The Dean's Perspective

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Both the authors of this series have been in higher education for more than 35 years and have been tenured for more years than they care to remember. Over the years, both have engaged in most of the activities described here in order to find ways to continually renew themselves and stay productive. In addition, both have presented sessions on various faculty development topics at regional, national, and international professional meetings and have published in the area. It is from these presentations and publications that the authors have drawn the following observations. (Krishna Dhir, Editor)

Part One of a Two-Part Series

Life After Tenure

by William Carper, University of West Florida; and James A. Pope, University of Toledo

So, now you have tenure--what are you going to do next? While the sports stars on the winning teams in the classic commercials tend to reply, "I'm going to Disneyland," that is not really a career option for an academician.

While you might think that being awarded tenure would make you the happiest person in the world, a big danger for those who have spent many years after their dissertation defenses trying to achieve this major milestone is "post-tenure depression"--a condition not totally dissimilar to post-partum depression for a new mother. The difference is that your "pregnancy" lasted 10 years or so. You went through the pressure and agony of getting your doctoral degree and as soon as you finished the degree and got over your elation at getting your first job, you faced the looming deadline of tenure. Although six years seemed like a long time when you started your new career, the reality of trying to juggle teaching, research, service, a personal life, and dealing with the entire tenure review process made those six years packed with pressure. And as the tenure dossier deadline came closer, that pressure only increased.

But, you finally made it and you have the tenure letter in hand. What are you facing now? Objectively, tenure is a type of double-edged sword that will present you with both positive and negative benefits.

For example, on the positive side, the tight "must" deadlines are gone, and the deadlines you have now will be largely of your own making. You no longer will have to worry about balancing teaching, research, and service every year. You can focus now on what you really enjoy and get involved in longer term projects if you wish.

Most importantly, you have received the validation from your peers that you have what it takes to succeed in your career. Your colleagues and the administrators at your school have reviewed your record and decided that you deserve a lifetime position. You have reason to be satisfied with your achievements.

You also have a range of options not available to most people outside of academia. You have teaching responsibilities for only nine months of the year, and if you decide to teach in the summers, you will be paid extra. You have opportunities for sabbaticals. You can engage in research projects involving a wide range of organizations outside the university. Professional organizations will provide you with the opportunity to have a network of colleagues throughout the world. And, unlike people in most professions, you have the opportunity to start over again every semester. When a new semester starts, you can try new ideas, teach new subjects, and get to know a new group of students.

But there is also a downside to receiving tenure. Over these past years, you have mined your dissertation for articles, and now the mother lode is dated and bare. You suddenly realize that your professional career track is front-loaded. Over the next 30 years or so, you will have only one more promotion (assuming that tenure and promotion to associate professor are simultaneous decisions at your school). Your goals are suddenly less clear and definitive. Although you can now look forward to getting promoted to full professor, there is not the tight schedule there was with tenure. In a conversation with one of the authors, Kenneth Boulding commented that academicians would never want to live to be 150 because no one would want to be an assistant professor for 50 years.

Judith Shapiro (2001), past president of Barnard College, put it this way:

Do you see before you a garden of earthly delights, offering a range of opportunities that will fill the coming years? Or does the place on which you stand appear now to be only in the foothills of a mountain range that lies before you? Is that prospect daunting or exhilarating? Or is what you see ahead a long, level plain reaching indefinitely into the future? Do you have a sudden fear that you may have been consulting the wrong map and ended up at the edge of the Gobi Desert?

When the thought that you now have lifetime employment hits you, do you think of it as a blessing or a curse? Do you have any guilt feelings since you got it and some of your colleagues did not? Tenure is a highly subjective process regardless of what is in any manual at your school. When one of the authors received tenure, he had a colleague who, in the same cycle, was arbitrarily redlined despite meeting the standards only to be told that meeting the published standards was merely a necessary but not sufficient criterion for tenure. You can be torn between being happy for yourself and unhappy for your colleagues.

