Tenure-Track Diary
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January 1, 1997: It has been more than five years since an exchange of e-mails with Keith Devlin (then editor of FOCUS) led to the writing of my Job Search Diary, and now, as 1997 begins, decisions on tenure and promotion are in sight. Within sixteen months, I will either be granted a level of job security that is the envy of the world, or else, on May 1, 1999, I will take down my professor shingle and seek my fortune trading stock options in Chicago. I plan, in this new diary, to document the process and my impressions of the process, to describe some of the issues I face as an assistant professor, and to contemplate what life as an associate professor will be (may be?) like.
Currently, I am in the middle of my second year at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), in Allendale, Michigan. (We are in the western part of the state, near Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan.) In 1995 I left my position at Southern Connecticut State University to accept a tenure-track position at GVSU. Needless to say, GVSU agreed to count my three years in Connecticut towards tenure here. Since the tenure decision is normally made in the latter part of one's sixth year, that means I'll know the outcome by April 1998.
Unlike in my original job search, I'm not worried about that outcome. I feel that I have performed at a level appropriate for tenure and promotion to associate professor. However, I will be watching closely during this coming semester as two tenured assistant professors apply for promotion. Promotions have not been automatic around here, even when someone receives tenure.
January 16, 1997: The weather here has been terrible for more than a week, and today the university was closed at noon because of a blizzard. If Grand Valley is closed, then you know that the weather is bad.
Today is also a due date in the personnel process for four faculty members in my department. Two of them, tenure-track, are seeking a contract renewal, while two who are tenured are seeking promotion. Two weeks ago, each candidate submitted a supporting portfolio, and by today, other members of the department were to have completed forms expressing an opinion for or against the renewals and promotions, one for each candidate. After looking at the portfolios, I completed my forms.
On the forms, we are to address five evaluation issues: teaching effectiveness, professional achievement, department and university service, community service, and future evaluation issues. I find that as you go down this list, the issues become easier to address. To contemplate teaching effectiveness, we are presented with a classroom visit report from the Department Personnel Committee (DPC), student evaluations, tests and other materials presented by the candidate in the portfolio, and maybe a teaching statement in the portfolio, along with our own interactions with the candidate. I've read somewhere that teaching is very much a private matter, and I think it is true -- we don't visit each other's classrooms much.
Professional achievement is a broad category to encompass all sorts of scholarly activity. For the two candidates applying for promotion, their recent professional achievement was earning their doctorates. (More on that later.) The department has created a long list of items that fit this area, including giving talks, providing opportunities for students to conduct research, active interaction with other schools, proposing a new course, and preparing a grant proposal. However, there isn't a procedure of counting publications (or citations! or grants!), the things that are the focus of promotion criteria at research institutions.
There are two separate service categories. The first is pretty straightforward, with items like committee work. The second, community service, is much more vague. Some faculty members interpret this as service in the community where you live, and list activities such as volunteering at a museum or for a church. Other people define community service as reflecting on one's profession, which means volunteering for the MAA or AMS, or tutoring mathematics at a high school. In sixteen months, I haven't heard of any fights about this category, as it doesn't seem to be a big issue.
"Future evaluation issues" allows the department to say, "Although we want to keep you here for now, some changes will have to occur before your next personnel decision." This section is rarely used.
Finally, the form asks you to make a recommendation. For contract renewal, the three choices are "renew for two years", "renew for one year", or "don't renew". For promotion, there are only two choices.
Once the DPC receives all of our comments and recommendations, they somehow integrate these ideas into one document per candidate. The committee looks for similar comments from different people to put into the master document, and tabulates the recommendations. At a later date, we will meet as a department to consider that report.
January 31, 1997: GVSU was established in the early 1960's to serve the citizens of western Michigan. It has had an interesting, if short, history, as it was first established as a public liberal arts college (and some would say it was a bit radical here, particularly for conservative western Michigan), and evolved into the "comprehensive institution" that it is today. GVSU is not a "research institution", although cutting-edge research is done here. Our first mission is to do a good job at teaching undergraduates.
I'm told that the state government almost shut down GVSU (then GVSC) in the early 80's, during the recession that severely affected the auto industry. Since then, the number of students and faculty here have doubled, buildings have sprouted like weeds, and, the administration tells us, the admissions office is becoming more and more selective. We faculty debate this last point with each other, but it is clear that the growth of the university is impressive, and a little frightening, as people discover that things are changing before their eyes. (More on that later.)
