Being In–between: Reflecting on Time,Space and Career during the Tenure Application Process

A couple months ago, I posted to my personal Facebook page that I had submitted my tenure and promotion materials for review. As a tenure–track Assistant Professor at a university in the United States (US), applying for tenure and promotion is a necessary step towards attaining a permanent position with the university (or, “tenure”). Tenure is defined as the process of according a continuing contract that, with few exceptions, results in non–terminating employment of an academic employee and typically includes specific protections of academic freedom through due process (Teichgraeber, 2014). Along the same vein, promotion is the upward movement in academic rank, such as from assistant to associate professor. At the university at which I am employed, these two items occur at the same time; the candidate is awarded tenure and promoted from assistant to associate professor. Although people with non–academic backgrounds (and our own students) may have heard of academic tenure, fewer seem to understand the process. To be fair, unless academics study a particular occupation, such as public school teaching, or medicine, or welding, they may not understand the intricate details of promotion and job tenure within these occupations.

Questions that could arise in such cases may be: How do individuals move up the career ladder? Who decides who gets to stay employed and who does not? What kind of hurdles does a professional face in order to be promoted? In my department, college, and university setting, applying for promotion and tenure involves submission of a curriculum vitae formatted to the university's standards, some accompanying demographic forms, and boxes of paper files that substantiate each item on the vitae. This goes through review, discussion and voting at the departmental personnel committee as well as the college review committee. Additionally, individuals including the department chair, college dean, provost, and university president must agree and pass it forward to the next level for approval. Eventually the board of regents and system chancellor approve the tenure and promotion. It harkens to a multi–year campaign of steadfast production and polite politics among department members, particularly with those who may be on the personnel committee, college colleagues who may be sitting on review committees, and administrators.

As I began to answer questions raised by those who are outside academe, I thought about the uniqueness of the space and time situation that I occupy. Although I am still “on the tenure track”, there is little I can do at this point to affect the tenure decision other than to maintain my teaching, service, and research productivity. In this paper I will provide an overview o the concept of tenure in the United States, weave my experiences in this time of being “in – between” throughout the paper, and draw connections between this time and space and other notions of “in–between” (or a “third space”) from the literature. My goal through this approach is to describe the experience of being “in–between” as a space and time worthy of further reflection and research in the career trajectories of faculty members at higher education institutions.

The Tenure Goal

Tenure, as described above, was started in the early twentieth century in the United States (Teichgraeber, 2014). A number of universities (such as Cornell University and Yale University) started some elements of what has become the tenure process at different points in time during the early twentieth century. Generally speaking, tenure processes share several common points, including tenured faculty being the evaluators of those faculty who are applying for tenure, an ideal of shared governance and personnel management between administrators at universities and faculty at universities, and the decision meaning continuing appointment with few exceptions subject to due process (American Association of University Professors, 1940/1970). Prior to tenure, faculty members are treated as probationary, and typically subject to dismissal and termination of contract without recourse. A small number of universities in the United States still do not practice a tenure system, and as a result faculty members at these universities are often treated as probationary (Honan & Teferra, 2001; Tierney, 1997). Newly hired assistant professors (including me) who fail to be promoted and make tenure are given a one–year terminal contract and then leave to find alternative employment (Siow, 1997). Indeed, like the merits of a good research project, success in the role of assistant professor must be proven through evidence. Evidence in this situation could be copies of publications, copies of correspondence, programs and agenda from events and meetings, copies of syllabi and course evaluations, and statements written by the applicant. The decision to award tenure is an expensive decision, considering the lifetime salary of a tenured faculty member, and other institutional benefits (such as professional development funds, research funds) that may have financial implications. At many universities, including my own, the bar continues to be raised, demanding more of untenured faculty in the same probationary time period than their peers who were granted tenure years earlier (de Rond & Miller, 2005). In my observation, this change is most likely due to (a) public scrutiny around tenure given that this sort of employment relationship rarely exists outside of academia, (b) the elevation in statuses of universities from teaching institutions to research institutions, and (c) the high regard now placed on external funding to provide supplemental funding to universities. Although tenure evaluations typically review teaching, scholarship, and service, in many institutions, the pressure to publish and obtain external funding has translated to large quantities of publications being the focus without always high regard for the quality of publication (de Rond & Miller, 2005). Thus, as faculty members are evaluated, inevitably, a “count” of publications is used as a metric of success, which gives rise to the phrase “publish or perish” (de Rond & Miller, 2005, p. 321). This means that if a tenure–track faculty member is perceived as not “publishing” enough publications in the appropriate time frame, her or his time as a faculty member at that institution may “perish” and the probationary contract is terminated. Research production seems to overshadow other elements of the profession, including teaching (activities related to credit–bearing academic courses and student learning) and service (activities related to functioning of department, college, or university governance or in the interest of further development of one's academic/professional field or the public interest in relation to one's field) in the tenure situation, although faculty members may also “perish” due to poor quality teaching or service.

