As a newly tenured faculty member, I'm reflecting on what helped me the most in crossing this difficult bridge. Here's my top five.
1. Research: Do one big thing at a time. It's easy to feel like you need to achieve a million things: as many articles as possible, a book, book reviews, media interviews, conferences, edited volumes, research networks in your area. That can be a formula for actually accomplishing nothing. So pick one thing at a time to focus on. I struggled a lot with this, but at a key moment I put an article to the side and just focused on my book. So I suggest picking the most important thing to start with and going after that. If you're interest in writing a book, but struggling to get started, then write one article that can become a book chapter, and then write the book. If you're ready to go straight to the book, go for it. If you're really an article writer, write one at a time.
A useful resource for me in the writing process has been Dropbox. I keep all of my documents on Dropbox so that I can access my research documents easily from any location. I don't keep any documents on my office machine or my home machine and I've never regretted that. It also allows me to easily share folders with mentors, research assistants, and co-authors. It also lets me access my documents from my iPhone or from other computers.
2. Teaching: Use simple easy tricks to make teaching fun, interactive, and easy. If you try to script every moment of every class you're going to exhaust yourself and you're not going to achieve a lot of research. Giving your students a lot of voice in the classroom makes for both better learning and easier teaching. Sometimes I come into the classroom, circle the students up, and ask them to offer one comment, question or critique from the week's readings. Students are encouraged to respond to each other and if a discussion develops I let it go. If a comment garners no response, I move to the next student. Sometimes I ask students to work in pairs or small groups to make a visual map of the week's topics, showing the relationship between key ideas. They then share these with the class and a discussion develops.
My favorite teaching resource is Prezi. With Prezi, I can use images, tables, key quotes, and YouTube videos to spark discussion. Assembling a few of these for each class provides plenty of material to foster discussion and allows the class to interpret information together.
3. Service: Focus on service within the discipline early on, and within the university later. Focusing early in your discipline allows you to build contacts and a reputation in your field. This will bring research and publication opportunities and shows that you have a voice in your field. Focusing later on the university level gives you the opportunity to build important networks across disciplines which will demonstrate that you're invested in your school. These folks, or their colleagues, are likely to serve on key committees in your tenure process and can provide helpful letters of support for your tenure case. At both levels, try to make logical connections between the service opportunities you choose and the research that you perform. You will likely have service in your department throughout your tenure-track years. It's important to show up at all meetings and follow through on the work you take on, but it's also important to protect yourself from too much cumbersome service.
I like to use the Google Documents program to develop my service work as a collaboration with my committee members. It allows you to gather expertise together so that you're not consumed by service projects all by yourself. Let people weigh in and move your work forward easily.
4. Organization: Stay light on your feet. Don't have a cluttered office, inbox, or computer. Use the library to get your books; use JSTOR to get pdfs of articles. Avoid having a disorganized bookshelf and a big set of files that just weigh you down and slow you down.
I like to make use of the best features on Gmail to manage my emails and ensure that I'm responding to important communications without getting bogged down by a cluttered inbox. Use the priority inbox lab to push important emails to the top. Create useful labels, or folders, to make it easy to find important emails. Create filters to get unimportant emails out of your inbox. Archive your emails so that your inbox stays clear.
5. Department politics: Keep your head down, but find your voice. You don't have to weigh in on every issue, but you should weigh in on the issues that matter to you. Listen to your colleagues to understand how and why they arrived at their positions on important departmental issues. Respect the time that they have put into the field, department, and university. You don't want to arrive at tenure time without having ever spoken up about anything, Find the issues that matter to you, where you have the most expertise, and take a stand. Colleagues who disagree with you will still respect you for your expertise.
The best resource is here is a mentor, and you don't have to have just one. You can have one person mentor your writing, one person mentor your teaching, and another person mentor you on the tenure-track process. Mentors can come from the department, from other departments, and from other colleges and universities. Mentorship is one of the most powerful ways to succeed in your field.
