Navigating the First Years on the Tenure Track

If you’re lucky enough to have landed a tenure track assistant professor job, you’re probably a combination of excited, terrified, and unsure of what the next few years will hold. This is totally normal! You’ve spent so much time and energy building your CV and connections to get this job, and you may be wondering what will make you successful when you’re running your own lab. I’m certainly no expert, and there are many paths to tenure, but hopefully you can take away some insights from my experience.

For context, I recently received tenure in a psychology department at an R1 institution. I started the position in 2019, so my first year on the tenure track was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which definitely affected my path and decisions about how to be successful in a changing research and teaching landscape. I was lucky to have a supportive partner in a dual-income household, but I also had unique challenges such as having one kid and another on the way during my pre-tenure years. I went up for tenure one year early based on positive feedback from my department. All timing decisions (e.g., delaying review because of childbirth, or going up early) should be discussed with your department leadership because these decisions may affect your review differently depending on the culture or tenure criteria of your department.

Now here is some of my wisdom!

Understanding Departmental Expectations for Tenure

One of the initial challenges of your new role is figuring what matters most to your department for tenure. Is it a ton of publications, publications in the most prestigious journals in your field, securing grants, getting students involved in research, teaching, or a combination of factors? These expectations may have been made clear to you in your job interview, but if not, it’s worth talking to your chair, senior faculty, and recently tenured faculty to understand what you need to prioritize most these next few years. If it’s getting big grants, you’re going to want to make a plan for writing those grants early and collecting any necessary pilot data ASAP since grants can take years to get. If it’s publishing papers (which was important for my department), you’ll want to make sure you are publishing papers on existing data while you’re collecting data for your lab so there’s not a huge lag in your publishing pipeline. Because I am a developmental psychologist, longitudinal data can take years to collect, so I had a plan to analyze data from data I could access from mentors and from publicly available datasets to publish in the meantime. I also collaborated with colleagues on short-term online data collection projects to publish on data collected more recently. These steps ensured that I was still publishing papers in those crucial pre-tenure years, since peer-reviewed publications were important for getting tenure in my department.

Take the time your first few months to figure out your department’s tenure priorities so you can align your goals accordingly. Knowing what matters for tenure will help you plan your time and allocate resources for the next few years.

Write!

This one may seem obvious, but soon you’ll learn that writing can fall at the bottom of your daily to-do list. It absolutely cannot. Some days I feel like I am a full-time project manager, and I’m completely sick of making decisions about the lab, but I always remind myself that what really matters for tenure is writing! The National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) recommends writing for at least 30 minutes a day. I think this is helpful advice to keep your writing momentum across days and weeks.

My best advice is to 1) block off time in your calendar each day for writing or associated tasks that lead to a publication or grant (e.g., data analysis) so that no one can schedule meetings during that time, and 2) develop accountability systems for writing. I had a weekly call with a friend in academia to discuss writing progress for the week. When I was in the NCFDD Faculty Success Program, I had biweekly meetings with my small group to track writing progress and brainstorm challenges I was having. I track my writing projects on a big white board in my office by stage (idea, data collection, data analysis, writing, under review, revising, accepted) so that I can see if I have backlogs in my projects (e.g., too many in data analysis stage and not enough in writing stage or under review). I also make writing fun by getting a special beverage like coffee and playing my writing playlist on Spotify, and I reward myself by doing something totally different like walking my dogs after a writing session. I like to leave myself a comment in Word about where to pick up after a writing session so that it’s easier to jump back in to writing the next day. Anything you can do to decrease friction and increase the reward of writing will help you keep the habit when things get overwhelming.