In the Mathematics & Statistics Department, most of our math majors are preparing to be teachers at the elementary or secondary level, while a few go on to graduate school. (For example, there is a student here, David Szurley, who has been working with me on an undergraduate research project and has applied to several graduate programs in applied mathematics.) The statistics majors move on to various careers, or graduate school.
We are department of many missions, and that is reflected in the way we are currently structured. There are four subgroups which focus on different parts of our curriculum: Statistics, Math. Ed., Math A (for courses before Calculus), and Math B (for Calculus and beyond). The subgroup structure has its pros and cons, but it does allow us to take care of basic business (scheduling courses, choosing textbooks) in a relatively efficient manner.
The evaluation process (including contract renewal, tenure, and promotion) takes place in this setting. As a consequence, teaching effectiveness is the most important criterion. If you are awful in the classroom, an impressive publication list isn't going to get you very far here. Service is also very important, and that can include advising, organizing conferences and competitions, and committee work (and there's lots of committee work).
Interestingly, as the school changes, some wonder if the definition of professional achievement is changing with it.
February 7, 1997: This week we had two department meetings to consider the four reports written by the DPC. At the end of each report was a statement to the effect that the department recommends that the candidate either be promoted or have his or her contract renewed, depending on the person.
These meetings are always stressful for a number of reasons. First of all, as you read the reports from the DPC, you realize that sometimes there is a wide range of opinion in the department about a candidate, but you don't know, a priori, who is coming in with which opinion. Along those lines, it is sometimes unclear, from reading the report, why some part of the department is against, say, a candidate's promotion. The DPC only includes a specific idea in the document if it is expressed by two or more people. If there is a disagreement about a candidate, it usually takes twenty minutes for the heart of the matter to become clear.
Secondly, the discussion of a report follows a version of Robert's Rules of Order, meaning that we start with a motion, namely to approve the report as written by the DPC. Consequently, a lot of discussion focuses more on whether the report reads well rather than whether the candidate should be retained/tenured/promoted. This year, there has been a growing feeling that we should not get caught up in "wordsmithing" during these meetings, although there is an on-going concern that the amendments to the report that are proposed have a way of watering down the content of the document. (Interestingly, this year, two amendments like that were voted down.)
What is most stressful, though, is that we are evaluating our colleagues. Do they teach well? Are their professional activities significant? Do they contribute enough to the department? There is also an implicit question: do we like having this person as a colleague? As we sit in this meeting asking hard questions about someone's work, I find myself inevitably asking the same questions of myself. Am I living up to the standards that the department wants? The standards that I want for my colleagues? Isn't it in my best interests not to be demanding, since I, in turn, will be up for tenure and promotion next year? The mind whirls.
The department approved all four reports, two of them with amendments. All the reports recommended that the candidate receive the promotion or the contract renewal. The votes were, for the most part, unanimous -- one of the reports passed without discussion -- although there were people that were against the recommendations. This is understandable, though, since now, as individuals, we have to fill out another form for each candidate for the Division Personnel Committee, outlining our views. Many of us will simply write, "I concur with the department report," but some will not. Later, this divisional committee will make a recommendation to the Dean.
March 2, 1997: This university has changed a lot over the past fifteen years, I'm told. It was a smaller place, with fewer students and faculty. Also, they used to hire people with masters' degrees (and not doctorates), sometimes into tenure-track positions. Recently, all hires have had Ph.D.'s, and a doctorate has become a necessary condition for being promoted to associate professor. This has motivated members of this department who do not have doctorates to earn them. We recognize work towards earning a doctorate as professional activity.
The growth of the university has made many people anxious about where we are going from here. GVSU has always been committed to quality undergraduate education, and the adminstration here as been pretty blunt that we will not try to compete as a research institution with schools like Michigan State. At the same time, new research centers are being established here, some separate from the core of the school, but a part of GVSU nonetheless. At the same time, the number of young faculty fresh out of graduate school is growing, and they arrive with their own ideas about the role of a professor here. (In general, it seems to be "Do everything!" and I am quite guilty of this.)
March 13, 1997: This month we are going through another part of the evaluation process known as the salary process or "The Big Headache". At many schools, the faculty is in a union, and raises are determined through collective bargaining. That is not the case at GVSU. Rather, we have a merit-based system for raises.
At the beginning of March of each year, every permanent faculty member has to write an activity report which describes, in some detail, what we accomplished since the previous May in the areas of teaching, professional development, department and university service, and community service. (As you can probably tell, we hear this litany of the four areas continuously until we can recite it in our sleep.) This year, in my department, we have agreed to a format for this report where the first page is a summary, followed by one or more pages of elaboration. These reports were due to the Department Chair this past Monday.
