Ed Aboufadel's Tenure Track Diary -- Part III

By Edward Aboufadel

October 27, 1997: Time-wise, this has been one of the toughest semesters in my career. I had intended to write entries for this diary once every week or so, but I have been lucky to find time every three weeks or so. I suppose you could say that I?m trying to impress my colleagues enough to give me a strong recommendation next semester for tenure and promotion, but the fact is that I have a hard time saying, "No," and I have too much that I want to accomplish. Last week, for instance, I met with Steve Schlicker twice to work on a minicourse we are giving at ICTCM next month on wavelets, met with Pam Wells twice as we continue to organize the 1998 Math-in-Action conference, met with Amanda Peterson to continue discussing our SURP proposal for next summer, attended three meetings (search committee, instructional resource committee, and a full department meeting), while continuing to prepare for and meet my eleven hours of classes, and five office hours. Who wants to tell me that I work twelve hours a week?

October 31, 1997: What a nutty week as the electricity and heat was out at my house for three days after a weird October snow and ice storm. For Halloween, today, I decided to show some spirit and wear a costume to work. I dressed up as a devil. I was cute. However, there were two people in the department who didn?t appreciate the costume. Maybe next year, I?ll go as Waldo again.

After six years, the truth is finally revealed.

November 13, 1997: There was a spirited debate today, featuring yours truly, at a Math B subgroup meeting concerning how we staff some of our courses. Most people at the meeting got the impression that a certain colleague of mine was suggesting that I wasn?t qualified to teach a certain course. This colleague never said that, but it was easy to get the impression, anyway. I even asked this person point-blank if he thought I wasn?t qualified. He didn?t answer.

I?m writing this in my diary because I am wondering just what has been going on recently, as I find myself having these difficult conversations with a few other members of the department about something or other. I don?t believe these disagreements are going to affect my tenure decision next semester, but isn?t this a good time to be paranoid? Speaking of which, I wonder when my third classroom visit will occur?

November 18, 1997: Today is the first time this semester where I feel like I am in striking distance of being "caught up" with my work. I guess I can see the end in sight. I?m looking forward to the holiday break, so that I can get on top of my different projects.

I also received word about the AMS election. I was a candidate this year for member-at-large of the AMS Council, but I was not elected. Of the eleven candidates, I came in ninth, with 1237 votes. The top candidate received 1983 votes. It appears that about 3100 people voted in the election.

I?m not sure how to interpret the results. There are a number of reasons I can think of as to why I wasn?t elected: I?m too young; I don?t have the history of research that rank-and-file AMS members want in their leaders; not enough people know where GVSU is; I didn?t address the research mission of the AMS in my candidate statement; some people didn?t like my earlier diaries. Who knows? One of my colleagues told me today, "At least your statement was coherent."

The third classroom visit by the Personnel committee is this Friday.

November 24, 1997: After several meetings and suggestions, the department has decided to change the way we do the salary process, also known as "The Big Headache." We are no longer going to be writing comments to the Chair. The Chair is now going to be making the recommendations himself, with input from others, and he will be responsible for the results. This means no more anonymous comments in April.

November 25, 1997: One of my projects last summer was to write some lecture notes about wavelets. I became interested in wavelets in 1992, and tried to incorporate them into a numerical analysis course that I taught in Connecticut, and a linear algebra course that I taught here. My plan over the summer was to write up some notes, so that the next time I tried this out, I wouldn?t have to start from scratch. One of my colleagues, Steven Schlicker, bought into my idea, and taught wavelets in one of his linear algebra courses, and we decided to work together on the notes. Soon, we saw that we actually had a book. The tentative title was Wavelets for Undergraduates.

Last summer, we sent what we wrote to the MAA, to see if they were interested in the project. I talked to Don Albers on the phone last July, and he was enthusiastic about what we had sent to him. However, it turns out that the committee that he works with was less impressed. I received word today that the MAA isn?t interested at this time in pursuing publishing the book. They are not sure that there would be a market for this book. Well, I think they are wrong, and we will find another publisher. Phil Pratt, the department Chair, gave us some advice today as to what to do next.

