Transcript Preparing for the 3

Preparing for tenure
Presented by
Paulette Clancy
School of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering
Updated 2012
Preparing for tenure: Timeline
1. Immediately after the 3-year review, discuss the details of the letter with your
Chair/Director and with your mentors to understand any areas that need
improvement and to discuss how to redress these problems.
2. 4th or 5th year, negotiate with your Chair/Director to reduce your teaching or
service load to allow you to make a concerted push in the lab to get results that
will become papers before the tenure deadline. Several Engr. departments
routinely set aside a teaching-free semester before tenure (in addition to the
one when you arrived).
3. 4th, and especially, 5th year, organize your own “publicity tour” in which (a)
you visit departments (b) and/or invite to Cornell faculty who are likely to be
targeted for a letter. This is immensely valuable to gain exposure.
But don’t go or invite external faculty until you have a compelling research
“story” to tell.
4. Semester before tenure package submission, ask a couple of faculty ‘friends’
either at home or at other universities to critique your resume and
research/teaching statements. [They don’t have to be in your area to be useful]
Preparing for tenure: Prep. steps
close to the deadline (1 of 2)
Mechanics of tenure
• Familiarize yourself with the University’s documents discussing the
criteria for tenure
• Discuss with your Chair/Director the date at which your package will be
submitted.
• There are discrete dates for submission to the College. This dictates
deadlines in the department by which you submit your package.
• Typically, you will begin this process up to 6 months in advance of the
submission date to the College. After that, it takes 6 months to go
through the ad hoc, College, Provost, BoT committees.
• Typically, you will submit to the College by December for a May tenure
decision
• Early tenure is invariably not in your best interests, no matter how
much funding and publications you have. You only get one shot at this.
Preparing for tenure: Prep steps
close to the deadline (2 of 2)
Mechanics of tenure
• Understand what you will need to provide in the dossier and prepare
accordingly. Ask your Chair for departmental expectations on all of the
components of the dossier. Ask the Assoc. Dean for Diversity (currently
Rick Allmendinger) if you need clarification on the College/University
requirements and expectations.
• Basic dossier components are
• An updated CV.
• A document that defines your vision of your research program (3-5
pages)
• A shorter document that describes your teaching philosophy and
experiences, including future plans (1-2 pages)
• A list of possible external letter-writers on your behalf
• Copies of sample exams, lecture notes, several important publications
of which you are most proud (can be pre-submission papers if they are
going to be high-impact).
Preparing for tenure: Your CV
• Get help: Ask a recently tenured faculty member in your department for a copy of
her/his resume. There is something prescriptive about the level of detail that is
expected; familiarize yourself with this.
• Understand your audience: This is mainly the department’s faculty, the external
reviewers and the ad hoc committee. Each have different interests; cater to all of
them.
• Order your publications (etc.) to highlight the achievements that occurred at
Cornell. Don’t let them get lost amid a slew of post-doc works.
• Provide a list of students and post-docs in your group and their status (e.g., dates
of A exam passed, expected graduation date) so that reviewers can see if your
manage/promote your students effectively. This list also help reviewers (esp. ad hoc
committee) check that your students are routinely first authors on your papers.
• Funding: For team proposal awards, the College mandates having your $$ share
given explicitly (e.g., $2M (Bhave share: $400K)). You can add a few words on your
contribution (e.g., ‘experimental studies of transport phenomena’)
• Awards: If you have a lot, pare it down to the most impressive. Three top awards are
better than listing all 15 awards you’ve ever received.
• Credit: Be scrupulous that you don’t take credit for something that someone else
did. For instance, don’t claim you completely redesigned a course to include X and Y
when you did this as part of a team.
Preparing for tenure: More on the CV
Be sure your CV includes the following
• All publications; divide into pre- and post- Cornell appointment and note
authorship of Cornell graduate students and post-docs (say, by putting
their names in italics). Include patents.
• Students advised, including post-docs, PhD students, MS students, M.
Eng. students, UG researchers and visitors. In the case of MS/PhD
students, indicate progress towards degree (e.g., Mary Brown, A exam
7/03; John Wilkins Booth, A exam expected summer 05). Include a list of
students for whom you are a thesis committee member.
• All proposals submitted. Divide into awarded, pending, declined. If joint
with other faculty, indicate your contribution and share of the award.
• All seminars and conference talks (indicate any invited talks)
• Courses taught (with course title, years taught, enrollment)
• Awards (but don’t go back to UG or grad related ones)
• Service responsibilities (in the department, at Cornell, outside Cornell
including panels, editorial help, etc.)
