Monitoring Dept. Health and Welfare
Valuing Diversity in the Dept.
Supporting Pre-Tenure Faculty Career Development
Encouraging Mid-Career Professional Development
Faculty Development Programs, Benefits, & Resources
SUPPORTING CAREER DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-TENURE FACULTY
New faculty and pre-tenure faculty may need extra attention with respect to retention. Issues facing new faculty include joining a new academic community, establishing their research and teaching activities, identifying resources, and navigating the new institution. Chairs should recognize that new faculty are in a new department, university, and city. New faculty may feel isolated or disconnected from the new academic community. This feeling is likely in stark contrast to the warm, social welcome they generally experienced on their interview visits. Efforts should be made to help maintain this type of community connection with new faculty once they arrive on campus.
Below are some tips for helping new faculty connect to their new community, be mentored, balance workload, get information access, and gain visibility.
Additional tips for supporting pre-tenure faculty can be found at http://www.aahe.org/ffrr/principles_brochure2.htm and http://faculty.washington.edu/olmstd/research/Mentoring.html.
CONNECTING TO A NEW COMMUNITY
MENTORS
WORKLOAD AND SUCCESS
INFORMATION ACCESS
VISIBILITY
CONNECTING
TO A NEW COMMUNITY:
There are many ways to help new faculty connect with their new community. College and university orientations are a good starting point. Such orientations offer a chance for new faculty to interact and become acquainted with resources on campus. Faculty may also benefit from a department level orientation that could be done on an informal basis. A general resources webpage or handout is another effective orientation tool. (See for example, a mock version of the UW Computer Science and Engineering Guide for New Faculty Please note some links will not work because they are password protected.)
Once the orientation stage is completed, new and pre-tenured faculty will still benefit from coordinated efforts to bring them into the department, college, and university community. The suggestions discussed in Section 3: Creating a Welcoming Climate are particularly applicable to new faculty.
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MENTORS:
Mentors are another great resource. Mentors can introduce new faculty to their networks and might invite pre-tenure faculty to collaborate with them. Mentors can also advocate for the pre-tenure faculty members, offering advice when necessary. New faculty can benefit from multiple mentors (at different ranks, from different departments, etc.) as each mentor can offer a different perspective. (See also Section 4: Mentoring.)
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WORKLOAD
AND SUCCESS:
Workload balance is critical to the success of pre-tenure faculty. They must be given the opportunity to succeed; this opportunity is directly linked to startup resources they are afforded at hiring time. (See the faculty recruitment toolkit for some ideas regarding recruitment.) Several additional ideas to support pre-tenure faculty include the following:
- Assigning pre-tenure faculty classes that will help them integrate into the department. At the beginning of their appointment, they should not be assigned large service courses or the most unpopular course in the curriculum. Rather, they should be assigned classes in their area, enabling them to recruit students to their research while establishing their own teaching style.
- Offering pre-tenure faculty reduced teaching loads both at the start of their career and again after they have successfully received their three-year contract renewal. (See, for example, the pre-tenure faculty development program in the College of Arts and Sciences.) Receiving a course buyout allows the pre-tenure faculty member more time and resources to focus on their research and grant writing.
- Allowing new faculty to repeat courses so they can minimize the course preparation time.
- Encouraging senior faculty to share course materials (syllabi, homework sets, lecture notes, etc.) so new faculty do not have to reinvent courses from scratch.
- Limiting service responsibilities for new faculty to afford more time for research and teaching.
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INFORMATION
ACCESS:
In addition to the promotion and tenure process, new faculty need information about the resources on campus and the various university policies. While faculty orientation is a starting point, the programs often contain a lot of information that is presented quickly ("too much, too soon"). After new faculty have had time to settle into their new positions, they may have additional questions. Taking pre-tenure faculty to lunch and informally discussing university policies and procedures is a great follow up to a formal orientation program. Hosting get-togethers with pre-tenure faculty and key resource people from around campus is another way to help develop the new faculty members' awareness of campus resources.
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VISIBILITY:
To help new faculty establish their reputations, department chairs should identify ways in which pre-tenure faculty can increase their research exposure. Some ways for department chairs to promote external visibility for pre-tenure faculty include:
- involve them in group proposals to broaden research contacts and collaboration as well as help them identify possible research extensions
- provide opportunities to attend national meetings to present their research and network with colleagues; departments should provide travel funds to pre-tenure faculty as part of the startup package
- encourage them to go on "tenure tours" to gain visibility near promotion and tenure time
- nominate them for university and national awards
- encourage them to write survey or review papers
- help them establish research relationships outside the home university.
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Last Updated: July 07, 2005
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