By Marcelo Wallau
It finally came. Thirteen months after the first submission, plus six years of preparation, the tenure letter finally arrived. What a journey! And I'm glad it is over. Or is it? According to a dear colleague and mentor, my work might stay the same after this given my personality and work style. Knowing me well, he also emailed me this week, reminding me to take time to reflect and celebrate. I still need to get to the second part. Being a get-goer, I have a hard time celebrating—the thrill in more in the challenge than in the achievement. But, following his suggestion, I would like to reflect on the road until here.
I work at a land-grant university and a top academic institution in the U.S. A dream come true, and sometimes hard to believe. Being a top university also means that the expectations are high. Considering that my appointment is 70% Extension and 30% Research, I am still expected to publish, bring dollars, and graduate students at a level close to 100% research. That's an exaggeration, but not by far. Since my first semester, it was clear (although I needed to be convinced) that research would give me tenure and not extension. That is a very frustrating thing, as, after all, I was hired as an Extension Specialist. Turns out that, even in a land-grant university, Extension is not as well known in the upper administrative ranks beyond the college of Ag and Life Science. Took me two years to convince myself that the path to keep my job (i.e., get tenure) was different from the path I believed my job was. But, as my dear colleague and mentor would put it, "Nobody cares what you think; this is the game, those are the rules, and you have to play to keep on going."
I finally realized that I needed to get on track with this concept. At that point (2 years in), my focus switched to grant writing. I applied for a few grants in the first year but got nothing. Then, I spread a broader net, and I got the same result. Finally, in year 3, with an even wider net, I secured four grants in a year. That is very exciting, right!? Well… now I need to get the job done. The grants I was targeting were quite different in nature (of course, to spread my chances), which ended up expanding and spreading my research and extension effort even further. In my mind, a larger team would be the solution to a large workload. However, I didn’t figure in the time it took for mentoring. As I vowed to be a good mentor, I wanted to be with my team as frequently as possible. Through several iterations of mentoring strategies, trial and error, I settled with a weekly report system from my students (which most ended up not doing) and weekly meetings, alternating between lab group and individual meetings every other week. That helped me to keep in touch with all and have a good grasp of how things were going within my group. The only issue was that those meetings took over a day a week (that’s 20%!). And, still, there was that 70% extension appointment that kept me frequently in the field or on the road.
I thought things were going well. Over $1 M in funds, four students graduated, and my mid-term (3-year) review came back with high remarks but the need for strengthening my publications. The average of 3 a year I maintained (mostly through collaborations, given my extension work) was insufficient. Beyond that, they requested three more things: international work, national professional society engagement, and being an associate editor for a journal. I was pretty sure those three things were expectations to go from associate to full professor. To me, it seemed that the goalpost kept moving further and further. What was my response? In the last two years before applying for tenure, I strategized and checked all three boxes, on top of all that was going on. The year I applied for tenure, I finished with 13 publications (adding to a total of 42 careerwise), 6 graduated MS students, 6 current MS and PhD students, along with 12 committee participations and almost 2.5 million dollars in funds (over $1,2 direct to my program). More than that, I was associate editor of a major journal, division chair for our national professional society, and had started an international project. Easy to say my workdays were seldom less than 10 hours. And, to that, we always hear the importance of “work-life balance”… but don’t forget the tenure.
This year, I finally heard from my new department chair (the 5th in 7 years since I started) that I need to slow down otherwise I will burn out. That was reassuring… but did it come too late? And how to slow down now with so many things in motion?
While we need to prove ourselves, excel in what we do, and strive for excellence, this road to tenure seems a bit too much at some points. Might be because of my personality and work style, or being hard on oneself, but the environment and the requirements lead to this type of scenario. While being in a top 5 public University, with the top agricultural majors in the country is a privilege, it can also be a burden. While I went up for tenure on time, colleagues in similar positions in other institutions were over with this process two years earlier in comparison I do not regret anything, and enjoyed each and every step, but is important to pause and reflect on how we got here, and what is on the table for the colleagues that are coming behind us. The expectation seems to be that, since we achieved this much, they can do better and achieve more.
As a faculty, we are given a lot of liberty in chasing our path and perhaps not as much guidance as we wish. It is up to us to trail our path; the apparent lack of guidance is part of the job structure. A solid mentoring committee is extremely important in this process, to steer you in the right direction. One needs to be strategic and plan from the beginning to achieve the important milestones in the mark. It’s hard to say no to opportunities, and it might not be wise to say no too much. People are observing and counting on you. You need to build that curriculum, show engagement at multiple levels beyond productivity, and build those relationships. That can quickly result in overburden and scatter. Regrouping after I got tenure, reducing the scope of my work and slowing down is proving to be more difficult than expected. The momentum is strong, and many people depend on the structure put in place to keep moving. It’s not just a matter of me wanting to slow down. This frenzy, however, affects the quality of my work and the quality of my interactions, especially with students.
My goals here are twofold. First, to share this experience with my colleagues, especially those with Extension appointments, in hopes that this reflection can help them plan and ease their way into tenure. Having a solid strategy from the beginning instead of "chasing your dreams" will help in achieving tenure with less stress. My advice is to set a simple and concrete action plan that leads to papers, grants and student recruitment, especially in the first three years. Second, I want to share some of my perceptions and challenges with those making decisions, in hopes that this can help them see a bit of the struggle new faculty face. Perhaps there are ways to get the best out of people without leading to burnouts and frustration.
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