• Field Memberships and professional societies
Preparing for the 3-year review:
Teaching Statement
• Indicate your teaching contributions to the department
• What’s your teaching philosophy (briefly)?
• What successes have you had? [Say course restructuring, innovations
in format or content]
• What challenges have you encountered?
• What can the department do to help you improve?
• Length: No more than a page
Preparing for tenure: Research Vision
Research Vision Document
• Provide the “big picture” view. If you were writing a fictitious citation of
your contribution to the field at the end of 5 years, what would it read?
• What progress have you made towards this goal? Highlight your
achievements and their importance in redefining the field.
• Don’t be afraid to use phrases like “we are the first group to…” or “we
resolved a long-standing misunderstanding in the literature…” Faculty
outside your area cannot see the ‘light and shade’ without your guidance.
Give it to them.
• Include your future plans (in less detail than accomplishments)
• Length: Department-specific and often influenced by the length of the
ones immediately before yours. Find out what’s expected. Don’t make it
too long or you will annoy the reviewers.
Preparing for tenure: Teaching
document
• Prep step: Make sure that the Chair/Director/Associate Director
organizes faculty to critique your classroom teaching as this needs
planning (at least a year in advance to catch both Fall and Spring classes
even once). If they haven’t visited, ask that they do. Some departments
visit twice: once with advance warning and once unexpectedly.
• Indicate your teaching contributions to the department
• What’s your teaching philosophy (briefly)?
• What successes have you had or innovations made? [Say course
creation or restructuring, innovations in format or content]
• Future Plans
• Length: Again, ask your Chair/Director, but typically 1-2 pages
Preparing for tenure: Choice of
external faculty letter-writers (1 of 2)
• Typically, the department will want to receive 10-15 letters from external
reviewers of your dossier at peer schools. Ten letters is a bare minimum
for an adequate review.
• Some of the letters requested by the department will not be received
(faculty traveling, overcommitted, on sabbatical, decline due to
unfamiliarity with your work), so the list of potential letter-writers will
typically be about 16.
• Invariably, you will be asked to provide a list and the department will
also draw up its own list (often independently of your list).
• Don’t give a list of every conceivable expert in the country. Leave some
obvious candidates for the department to choose.
• You can include 1 or 2 names of people in industry if they know you well
and are well respected. Mention if this person is an NAE/NAS member.
Preparing for tenure: Choice of
external faculty letter-writers (2 of 2)
• It seems to be common practise now not to list internal Cornell faculty
who know your work well (perhaps to ensure that they can be asked to
serve on the ad hoc committee). Active collaborators will not be on your
ad hoc committee (COI), so a letter from one of them might be worth
considering under some circumstances. Discuss with your Chair and the
Assoc. Dean if you want to include a Cornell letter.
• Discuss with your Chair/Director if there is someone who you would
prefer is not asked for a letter.
Preparing for tenure: Choice of
student letter-writers
• Typically, the department will ask some or all of your current and former
post-docs and PhD students for a letter on your behalf
• The department will ask for letters from undergraduate and M.Eng.
students who have taken your classes
• The process by which undergraduate and M. Eng. letter writers are
chosen is somewhat department-specific.
• Some send a blanket e-mail to all students who took your courses.
They are bound to include all responses and not select just the ones
that they choose
• Some select the students randomly (e.g., every 5th student on the
register)
• Some select the students to include a diversity of GPA,
gender/ethnicity, and perhaps focus on more thoughtful students
• Find out which process your department uses
Preparing for tenure: Delaying the
tenure clock
• There is an option to delay the tenure clock.
• This is automatically granted for reasons such as pregnancy, birth and
child adoption (not just for women!)
• It can be granted for other reasons, such as delays due to lab
renovation, etc., by petition through your Chair/Director to the Dean
• Note: Faculty are taking advantage of this option- you will not be the
first!
Preparing for tenure: Getting help
Sources of help and being pro-active
• Research and teaching mentors in the department
• Seriously consider getting feedback from someone outside your
department but in your area
• Women faculty: You have an open invitation to ask senior women faculty
to look at your “package.”
• I would be happy to review anyone’s material.
• If you perceive that your dept. mentor is not very helpful, discuss this
with your Director and ask for their help or a new mentor.
• At any stage in your pre-tenure career, remember that the advancement
of young faculty is arguably your Chair/Director’s premier concern. Talk
to him or her.
• Get advice annually; don’t wait till the last minute.
• Don’t be passive in this process: Understand the requirements and
ensure that the department is working through in a timely and considered
manner