Timeline for "Taking summers off" and the impact on tenure decisions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 12, 2015 at 17:43 | comment | added | theforestecologist | It was gramatically incorrect! | |
| Dec 12, 2015 at 16:52 | comment | added | Ooker | I would like to know why you didn't like the new title | |
| Dec 11, 2015 at 15:02 | history | rollback | theforestecologist |
Rollback to Revision 1
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| Dec 9, 2015 at 20:59 | comment | added | mkennedy | Something that I haven't seen any answers comment on--if you are advising graduate students, they may not want or be able to take the summer off. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 19:48 | comment | added | Oswald Veblen | The 9-month contract issue is one of many thing that highlight how a research-oriented professor position is in an ambiguous middle ground between a "job" and a "hobby club". It is easier to understand the conventions if you think of it as a little bit of both. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 19:35 | answer | added | Oswald Veblen | timeline score: 8 | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 17:54 | history | edited | Ooker | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited title
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| Dec 9, 2015 at 16:26 | answer | added | JeffE | timeline score: 23 | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 13:40 | comment | added | Mark Meckes | I second JeffE's comment. There are some departments where nobody will even notice whether you're in town over the summer, because no one else is in their offices either, and as long as you get work done nobody will know or care exactly when you did it. There are other departments where every closed office door will raise eyebrows, no matter how productive you are. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 6:20 | comment | added | aparente001 | Could you explain why you're asking, please? Is it that you are fantasizing about getting a tenure track job, and are hoping you can spend your summer snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef? That you are wondering how the heck the guy down the hall from you thinks he stands a chance of getting tenure if he spends his summer building himself a house out of straw and clay? Something else entirely? | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 6:20 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackAcademia/status/674473596794839040 | ||
| Dec 9, 2015 at 5:44 | answer | added | user18072 | timeline score: 9 | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 5:41 | comment | added | Dan Romik | I deleted my answer, since based on @NateEldredge's comments it looks like a key premise I had assumed may be incorrect, which potentially undermines the validity of the entire answer. Sorry! | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 5:05 | comment | added | Dan Romik | theforestecologist, plausible? Maybe, but this is pure speculation, and as I said in my answer, you're essentially speculating about people's thoughts about illegal discrimination, so neither I nor anyone else can give anything approaching an authoritative answer. If you feel comfortable speculating about this, go ahead; I don't. Also, part of what makes it difficult to answer is that as @NateEldredge commented, this is pretty near to being a vacuous question: the sample size, if there is even a sample, would be vanishingly small. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 4:56 | comment | added | theforestecologist | @Dan Romik: I agree with the others. This is very plausible, especially at an R1 university (though you likely won't have profs at an R1 attempting to take any time away from their work :p...). I think a tenure committee would look at that pattern of work behavior and question your work ethic or dedication to being an effective tenured professor in the long run. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 4:53 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | "If the individual got the work required for tenure completed during the 9-months of the school year, they could do whatever they want the other 3 months (since they are off contract) without repercussions, right?" This seems to me like a great example of a vacuously true statement. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 4:52 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | @DanRomik: Really? I think it's perfectly plausible that a department chair could say something like "Officially, it's irrelevant. Off the record, I have a sense that it might affect the votes of certain faculty members. There was a previous case..." | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 4:37 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @JeffE the question has only one, rather obvious, correct answer (see my answer), so in that sense I actually don't think this is an excellent question for OP's department chair. If the chair is not entirely clueless he/she will give the obvious official answer since anything else would be exposing the university, and maybe him/her personally, to a big liability; and if he/she is entirely clueless, you shouldn't trust what they are saying anyway. So either way by asking them I don't see that you'd gain any useful information, and you may in fact get entirely wrong and misleading information. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 3:47 | comment | added | JeffE | This is an excellent question for your department chair. In principle, it shouldn't matter, but in practice, it depends on your department's culture. | |
| Dec 9, 2015 at 3:28 | history | asked | theforestecologist | CC BY-SA 3.0 |