Like many adult educators, I see the primacy of being able to teach adults and carve out space for pedagogically sound learning activities. As much as I engage in professional development to strengthen my teaching practice, on one hand, the tenure–track system detracts from developing sound teaching practice (Olson & Einwohner, 2001; Serow, 2000; Tierney, 1997). On the other hand, tenure is critical to the maturity of a department and its ability to address student needs and adapt to changes in the field (Bland & Bergquist, 1997). Balancing this tension (need to be tenured vs time with students) creates difficult decisions as to when to be available and when to be silent.

At times, I felt buried by the policies and nuances of the experience along with the paperwork involved in the process. There are details about how faculty seek out external review of their materials, how materials are to be presented, including to my amazement, what color folders must be used. Having my tenure and promotion materials, four filing boxes in volume, submitted has become a certain relief to me given all this tedious activity and stark warnings about not following the policies and procedures. The preparation of these materials seemed to constitute a marathon unto itself. I tried to find the most convincing documentation for each item listed on the curriculum vitae. I had met with members of our small personnel committee on several occasions before and during this preparation period. These meetings were to help the committee members understand my time at university, how my research fit together, and to troubleshoot any questions that might arise in various review committees.

The university at which I teach is considered an emerging research university by the State of Texas. As an emerging research university, the pressure, especially for newer faculty members is to obtain external funding through grants and contracts and publish in peer – reviewed journals. Tenure and promotion decisions are made during the candidate's sixth year and as such, there is only one opportunity to make the promotion within the timeframe.

Recently, a colleague asked me what it was like to be “in–between”, not yet tenured, but having already submitted my materials. I had commented to my colleagues and friends who understood what I was experiencing that I just wished to fast–forward time six months so I know the outcome of the tenure and promotion review process, but I had never thought about it as being in an in–between space. Borrowing from Bhabha (1994), English (2005) writes about a third space. One characteristic of third space is that it denies the simplicity of dichotomies – and in this case, English refers to the difficulties in which adult educator development workers find difficulties in assuming existing identity options. In this third space, educators created new identities through negotiation and subversion. Perhaps this space of “in–between” is a third space, one that neither pre–tenured races of “publish or perish” seem to fit, nor the safety of senior faculty status accorded with tenure. Space is an especially salient metaphor for life on the “tenure track.” Pre–tenure life is spoken about as on the track – and it's quite the marathon to publish and apply for funding (and maintain teaching and service in the meantime). Now that my materials are submitted, I have a few moments to think about this “in–between” space.

Waiting to Exhale

Thinking about being “in–between” had me reflecting not only on the volume and submission of my scholarship for review, but on the actual scholarly work I had done over the past five years. One example comes to mind. In 2013, Robert Mizzi and I published a paper about Middle–Eastern, immigrant, sexual–minority men in the United States and Canada (Eichler & Mizzi, 2013). In this article, we reported on a multiple case study we had pursued in describing and theorizing the lives of men who were living in a space I would now call in – between. They are in–between cultures in their home countries (where sexual minority identity status is not tolerated) and the US or Canada (where sexual minority identity status is more widely accepted and even celebrated). They move in between family and cultural communities of immigrants in their current location and the (urban) spaces where LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) people are found in large number.

