Tenure Trek

The University of Maine system has a benevolent process by which one is awarded tenure, I think, and I am benefiting from its very clear layout. Recently, I had my second-year review; but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Tenure here is normally awarded after six years of service, or however fewer years the administration agrees to if you come with some experience on the tenure track elsewhere, as I did. But my two years on Guam did not count toward tenure here, though this isn't necessarily a blanket rule; instead, cases are decided on an individual basis. As we decided for me, I would contractually go up for tenure after the full six years instead of being awarded a year and contractually go up in five years. But on my track, I still have the the option of going up for tenure in five years if I chose with no penalty. The benefit here is that if I go up in five years on the six-year contractual plan and do not get tenure, I still have another year to do whatever I have to do to satisfy the requirements. If I were contractually locked into five years, I would have to get tenure in five years or leave the University. Basically, the system works to my advantage because I get two shots at tenure, on the assumption that I might need them. I hope I don't!

I am evaluated every year for my first six years, then at tenure, and then every four years thereafter for post-tenure review. This seems reasonable to me. If a faculty member has severe problems -- lousy teaching, bad scholarship, general unpleasantness -- they are likely to manifest themselves early on. Thus an annual review early on seems the smartest way to nip them in the bud. The fact that reviews don't come at the end of the year but rather in the first term of the year also makes sense. If the review comes at the end, it's too late to salvage the year that just passed. Better to find problems and address them immediately, and that's what the review system is designed to do.

My school, the University of Maine at Augusta, requires teaching first, then research and service for tenure. Accordingly I prepared my documentation for this. The U Maine system asks that you create a single document which has a standard form that you simply keep adding to year after year as you accumulate glorious accomplishments. (The way a curriculum vita develops is not unlike the way a coral reef accretes, little bit by little bit.) it's far easier than maintaining your own files and files of documentation of all you did, and you know exactly what you need to fill in. The form is in fact provided for you by the personnel office in Bangor, and all faculty follow it. You submit that to your peers in your department and then you have a meeting with them where your Fate is Decided. For the next year at least.

I like the idea of being evaluated primarily by my peers in humanities rather than by administrators, as I have been evaluated elsewhere. My peers are, after all, the people closest to my teaching and my geniality on committees. And if the things that I've suggested thus far suggest that a certain level of the evaluation is arbitrary, well, I suppose it is. One is judged on one's collegiality as well as one's accomplishments, like it or not. I don't have a big problem with this. If I get tenure, the department may be looking at having me hang around for the next 25 years. Faculty members having positions for 40 years is not unheard of. All this means that you have better get along with the other people who are also around for 25 years. This is especially true in a small school like mine. No matter what I do, I am going to run into my colleagues on various committees for decades to come. Thankfully, our meeting was most congenial, as I expected; I was evaluated along with my new French professor colleague Chelsea. The best thing about the meeting was, of course, the food.

When I interviewed for a position at UMA, my search committee asked me in the more informal part of the interview, "Can you cook?" This seemed to me to be a very reasonable question in that we can all cook, and we expect to eat during meetings. The unofficlal policy is that if you're being reviewed, you bring the goodies, so Chelsea and I planned a breakfast menu for our 9:00 am meeting. The fact that we sat in the office we share and planned a menu says it all, doesn't it? I made two cranberry raisin tarts and Chelsea made a dish called an "egg puff," which is a puffy dish with eggs and cheese in it. I am unhappy about the fact that our philosophy professor Greg Fahy makes better piecrust than I do. When Greg went up for tenure last year, he made homemade blueberry pie, and his piecrust puts mine to shame, dammit. It sounds as if I ought to ask him all his secrets for keeping his kitchen floors so sparkling clean and his furniture so shiny and dust-free too, doesn't it?

Despite all this, I think that UMA has come up with a way to make the tenure process clear and really enjoyable. When I spoke of my work for the last year, I didn't feel as if I were being evaluated and scrutinized, though I was, of course. As my coordinator Lisa puts it, "We have a conversation." I appreciate the fact that I work with such colleagues who really see all of us as a team in organizing good courses and programs for our students. And they all can cook besides.

The conversation itself was great fun. My colleagues asked me about the new courses that I'm teaching, the community service that I'm working on in connecting UMA more to the public libraries in the area; to Just Guys, the local AIDS prevention organization; and to my parish, where I'll teach some classes on spiritual writers, and by extension (I hope) to the Diocese of Maine. They seemed very impressed with my committee work, as they ought to be, if I say so myself. I didn't realize how much I had done until it was all on paper looking at me. I probably overdid it my first year, but I would argue that nothing will get you into a new school system as efficiently as committee work.

So, I have been renewed for my third year, with very nice and complimentary letters in tow from my colleagues and my dean, all on their way to the provost and President. Here's hoping that my third year, 2008 to 2009, goes as well. It ought to, as I have a couple new cookbooks.

Comments

[Lee Kottner]

When you get the pie crust thing down, clue me in, will you?

[Rob Kellerman]

I've asked Greg how he does it, and it seems to be the same process as mine. So it's a mystery to me why mine is so crumbly and won't roll out well. But it still tastes good, so that's something.

[marcy]

Damn! I got hired in the wrong places! I can make pie crust with the best of 'em . . . (and in Maine I might possibly have been able to make full professor on the strength of my pasta salad . . . )

Cookbooks? You've finished up As I Lay Frying, then?