. Match between my research interests and
those of others in my department
3. Opportunity to work with a leader in my field
Importance of Job Factors to
Female Students
In making job choices, female students placed
significantly more importance than male
students on:
1. Flexibility of my work schedule
2. Time for family or other personal obligations
3. Employment opportunities for my spouse or
partner
Students in the Professions
Students in professions placed more importance
than students in other fields on:
1. Institutional support for research
2. Flexibility of the work schedule
3. Attractiveness of the compensation package
Highlights:
Ambivalence about Tenure
On the one hand, tenure is security, status,
prestige, “the green card,” “legitimacy—the
measure of worth among peers,” “a voice in one’s
department,” “essential” to academic freedom.
On the other hand, tenure is “no guarantee—like
the social security system,” “You won’t have a life
for 6-7 years and then what?”, “Three full time jobs
rolled into one and all for $40,000.”
Highlights:
Other Factors Loom Large
Strive for tenure, believe in tenure—but it
appears that other factors are starting to play
a role in the decision about where to work.
In fact, attractive combinations of other
factors can actually challenge tenure-track.
Work…Location…Quality of Life
What They Say About…
 Work: “More important to me than tenure or
non-tenure is what I’ll actually be doing. I want
an even mix, a balance of teaching and
research so I’ll go where I can do that,
regardless of the contract.”
 Location: ”So much more important than any
other factor is where the institution is. I have a
spouse and we went where we could both find
work and a place that was safe, affordable, a
decent commute, and comfortable.”
What They Say About…
 Quality of Life: “When choosing
between tenure track and non-tenure
track, I’m looking at it as a lifestyle
choice—which path will offer “greater
flexibility to work on my own terms,”
“more mobility,” less stress,” the
chance to "fare better" and the ability
to have “some semblance of a life
outside of the academy.”
21st - Century Academic Careers:
What Matters?
 Tension between the existing academic
culture and what young scholars want.
 In choosing where to work, young scholars
are carefully weighing their options.
 They are looking for a balance of work
that is meaningful, in a place that is a
good fit, with a reasonable quality of life.
Implications?
Directions: Working with one or two individuals
nearby, please spend the next ten minutes
responding to the following:
What matters most to you in terms of work
factors/workplace? Any changes from when
you were on the job market? Any implications
for recruiting new faculty to your department or
university?
Vision Versus Reality
A key finding of the Heeding New
Voices: Academic Careers For a New
Generation is the troubling gap between
the vision and the reality of an academic
career.
Rice, Sorcinelli, and Austin, 2000; 2002.
Vision of an Academic Career
 Sense of autonomy, academic freedom
 Opportunity for continued learning, discovery
 Wise use of skills, abilities
 Sense of accomplishment
 Opportunity to impact others
Reality of an Academic Career
Three core, consistent, interwoven concerns on
the minds of early career faculty include the
lack of a:
 Comprehensible tenure/performance review
 Sense of community
 Balanced, integrated life
Concerns About Tenure
 Expectations for Performance
- Clear? Consistent? Reasonable? Fair?
 Feedback on Progress
- Informal and formal feedback?
 Review Structure and Process
- Who? How? Timeframe? Standards?
 Timeline
- Stop clock? Short-term focus v. intellectual passion
Concerns About Community
 Department Chair
- Critical to mentoring, quality of feedback
 Senior Faculty
- Key to “culture of collegiality,” vested in success
 Students
- Satisfaction with “being valued as a teacher by
students” yet “good teaching” is ill defined, poorly
evaluated, undervalued and exhausting
Concerns About Integrated Life
 Balancing Professional Roles
- How to develop, prioritize and juggle teaching and
research (even less prepared for advising, grant
writing, institutional service, administrative duties)
 Balancing Professional and Personal Life
- How to carve out personal, family and leisure time
(spouse/partner’s career, young children, commuting
relationships) and find support (childcare, affordable
housing, family leave, community)
In Summary…
Seeking a connection between
Expectations, Hopes,
Vision, Passion
&
Reality...
The Challenge Ahead…
We need to:
 Improve academic life as we now
know it.
 Envision the academic world we might
yet construct.
What Can We Do Now?
Principles of Good Practice: Supporting
Early-Career Faculty
 Communicating expectations
 Giving feedback on progress
 Improving review processes
 Encouraging mentoring and advising
 Department chair as “career sponsor”
 Supporting scholarship and teaching
What Can We Do Now?
Directions:
Choose a topic of most interest to you. In your
small group, come up with one or two creative
strategies that you’ve found helpful in each of the
following areas:
What Can We Do Now?
• Teaching
• Research
• Service
• Tenure process
• Relations with colleagues
• Personal life
Improving Performance Review
 Mid-term Assessment Process
- Feedback from students while course in progress
 Annual Review
- Record of scholarly activities in teaching, research, service and
meet with chair (and PC) each year
 Mini-Tenure Review (4.2)
-Take letters from chair, PC, and college PC seriously
 Annual Promotion & Tenure Seminar
-Chair, dean, provost, newly tenured faculty member discuss what
counts, the case, the process at each level
Enhancing Community
 New Faculty Orientation/Listserv
 Lilly Teaching Fellowship
– Year-long Seminar on College Teaching
– Mentors/Distinguished Teachers/Teaching
Consultant
– Teaching Project/Portfolio
 Faculty as Writers Support Group
Fostering Balance
 Time Management
– Fewer preps/courses in year one
– Lilly Teaching Fellowship (two course release)
– Seminars/print resources (e.g., Rick Reis)
 Flexible Benefits
- Parental leave, flexible time to tenure, child care
Academic Career Network
-Database of academic jobs for dual-career couples
Envisioning the Future
 What will be meaningful academic work/career?
 How will we recruit/socialize new faculty to it?
 How will we develop and assess it?
 What will we need from each other to help
anticipate and shape the future academic
workplace?