Between Monday and today, copies of all the reports have been made and distributed to all of the permanent faculty members of the department. Also this week, a survey of the salaries of everyone in the department, going back for three years, along with the percentage raise each year (not factoring in automatic raises due to promotion), has been made available to the department. (In other words, you have to ask for it.) We now have nine days to evaluate each other, making recommendations for the raises of our colleagues, basically by labeling a colleagues' work "exceptional", "average", or "below average", with written justification for the grade.
We don't have to evaluate everyone in the department, and thank goodness, since this department is growing and growing. We have agreed that the first priority is to make recommendations for those we feel are exceptional or below average. I plan on writing nine or ten recommendations in all, most of which will be to single out someone that I felt did outstanding work this academic year.
Our Department Chair receives all of these recommendations by a week from Friday, and then, somehow, over the weekend, turns these collective opinions into tentative percentage raises for each faculty member (except for himself). After that, the Department Chair meets with the Department Council (made up of the head of each of the four subgroups) to discuss these numbers. With the approval of Council, the Chair then meets with the Dean to hammer out the final numbers. We then learn in June what our new salary is.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that some time in April, I will receive from the Chair a copy of all of the recommendations that were written about me this month, anonymously, of course. That is a fun week in the department.
April 5, 1997: Grand Valley adopted the Harvard Calculus texts a few years ago, and I have taught out of those books for almost two years now. This semester we have reached a consensus that it is time for a change. Different people here have different reasons for wanting a new book -- some are not happy with the content, others do not like the approach that the book takes. For myself, I like the way the concepts of calculus are on equal footing with the calculations, but students do need to learn how to calculate limits (how else do you effectively compute improper integrals in Calculus II?).
The texts also don't seem quite right for our students. I am coming to believe that the Harvard texts are a good fit for a school like, I imagine, Harvard, where most of the students live on campus and are first, and foremost, college students. This type of student has the time to invest to work extensively outside of class in groups on non-routine problems. Many of my students work twenty to forty hours a week and live off-campus, so they need a book that they can study while alone. Although I don't want to get away from an understanding of the concepts, frankly, texts with more "skill and drill" problems (or at least with answers to some of the exercises) fit our students better. A representative from a book publisher says my attitude is "neo-reformist."
Speaking of those salesmen, there are two who, upon hearing of our change of heart towards the Harvard texts, have been frantically scurrying about our department in recent weeks. One gentleman, from Prentice-Hall, smells an opportunity here and is talking up the strengths of a number of calculus texts, including one that will have an active web site where students can go for tutoring. The other gentleman is the rep from Wiley (the publisher of the Harvard text), and you can feel how anxious he is about our changing books. In the past few weeks, he has given me the sales pitch twice about the new version of the Harvard texts (We have limits! We have the mean value theorem!), has sent me a desk copy of the new multivariable book (which looks like an improvement on the "preliminary edition"), and has sent me software on CD-ROM that they will bundle with the Harvard book "for only an extra $5!" How can I tell this guy that the only way we will be using his textbook come August is if we can't make up our minds this April?
April 22, 1997: I am on the committee to choose a new calculus text, and as the semester has wound down (it is Finals Week here), we have met twice and will meet again tomorrow. Imagine a search committee using the following procedure to hire a new colleague: at the first meeting, three out of the hundreds of candidates who applied are chosen as finalists because someone at the table either "heard he was good" or "has taken a good look at her application folder". Then the committee takes a close look at one of the finalists, devotes half a meeting to discussing the merits of that candidate, decides to reject that applicant, and then moves on to the two that are left, one of which has an incomplete application. That is basically what we have done so far in trying to choose a new calculus text. We started with the new Osterbee/Zorn book, the new "reformed" Stewart book, and the second edition of the Harvard text, which we actually don't have yet -- just some flyers about it. We've decided that we are not going to adopt the Osterbee/Zorn book. Tomorrow we will talk more about Stewart.
No sooner did we make our decision about Osterbee/Zorn than the salesman for that book showed up at my door and proceeded to become one of the few textbook salesmen to really irritate me. I told him right off the bat, "I'm sorry to say this, but I don't believe we are going to adopt your book." He looked at me like I was insane or an idiot or something, but then he asked me what I didn't like about his book. I told him, but he didn't take any notes. Next, he presented me with some flyers, one called "Seven Reasons to choose Osterbee/Zorn over Stewart", and a second, a comparative review of Osterbee/Zorn versus the Harvard text, written by a faculty member at Kennesaw State University. The reviewer was clear that she preferred the Osterbee/Zorn book.