1. Research: Do one big thing at a time. It's easy to feel like you need to achieve a million things: as many articles as possible, a book, book reviews, media interviews, conferences, edited volumes, research networks in your area. That can be a formula for actually accomplishing nothing. So pick one thing at a time to focus on. I struggled a lot with this, but at a key moment I put an article to the side and just focused on my book. So I suggest picking the most important thing to start with and going after that. If you're interest in writing a book, but struggling to get started, then write one article that can become a book chapter, and then write the book. If you're ready to go straight to the book, go for it. If you're really an article writer, write one at a time.
A useful resource for me in the writing process has been Dropbox. I keep all of my documents on Dropbox so that I can access my research documents easily from any location. I don't keep any documents on my office machine or my home machine and I've never regretted that. It also allows me to easily share folders with mentors, research assistants, and co-authors. It also lets me access my documents from my iPhone or from other computers.
2. Teaching: Use simple easy tricks to make teaching fun, interactive, and easy. If you try to script every moment of every class you're going to exhaust yourself and you're not going to achieve a lot of research. Giving your students a lot of voice in the classroom makes for both better learning and easier teaching. Sometimes I come into the classroom, circle the students up, and ask them to offer one comment, question or critique from the week's readings. Students are encouraged to respond to each other and if a discussion develops I let it go. If a comment garners no response, I move to the next student. Sometimes I ask students to work in pairs or small groups to make a visual map of the week's topics, showing the relationship between key ideas. They then share these with the class and a discussion develops.
My favorite teaching resource is Prezi. With Prezi, I can use images, tables, key quotes, and YouTube videos to spark discussion. Assembling a few of these for each class provides plenty of material to foster discussion and allows the class to interpret information together.
3. Service: Focus on service within the discipline early on, and within the university later. Focusing early in your discipline allows you to build contacts and a reputation in your field. This will bring research and publication opportunities and shows that you have a voice in your field. Focusing later on the university level gives you the opportunity to build important networks across disciplines which will demonstrate that you're invested in your school. These folks, or their colleagues, are likely to serve on key committees in your tenure process and can provide helpful letters of support for your tenure case. At both levels, try to make logical connections between the service opportunities you choose and the research that you perform. You will likely have service in your department throughout your tenure-track years. It's important to show up at all meetings and follow through on the work you take on, but it's also important to protect yourself from too much cumbersome service.
I like to use the Google Documents program to develop my service work as a collaboration with my committee members. It allows you to gather expertise together so that you're not consumed by service projects all by yourself. Let people weigh in and move your work forward easily.
4. Organization: Stay light on your feet. Don't have a cluttered office, inbox, or computer. Use the library to get your books; use JSTOR to get pdfs of articles. Avoid having a disorganized bookshelf and a big set of files that just weigh you down and slow you down.
I like to make use of the best features on Gmail to manage my emails and ensure that I'm responding to important communications without getting bogged down by a cluttered inbox. Use the priority inbox lab to push important emails to the top. Create useful labels, or folders, to make it easy to find important emails. Create filters to get unimportant emails out of your inbox. Archive your emails so that your inbox stays clear.
5. Department politics: Keep your head down, but find your voice. You don't have to weigh in on every issue, but you should weigh in on the issues that matter to you. Listen to your colleagues to understand how and why they arrived at their positions on important departmental issues. Respect the time that they have put into the field, department, and university. You don't want to arrive at tenure time without having ever spoken up about anything, Find the issues that matter to you, where you have the most expertise, and take a stand. Colleagues who disagree with you will still respect you for your expertise.
The best resource is here is a mentor, and you don't have to have just one. You can have one person mentor your writing, one person mentor your teaching, and another person mentor you on the tenure-track process. Mentors can come from the department, from other departments, and from other colleges and universities. Mentorship is one of the most powerful ways to succeed in your field.
Thanks for sharing! Your top five are really helpful!- Lu
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