While most schools provide a fairly good salary bump with the awarding of tenure and a promotion to associate professor, has the realization hit you that there will be no more big raises in your future? In academia, with very few exceptions, there are no big annual raises--and in the current economic environment, faculty are even being involuntarily furloughed without pay for multiple days in order for their systems to cut costs. Big raises are generally only available when you move to another school; but now that you have tenure, moving may be more problematic since most advertised positions are aimed at untenured, assistant professors--entry-level positions. There are a few exceptions which we discuss later, but it is not unheard of for faculty to give up tenure and rank in order to move.

On top of it all, your family may decide that it is time you started making it up to them for being put on the back burner during the past 10 or more years while you pursued your doctorate and tenure. While it is hard to shift gears, it may be necessary in order to save a marriage and a family.

Still the issue is: now that you have achieved tenure, what will you do for the next 30 years or so? The following essay represents the first of two installments which will look at some specific options for the newly tenured faculty member. In this segment, the authors consider moving into administration and/or beginning a consulting practice. The second part of this article will examine doing such things as moving into faculty leadership positions, becoming a chaired or eminent professor, seeking out opportunities to teach as an exchange faculty member in an overseas program, serving as a mentor to new/junior faculty, and working with your discipline's professional organizations.

In deciding which path to take, it is important to look within yourself. What do you really like to do? What are you good at? What part of academia suits you best? Where does your personality type fit best? Thirty years from now, where do you want to be? After reading the entire article, we hope we have given you some guidance in planning your academic career.

Administration
Faculty may have many reasons for going into administration. An administrative position may provide you with a break in routine after many years of doing the same things in terms of teaching, research, and service. It is also one of the few ways for a faculty member to obtain a larger salary without moving, or it may be a way for a tenured faculty member to move to another school. Finally, some faculty have ideas about how a department or college should be run, and becoming an administrator is one way to implement these ideas.

If you are only going into administration to get a higher salary, however, we would highly advise you against it. The first thing an administrator at any level gives up is control of his or her time. Administrative positions generally involve 12-month contracts and often require almost 24/7/365 commitments. In addition, they have pressures far beyond those faced by "regular" faculty. Regardless of what you may think of your role as a faculty member, accepting an administrative position should not be looked at as a way out.

Others go into administration because that is what they wanted to do career-wise from the beginning but realized that in order to do so in the area of academic affairs, they had to first "legitimize" themselves as faculty. Having had their faculty cards punched by succeeding in the tenure process, they become eligible to move into administration. This also brings up an important caveat: never, never go into any type of major administrative position until after you have obtained tenure. Even then, it is best if you have also been promoted to full professor.

Both authors have known many colleagues who have accepted administrative positions without tenure and/or the rank of full professor and were never able to obtain either. The reality is that in order to obtain tenure and/or a promotion to full professor, you will be judged against your faculty peers, based on your faculty credentials as a teacher and researcher, by your faculty peers. It is all but impossible to continue to build an academic resume as a faculty member while serving as an administrator, given the nature and demands of major administrative positions.

Having held administrative positions at all levels up to and including that of vice-provost, the authors believe that the most difficult administrative position is that of department chair. For most faculty seeking to go into administration, the department chair position is the beginning point, and most of the time you will have to start as a chair at your own school. In fact there are some programs that expect all faculty members to take a turn as chair of his or her department on a rotating basis. As a chair, you are basically a bridge between the upper administration and the faculty--half-faculty and half-administrator--representing each to the other. People who recently were your peers are now those you supervise, and thus your relationships with them may be much more uncomfortable as they may view you as having gone over to the "Dark Side." At the same time, the dean and/or the university administration may not see you as a true administrator (especially if you are filling the position on a rotating or interim basis) and may not trust you either. You are stuck in the middle, with few resources you can actually control or allocate other than maybe day and time slots on the teaching schedule.

Once you have established a record as a chair, you may start thinking about becoming an associate dean. Again, most associate dean positions are filled internally, but in many ways, it is an easier position than that of department chair. Generally you do not have any direct supervision over the unit's faculty and thus you will not directly represent them to the administration. The duties may vary widely depending upon the school and the dean, but often they are akin to being the chief operating officer in a business enterprise or an executive officer in a military unit--you are expected to get things done for the dean and you may even be his or her hatchet person. This is a staff position and your power, such that it is, comes from your relationship with the dean.