Others have written about in–between spaces in adult education and human resource development. Fenwick (2007) studied independent consultants in organizational change in Canada, and described the in–between space as a:

Discursive and relational space occupied by the independent knowledge worker that is neither inside nor outside the organization. As a non–employee, this worker is apart from the organizational social networks and cultural norms, and is not enmeshed in the everyday joint activity that comprises organizational practices. (p. 517)

What is significant about Fenwick's work here is the way that workers are reported to negotiate these spaces, which seem to be largely unnoticed spaces because of the peripherality of the space, neither in an organization or outside an organization, but a little of both. New forms of agency were constituted through negotiation in the space and connection building. Solomon, Boud, and Rooney (2006) have also used the phrase in–between to describe the learning that happens at the “intersections of work and social spaces” (p. 3). They posit that we miss substantial learning in the workplace when we study only the learning that happens in traditional boundaries (i.e., within classroom walls), and not the learning that also occurs with co–workers in work–related social spaces, such as commuting together, break rooms, and lunch spaces. These hybrid (meaning a mixture of characteristics) spaces are neither completely work nor completely social, since it is unlikely the space as constituted would be present without work, nor are they spaces thought of as work–productive spaces.

Considering these perspectives on space, what I have noticed as being “in–between” tenure–track and possibly tenure is that there is a rush of activity prior to submission of materials for tenure and the granting of tenure. At this time and space, there is a foot in both worlds; I am no longer in the middle of the race, however I am still attuned to the continued production of quality research, teaching, and service. Still, this is not the time to enjoy the freedom and responsibilities of tenure and promotion.

My materials have gone forward, so there are no major revisions allowed to these materials. It's waiting time. I wait as my materials, including the plastic boxes of paper files, colored folders, and forms, make their way through the review committees of my department and college, as well as pass the desks of the department chair, dean, provost, and president. I feel ambivalent about those materials. The amount of effort and emotional energy put into their preparation seemed so excessive. I am ready for them to be done. At the same time, the materials are personify a young child that is to be protected and treated gently. Previously, my anxiety would lead me to put in long hours, seek out publications and presentations, and try to improve my scholarship. Now, the anxiety needs to be directed elsewhere, towards program improvement, towards the next stage of research, towards setting new goals, and towards a betterment of my relationships with students. As I work on these tasks, I am reminded that if tenure is not granted, then they are moot in terms of my time as faculty in my current university setting. I can devote more time to serving students, reading, and moving on to starting more research projects that had been put on hold to complete the dossier. I also try to find new pursuits to further my professional development. I find myself again (re) learning new research methodologies – those long forgotten from my time as a doctoral student or new ones that might fit upcoming projects. In the meantime, I continue with my work as if I am to get tenure. If tenure is granted, in five years, it will be a time to apply for promotion to professor – and a gap in productivity is not prudent. I am still evaluated annually on productivity outside of this process, so the work must continue.

Hybrid Space: A Concluding Thought

The time and space between the application for tenure and the granting of tenure while certainly an “in–between” time could constitute a third space, being some hybrid of characteristics of both pre–tenure and post–tenure spaces. Indeed, in reflecting as space as such, the role of untenured assistant professors is to produce research outputs in addition to maintaining active teaching and service, however, the research outputs accorded during this time no longer seem to have the primacy of those created prior to the submission of tenure materials for review. Additional time is available for pursuits that was not previously available in the race prior to the submission of materials. Further reflection and research as to the impact of this “in–between” space and its unique and new conditions, as it is a particular time located in very few professions. I understand this as a unique space and time and will continue to seek new opportunities and reflection during this time.