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Tenure Epiphanies

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By John B. Zibluk

You can't control epiphanies. They come when you least expect them, and sometimes one begets another.

My first one this year came while I was packing for an academic conference in Pittsburgh. It was my first appearance at that particular meeting, which was outside my field. I knew only one other person attending, and he was a passing acquaintance.

I wanted to make a good impression, but as I began to pack the charcoal pinstripe suit and the dress shoes that I usually wear to weddings, funerals, conferences, and job interviews, it hit me: I didn't have to wear the suit or the shoes. I didn't even have to wear a tie if I didn't feel like it.

I am a tenured associate professor, damn it, and I don't need to impress anyone. It only took me two years to make that little existential breakthrough.

My tenure and promotion in the spring of 2003 were anticlimactic. For five years, I had done all the right things: the requisite papers, presentations, a juried art exhibition, many nonrefereed publications, and a lot of service activities. I had good teaching evaluations and the support of my peers. I was nervous but fairly confident about my case.

When I got the congratulatory letter confirming my hopes over my anxieties, I was pleased. But I didn't feel any different. I wasn't taller or stronger or faster or smarter.

I remember looking around my office after receiving notice of my promotion. I still couldn't find that article I needed for a current project. I was doing the same work with the same people. I was teaching the same students. I got a raise with the promotion, but it was quickly eaten up by the costs of raising a child.

To be honest, I was disappointed that I didn't feel any different. Eventually I would, but the changes were subtle and cumulative. Tenure, it seems, has its own momentum.

I had established myself to a certain degree on the campus and in the outside world. I met a lot of people with similar interests at conferences, and that led to collaborative opportunities. I was asked to serve on the requisite campus committees. People asked me to work on projects more often than I had to ask them to be included.

And once I was included in something, I no longer felt lost when confronted with the often-convoluted lingo of academe. I found that I had even learned to use words like "pedagogy" in casual conversation without feeling pretentious. Assorted powers that be even gave me some authority as an assistant associate interim vice chairman of a subcommittee every now and then.

But those changes were so incremental that I didn't notice them or think about them until I packed for the conference earlier this year in Pittsburgh.

A few months later came an even bigger epiphany: I can question dominant paradigms. For real. In graduate school, many of my professors pushed us to do just that. But usually they were looking for support for their own efforts to challenge particular theories. They weren't looking for us to challenge their favorite paradigms.

My second epiphany came as a result of a job interview. One advantage of being a notch above total obscurity is that sometimes somebody notices you. I was invited to interview for a tenure-track job at a major research university. It wasn't the biggest or most prestigious institution in my field, but it represented a jump from the minors to the major league. And of course, the salary was about 25 percent higher than I now earn.

I had to at least give it a look. The members of the hiring committee were very nice, cordial, and professional. Even before I visited, I was asked about my "research agenda," which, in all truth, consists of "stuff I can crank out when I have time between my teaching and family obligations."

That translated to "varied and eclectic" for the purposes of the job interview. As a photojournalism professor, I have both professional and academic interests. I take photographs and write articles and columns for newspapers and magazines. I like to think that grounds my research in the real world, a radical approach disdained by some academics. I am interested in law, ethics, technology, politics, sociology, and the effects of photojournalism on audiences and policy makers. I am interested in doing all I can to constantly improve my teaching.

A research agenda, that is not.

Before the interview, a colleague encouraged me to get some background on the research university from Dr. Big Dog, a well-traveled senior scholar on the university's campus. He was very candid about life there and explained that his university, like most research institutions, valued narrowly focused research -- so, for example, it would be interested in images of early Edwardian waistcoats and how they socially constructed gender in pre-World War I Shropshire.

Since Dr. Big Dog was chairman of the tenure committee, I listened closely. He told me that even though I was tenured at a good regional university, my portfolio of research wasn't enough to qualify for tenure at his institution. So, if hired, I would have to start fresh on the tenure track and wait a good seven years, he said, before I could get back to the same status and security I enjoy in my current position.

I heard that same message repeatedly during the interview -- from other professors, from administrators, and from the dean of the school, who actually wrote for one of the same nonrefereed publications for which I've written.

The dean, an enthusiastic and friendly man I hoped to impress, had broad and eclectic interests similar to mine. He, too, wrote for a lot of different publications. He told me I could get back to writing for magazines and newspapers after I had established my research agenda over the next seven years.

I wondered why I had to wait seven more years to do the same things that he does now. And I said that, or something like it, in the exit interview that day.

I don't think anyone was surprised when I withdrew from consideration a few days later.

I knew I wasn't a good fit and I think I did the right thing by withdrawing. But I didn't know what to make of the experience. Was I henceforth doomed to the second tier? Does second tier really mean second-rate? Am I second-rate?

And that's when it hit me: If I don't need to impress anybody, why am I trying to impress the folks at that big-time research university? I don't need to play that game anymore. I have gone through the hoops and impressed people for the past 15 years, from graduate school through tenure and beyond.

I really am good enough and smart enough and, gosh darn it, people do like me, and it's not an affirmation. It's internalized.

So rather than whine, I began to question. After all, that's what a good journalist, and a good academic, does. Why do major research universities have to keep their minions on a tight and narrow focus? Why can't their untenured faculty members tackle big questions and devote themselves to the problems of the world beyond little-read refereed journals?

As a tenured associate professor, I can question the dominant paradigm. And I don't have to wear a suit and tie while doing it.