Looking back over the past few months, I?ve received a number of rejections of a sort. Not much different than my first year or two as a professor, but with some victories under my belt from the past five years, I don?t feel as bad about the defeats. At least now I know that if I have good ideas, and I keep trying, then I will succeed. I hope the Personnel Committee sees it that way.

December 1, 1997: Two formal steps in the personnel process occurred this week. First, I received formal notification from the Dean that I "must be evaluated for Tenure during the Winter 1998 semester." Gosh, I had no idea. Second, the head of the Department Personnel Committee asked me to read and sign the Classroom Visitation Report that was written by that committee. The report was uniformly positive, so I signed. If I had objected to something in that report, then I could have responded in writing to the committee.

December 19, 1997: My colleague Paul Fishback called me at home today to tell me that our grant proposal to set up a summer program for undergraduate research was not funded. This is the third or fourth grant proposal to the NSF that I have been a part of ? none of which have been funded.

December 23, 1997: Finally, the Fall semester is over, grading is done, and I have some time to reflect. This was a tough semester for a number of reasons, from my health (from broken ribs to weird rashes), to various rejections I?ve received at the professional level, along with some challenges in the classroom and in working with colleagues. I have to admit the whole experience has left me a bit rattled, bringing back feelings that I had during my first year as a professor. (See "New Job Diary".) Let me explain.

When I started being a professor, I needed to decide what it meant for me to be successful in research and other scholarly activities. The key words here are "for me", because there are several places to look to find definitions of success in this area. The one with which we are most familiar we internalize in graduate school: do research, win grants, prove a lot of theorems, and publish, publish, publish. Although I didn?t want to accept it, I already knew in graduate school that this was not what I was born to do.

When I completed graduate school, I was hired by a school in Connecticut where you teach twelve credit hours a semester, among other things. I like teaching ? maybe that is what I was born to do ? but I struggled that first year trying to figure out how to also be a successful researcher at the same time, where "successful" means "published." It was difficult and I was not feeling very accomplished.

Eventually I feel that I found my way. In the past years, I have written a number of articles about teaching ? articles that have been published! I also got two papers published based on my dissertation work, led an undergraduate research project, organized two conferences, and a paper of mine of original research appeared last year in the Monthly (although I wouldn?t call it fancy ? it had to do with baseball.) Now, this recitation of my vita isn?t going to get me hired by Harvard, but I have enjoyed my work so far, it has made me a better teacher, it has given me a little attention, and it is the type of accomplishment appreciated by where I used to work and where I am now. In fact, the president of GVSU, Arend Lubbers, who wanders over to our department occasionally to chat with faculty, reminded me last week that teaching is the first priority here. It is foolish for us to try to compete with the University of Michigan when it comes to the amount of research that is accomplished. Some research is important, but let?s not get obsessed with it.

This semester, and thinking about tenure and promotion, has made me think about all this stuff again, and perhaps has made me a bit paranoid. Can two people who have not done research in wavelets publish a book about wavelets? Can faculty who are not publishing two or three papers a year win an NSF grant? Can a faculty member at GVSU be elected to an office in the AMS or AAAS? Since I haven?t done research in numerical analysis, am I qualified to teach it? (OK, the answer to that one is "yes", and I taught it twice as a graduate student at Rutgers, but the question came up this semester.) In the area of research and scholarly activity, have I established standards for myself that aren?t compatible with what is important to our profession?

Or am I just being too hard on myself right now? Perhaps it is the case that my time as an Assistant Professor was when I demonstrated my potential, and that my time as an Associate Professor will be when I hit the home runs. Hmmm.

An image from the ceremony establishing a chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon at GVSU. Jacqueline Burm, an outstanding student of mathematics, prepares to sign the charter, while Edward Aboufadel looks on. Paul Fishback (of GVSU) is in charge at the computer, and Robert S. Smith of Miami University (Ohio) prepares to greet the next charter member.

to be continued ...

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Tenure-Track Diary

Ed Aboufadel's Diaries -- main page
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

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.