Creating a Strategic To-Do List

Compile a comprehensive to-do list prioritizing tasks crucial for your success. I started this to-do list as soon as I had accepted my position so that I would have concrete tasks to accomplish that would reduce the barriers to getting research done when I arrived on campus. For example, I had tasks such as purchasing specific pieces of equipment, buying lab furniture and computers, and submitting my first IRB on my to-do list. I also added to-dos that would streamline repetitive tasks, including creating reusable documents like protocols and form emails (e.g., for responding to prospective PhD students) so that I wasn’t reinventing the wheel each time I was asked to do the same task. Additionally, I added to-dos such as meeting with both pre-tenure and experienced faculty members in my department to understand strategies for success and how to navigate common challenges when starting a new lab.

Prevent Decision Fatigue (if possible…)

One of the most difficult parts of starting a lab or even a new job as a professor is the overwhelming number of decisions you need to make. There are seemingly endless decisions about what to purchase, how to spend start-up funds, whom to hire or accept as a student, which projects to start, which collaborations to form, how to design a course, and which service to do, among many other decisions.

First, you need to decide which are the most important decisions for your success. For example, deciding which research projects to start and who to hire were more important to me than decisions about which company we should by equipment from, what style of furniture we wanted, or what to put on my slides for a class. If there are ways to outsource decision-making for less important things, do that. For example, I had my lab manager send me the best quote they could find for a specific product, or a couple of options for furniture for me to choose from, which reduced the amount of time I spent searching for the perfect option.

Protecting your time for writing at work and for rest outside of work will help you recharge and remind you why you’re doing this work! Remember that this period is temporary, and you won’t need to make many of these decisions again for a long time. This mindset helped me to stay focused when I was experiencing decision fatigue.

Building a Positive Lab Culture

A positive lab culture is so important for your success. When interviewing applicants for students or staff, it’s important to think about how they will work with you or others on your team. Even if someone has an impressive CV, if your current staff or students tell you that they were rude to them, you may want to rethink accepting them to the lab. You may spend a lot of time managing lab conflicts or dealing with low morale from others in the lab. Once people start in the lab, having them co-create contracts or having them read the lab manual can set expectations and boundaries, and gives everyone the same information. Creating time and space for socializing (e.g., lab dinner or picnics) gives everyone the opportunity to get to know each other and improve lab morale. Happy and interconnected lab members lead to more productive teams who share good ideas and work together to conduct important science.

Strategically Pursuing Grants and Awards

Search for and identify grants and awards that are aligned with your research interests and tenure criteria. Maintain a list of these opportunities. Set reminders for deadlines in your calendar to ensure that you’re giving yourself enough time to apply and seek collaborators or reference writers. When I learn about a new award, I put a reminder in my calendar for about 2 months before the deadline to check it out and start preparing my materials if I decide to apply. Ask your colleagues about grant and award opportunities you may not know about. Read the CVs of faculty in your field who you admire, and see if they have gotten a specific award or grant that you might be eligible for. Finally, ask your mentors if they can nominate you for relevant awards in your field. You can offer to help them with the letter so they hit all the relevant points and are not burdened much if you are concerned about that. These grants and awards will likely look excellent on your tenure application. Even applying for opportunities like grants may look good on your tenure application despite not getting the award, depending on your department.

Documenting Your Progress

Writing down all your important activities each year is crucial. I kept a running list for every 6-month period about the service, teach, and research I accomplished. For example, I might say “taught two undergrad courses,” “served as the professional development coordinator,” “started new study,” “applied for internal grant,” and “student received NSF fellowship.” Since all of these contributions are important for my department, I wanted to bring them up in the annual evaluation but also keep them for my tenure dossier. I have a good habit of adding things like new publications to my CV right away. However, I am less effective at tracking things like grant applications that don’t go on my CV, so I put a reminder in my calendar every 6 months to add items to my list of important activities to avoid forgetting. These records were invaluable when creating my tenure statements.