If your goal is to become a dean, you will most likely have to leave your present school since there is only one dean's position available there and it is already filled. Even if you do get the position of dean at your present school because of some type of timing situation (i.e., the current dean goes into university-level administration, moves to another deanship in a larger program elsewhere, retires, or dies), you still may be looking at a later move in order to continue your career progression. Very few people have been able to start at one school, move through faculty and administrative positions, and then retire, all on the same campus.

As indicated above, any administrative position will involve dramatic changes in your personal and professional life. Your research will largely end, especially as you move up beyond department chair. Sabbaticals will be largely out of the question. You will have a different network of colleagues (e.g., fellow deans, some of whom may have been your colleagues as faculty members). You will work on a 12-month contract. You will need to be much more outgoing and outwardly focused than the typical faculty member. You will have to learn to ask donors for money. You will spend less time at home with your family and more at required social functions. Your family may become more visible. And, you will have to become much more visible in the local community as a representative of the university. Consider if your personality lends itself to these types of activities and if your family can accept being more in the public eye.

Consulting
Consulting is often a natural outlet for faculty members in business schools as we tend to have expertise in areas in which businesses often need help and for which they are willing to pay. Thus external consulting provides you with opportunities to earn additional income, put some of your ideas into practice, form new practitioner networks, and gain insights and information that you can take back to your teaching and research.

As with going into administration, there are downsides to consulting. The organizations that hire you want answers, not theories or hypotheses, and they want those answers according to their schedules, not yours or your university's. Furthermore, since they are paying you for your expertise, they want workable answers--they want value added (remember teaching that concept?).

Another thing to consider is that by earning this extra income you are, in fact, running a small business. Even if you handle the income stream as an independent contractor, you will still need to keep a set of books detailing your income and expenses; pay taxes on that income (probably on a Schedule C); print stationery, business cards, and invoices; deal with possible uncollectible accounts; and even do such things as making sure that you have zoning permission to operate a business out of your home.

If you end up doing a good deal of consulting work, you may need to look into actually incorporating yourself as a formal business. In any case, you need to have a contract template that you can use with an organization that spells out the nature of the work you will be providing (as well as what you will not be doing), the time frame of the assignment, the deliverables expected and their due dates, the financial details of your compensation and the reimbursement of your expenses, and the ownership of any intellectual property that is developed as a part of the consulting assignment. This document should also indicate under what conditions (if any) you can use anything from your consulting assignment in your future teaching or research activities.

Most universities have specific rules and procedures that you must follow if you want to do consulting, but the general rule of thumb is that you can consult one day per week during the school year if it does not interfere with your normal teaching, research, and service obligations on campus. The bigger issues relate to conflicts of interest, use of university resources, and intellectual property ownership. These will be briefly addressed below.

If you are not already into consulting, how do you start? One way is for a colleague who is already doing consulting to invite you to join in on a project because you have a specific expertise that the colleague does not possess. From there, you gain various insights into how to be a consultant.

Another easy entrèe into consulting is to teach evening graduate classes since they tend to contain students who are working as practitioners, and, when the need for a consultant arises in their businesses, they may think of you and tell their bosses. The more you can relate the subject matter you are teaching to the "real world," the more likely it is that your students will see not only the application of the concepts, but will also provide you with an opening into their organizations. A caution here: do not do this while the student is still in your classes as that could pose another conflict of interest or at least the perception of one.

You can also become active in practitioner and civic organizations. Virtually every academic business specialty has a practitioner counterpart--often several. Many of them offer certifications and certification training courses. Getting certified yourself gives you practitioner credentials and teaching the certification courses gives you exposure to those who may need consulting. Ask to tour manufacturing plants, ports, airports, hospitals, call centers, and other local business operations. These tours not only give you insights into how the businesses function, they also give you material to take into your classes, expose you to many of the problems being faced by the businesses, and give you contacts.

Go to local business functions. Organizations such as Chambers of Commerce often have functions which are open to the general public and provide networking opportunities. Civic organizations are always looking for programs for their meetings; so by making yourself known in terms of being able to do 15 to 20 minutes on a topic you teach anyway, you also become known to more people in the local business community who will be in your audiences. Use these opportunities to learn about local businesses and make contacts.