After this typical faculty/salesman dance, I asked him if he has any other calculus books, and this is where I became annoyed. "Other books?" he asked, bringing his hand up to his chin. "But, " he said, as he looked at me with an air of patronization, "I thought you were interested in a reformed book." "Yes," I thought to myself, "I will only look at books that have been certified reformed, just like some people will only buy food that comes in green boxes." I told him that we are not married to calculus reform, but he didn't even mention anything else. I then told him that I had grading to do.
So, tomorrow we discuss the Stewart book. One issue I know we'll discuss tomorrow is that Stewart himself is just starting to write the multivariable book, and some of us are uncomfortable about adopting the book for that reason. On the other hand, we are still waiting for a promised xerox copy of the new Harvard book. I suggested last week that we be open to looking at the rest of the "applicants."
April 27, 1997: At our meeting a few days ago, we discussed several of Stewart's books, from the new one mentioned above to the older, hardcover texts that one faculty member describes as "more complete." The discussion was a bit tense, it seems, as many of us danced around the question of just what is the purpose of the textbook in a calculus course. It is clear that more than one person would like to return to the calculus encyclopedias of old. This is not necessarily a bad thing -- it struck a chord with me when one person reported how some of his students who had some calculus in high school are really happy that they kept their high school book "to use as a reference". As a professor, I find myself at least once a month referring to my old copy of Edwards & Penney, the book that I had as an undergraduate at Michigan State.
To help me get my thoughts straight, yesterday I dug out my copy of "Toward A Lean and Lively Calculus", the collection of papers from the 1986 Tulane conference that was a catalyst for Calculus reform. A number of key criticisms of the way Calculus was being taught in 1986 can be found in this publication. One was that too many faculty were teaching calculus as a cookbook course, with lots of methods and skills, but no concepts. Another was that a premature use of formalism was counter-productive, pedagogically. A third was that the calculus textbooks of the 1980's were not helpful to students -- they had developed into encyclopedias. Lynn Arthur Steen asked: "Would the health of calculus be improved if it were put on a diet?" The Calculus reformers set out to promulgate new textbooks, syllabi, and teaching methods that would "cure" these ills.
Today, reform textbooks are criticized for lacking rigor and for being incomplete, which, ironically, is exactly what the Tulane conferees had in mind. Today's debates though, including the debates in our textbook committee here, seem based on the premise that the textbook is the course, so that what students learn is equivalent to what is in the textbook. But choice of teaching style and evaluation method is perhaps more critical. For example, here at GVSU, we have scheduled our calculus courses (and a few others) to meet one day a week in a computer lab. A few of my colleagues have taken the initiative, once the semester begins, to reschedule their class so as to meet in a computer lab more often, or less often, depending on the person. That choice has more impact, I believe, than the textbook that is used.
Not that the textbook has no effect on the course. I applaud the Harvard book for getting me to realize that the derivative could be introduced using a more data-driven applied approach, and in getting me to introduce differential equations earlier. I might not agree with their order of topics, but at least I am now exposed to an alternative way of thinking about teaching Calculus I. No matter what textbook we adopt, I can see myself using some of the ideas from the Harvard books in my courses.
In practice, departments adopt textbooks, not teaching strategies. Textbooks definitely affect the syllabus, but a big text can be used with a "lean and lively" course outline. Taking this argument to extremes, I suppose one could use Schaum Outline Series workbooks as textbooks.
May 9, 1997: This week the Calculus Textbook Committee met and decided, without any fireworks, to adopt Stewart's Concepts and Contexts book. I had a thought this week about how "traditional" books tend to be hard-cover while "reform" books tend to be soft-covered.
From here, we need to decide which chapters will go with Calculus I, and which with Calculus II.
I have started to teach a summer class this week, and I also got myself organized as far as professional development projects for this summer. Summer is the time to get research and writing done. I have four major projects planned (including writing some lecture notes about wavelets), and about ten minor ones. That's a bit ambitious, and I know I won't accomplish everything, but I'll try. Anything I can accomplish this summer will make my candidacy for tenure and promotion even stronger.
to be continued ...
Edward Aboufadel teaches at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. This is the fourth in a series of diaries relating to his professional experience. His first diary dealt with his job search. The second explored his experiences in his new job. The third focused on his work as part of a search committee. All three were first published in FOCUS, the print newsletter of the Association, and are now available online.
MAA Online is edited by Fernando Q. Gouvêa (fqgouvea@colby.edu). Last modified: Wed Mar 24 11:58:43 -0500 1999