Balancing Teaching Responsibilities

While teaching is an important part of the job, it’s typically weighed much less heavily into your evaluations if you’re at a research-focused institution. While you should do what you can to convey your knowledge and accomplish the goals of the course, you should not strive for perfection. You could spend many hours trying to perfect your course, and it may not have measurable outcomes in student learning or satisfaction. If you didn’t negotiate limits on new course preparations before tenure as part of your job offer, you can still try to ask for limits on new course preps once you start. You can also ask if colleagues might be willing to share their syllabi, assignments, activities, and lectures with you to help you create your own course. Many institutions have offices for teaching and learning where you can also consult with teaching experts on your course rather than figuring out everything on your own. This approach minimizes your workload while maximizing the quality of the course.

Although course evaluations are certainly an imperfect way to evaluate teaching success, it helps to get positive evaluations from students for tenure at most institutions. You’ll want to show that you’re being responsive to reasonable suggestions for improvement from students, but you don’t need to respond to every student request. I like to give a mid-quarter anonymous survey asking for things students like and ways to improve the course. Then I can show them their feedback as a whole and tell them how I’ll implement their feedback for the rest of the course. This method explicitly shows students that I’m working to improve the class before they submit their final course evaluations. I find that this approach leads to a better class but also happier students who are more likely to positively evaluate my teaching, which is important for tenure evaluations.

Embracing Flexibility and New Opportunities

Starting a tenure-track position is so exciting because there are seemingly unlimited opportunities for new projects, collaborations, and research directions. It’s important to be open to new opportunities and projects while also remembering not to spread yourself too thin. If you become involved in too many projects, you risk spending your time managing a ton of projects while not having time to write and publish. I would advise creating a conceptual framework of your overall research program (i.e., your research interests and future directions… you may have presented one in your job talk) and using that framework to guide decisions about new projects and collaborations. If something is exciting to you, fits within your conceptual framework, and you have time for it, you should consider going for it! If you would have to take time away from something important (like writing) or it’s not really in line with where you want your research to go, you may want to say no for now.

As someone who experienced the start of COVID-19 pandemic in their first year on the tenure track, I cannot stress enough the importance of remaining flexible in your plans. Should you experience a major roadblock to your research, you should seriously consider whether pivoting to something more feasible may be smarter than continuing to pursue a project that might never come to fruition. For me, I paused in-person data collection and collaborated with other researchers to conduct online research about the effects of the pandemic on parents, college students, and teens. While not totally in line with my conceptual map—I didn’t previously include a pandemic as a possible stressor—I was able to make the case that I was still pursuing stress research on an emerging topic of importance. These papers are now some of my most highly-cited works, though I couldn’t have anticipated this pivot when I started my position. I was then able to return to my in-person research that was more directly in line with my conceptual map when it became safe again. If roadblocks present themselves, prepare to think creatively to still do what you need to get tenure.

Leveraging Resources for Success

There are many resources to increase your chances of success! If your institution is a member of NCFDD, they have a free core curriculum for success on the tenure track. If you have start-up or professional development funds, I recommend the NCFDD Faculty Success Program. I completed this program about halfway through the tenure clock to make sure I could efficiently submit papers for publication before tenure review. Books like The Writing Workshop and How to Write a Lot also helped me prioritize writing. I also recommend talking to people who have recently gotten tenure, especially at your institution, to ask for tips. Ask them if they’ll share their research and teaching statements they submitted for tenure. And if your department allows pre-tenure folks to serve on tenure committees, I’d recommend doing that so you can see how tenure cases are discussed in your department to tailor your efforts and materials.

The pre-tenure years are a time of exciting opportunities for growth and also for setting up habits that will help you become successful even after tenure. By understanding departmental expectations, prioritizing important tasks like writing, fostering a positive lab culture, strategically pursuing grants and awards, documenting your achievements, balancing teaching and service responsibilities, embracing flexibility, and leveraging resources, you can set yourself up for success.

Please reach out to me (Jena.Doom@du.edu) if you have any questions! I’m happy to pass along any knowledge I can as I benefited from the wisdom of many who achieved tenure before me.