Teachers work toward tenure
Assistant professors balance research, service to obtain goal

By Jillanne Johnson
Staff Reporter

Students aren’t the only people on campus who must focus on classes, research, committee meetings and workshops to build a résumé that will earn them top jobs.

Assistant professors spend their first years on campus learning to balance the demands of their appointment in order to fill a résumé that will gain them tenure and promotion to associate professor. The process can be tough, said Ed Kolesar, chairman of the Faculty Senate Tenure, Promotions and Grievance committee.

“Tenure says you came in (to the college) and after a certain window of time you have made certain accomplishments,” Kolesar said. “Based on these accomplishments the university is going to award you tenure.”

Kolesar said gaining tenure at TCU means a professor demonstrates outstanding work in teaching, research, creative activity, advising, professional development and service.

Ron Flowers, professor of religion, said demonstrating areas in which an assistant professor has excelled in is different now than it was 25 years ago. When he earned tenure in 1973, he wasn’t informed of his accomplishment.

“I first read that I gained tenure in the faculty bulletin,” he said.

Flowers said the process is different today because candidates must file an annual review of the professors’ progress towards tenure. After their fifth year, they must present a package for review by the department, college and then the provost. This package includes a profile written by the candidate and the résumé of accomplishments in various areas. Other information includes student evaluations of teaching and reviews of the journals in which the candidate has published, he said.

Flowers also said this new system, which the university began moving to gradually beginning in the mid-80s, gives the candidate and their department a chance to celebrate a person who has contentious, quality teaching.

Mike Sacken, chairman of the educational foundation and administration department, agrees with Kolesar and said the responsibilities of gaining tenure puts a lot of pressure on junior faculty.

“Senior faculty should do service and try to encourage junior faculty not to get involved in other domains,” Sacken said.

Sacken said he does not feel that the service aspects of the university are unimportant, however he feels that the demand of developing a teaching and research record are important and a hard part of the early years.

Jean-Luc Montchamp, an assistant professor of chemistry, said balancing teaching and research can be difficult. He said the teaching takes a lot of time away from research, but he said he thinks TCU provides a good medium between large universities that focus on research and small colleges that focus on teaching.

“TCU has the right ingredients to do this (mix),” Montchamp said. “It’s not like having all your eggs in one basket. But the best teachers are also good researchers.”

Assistant professors know they must develop a record of excellence to be recommended by their department for tenure, however there are no specific requirements.

“It’s not like you can say, ‘This one has five publications and this one has six’,” Kolesar said.

Varying publications have varying levels of prestige, he said. Just because one professor has five publications and another has three, the three may be published in more prestigious journals giving the résumé a stronger weight.

The teacher-scholar model TCU uses to model life-time learning for students requires that faculty be in the classroom, developing classes and continuing to find new knowledge that will bolster their students’ learning, while at the same time bolstering their own.

Jillanne Johnson
j.johnson@student.tcu.edu