There are also business counterparts to the social networking sites on the web. A major one in the U.S. is "LinkedIn" and in Europe it is "Xing." Both have a level of membership which costs nothing, so you can test how they work. These sites also give you a way to keep in contact with students who have graduated and/or with colleagues you do not see regularly.

As mentioned above, be careful of conflicts of interest. Do not do consulting for your current students as they may expect quid pro quos in the form of grades. If the organizations for which you are consulting do business with your school, watch out for conflicts as you may be viewed as an agent of your university even if you think you are operating as an independent contractor. Since your dean or development office may be cultivating a business for a donation, it is a good idea to inform them of your intentions to do consulting work for an organization (especially a local one) prior to starting so that you do not get caught in the middle. If the organization asks you to sign any type of nondisclosure agreement, take it seriously and have it reviewed by your university's legal counsel.

If you work at a state university, using university property in your consulting business may be a conflict of interest at best and illegal at worst. This includes presenting yourself as a representative (i.e., an agent) of the university either directly or indirectly (e.g., using your university business cards or having a consulting phone call come to you at your university office). If you use university resources, arrange to pay for them in advance. While many schools have formal procedures and forms for this and/or require annual "conflict of interest" filings, an easy way to handle this is to give a predetermined percentage of your earnings back to the university. If you can, make sure this money goes to your college and your dean gets the credit but in any case, it makes you a donor and should cover any conflict of interest.

Above all, use your consulting experiences, to the extent that you can, in your teaching and research. You may have to avoid directly using, or even have to disguise, company names but consulting can give you an endless source of "war stories" to tell in class. It also gives you credibility since you are telling students that you have been out in the "real world" and have seen and done many of the things you are teaching them. Having an entrèe into real business organizations can provide you with materials to use in preparing case studies as well as potential data sets to empirically analyze. To the extent that your consulting work is generalizable, you will probably be able to use it in your research and if you have built models or applied techniques in a unique way, you should write about them. Again, be careful of confidentiality and make sure the use of company facts and data are allowed in the consulting agreement you sign with the organization in the beginning.

End of Part I
In this first part of our essay, we have introduced the topic of life after tenure and have discussed two ways many faculty use to renew themselves after being awarded tenure. These involve going into some type of administrative position and beginning to do external consulting. In Part II, we shall look at additional renewal strategies as well as discuss a strategy that some faculty elect to do, but which we do not recommend: retire on active duty. In the end, the choices are yours. We hope this information will aid you in making those choices.

 

References
Carper, William B., Gooding, Carl W., Pope, James A., & Uhr, Ernest B. (2006). Academic street smarts. Decision Line, 37, (4), July, pp. 4-8. Reprinted in Krishna S. Dhir (ed.), The dean's perspective. (2008). Atlanta Ga.: Decision Sciences Institute, 64-73.

Shapiro, Judith. Winning tenure, losing the thrill. (2001). The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 16. Retrieved on March 15, 2010 from http://chronicle.com/article/Winning-Tenure-Losing-the/12027

Reading List (as well as all of the works cited in each of these)
Abbott, H. Porter. On the prospects for life after tenure. ADE Bulletin (Fall 1988, pp. 72-74. Retrieved on March 15, 2010 from http://web2.ade.org/ade/bulletin/n090/090072.htm

Bradley, S. G. Managing the academic tenure process. From Leadership and Staffing, Published: July 31, 2006. Retrieved on March 15, http://www.labmanager.com/articles_pf.asp?ID=96

Cohen, J. J. Post tenure depression, or a goal once attained recedes anew." Retrieved on March 15, 2010 from http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2009/04/post-tenure-depression-or-goal-once.html

Dr. Virago (pseudonym). Post-tenure blues. Ennui. Depression. Melancholy. Or something like that. Retrieved on March 15, 2010 from http://quodshe.blogspot.com/2009/04/post-tenure-blues-ennui-depression.html

Hemami, Sheila. Maintaining momentum after tenure, or avoiding the "Now what?" Syndrome. Retrieved on March 15, 2010 from http://paesmem.stanford.edu/slides/hemami.pdf

Wagner, Neil R. Getting tenure at a university. Retrieved on March 15, 2010 from http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/creative_writing/tenure6.pdf

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