BALANCING ACT

Right on Track

Every university has its own culture, and part of the tenure-track experience is figuring out what that culture values

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By PAMELA JOHNSTON

Some years ago, I began my tenure-track journey with a new colleague who quickly became a good friend. Like me, she had been educated at large research universities and was a little unsure how the culture of a small liberal-arts institution would be different. Like me, she was a mother with small children. And, like me, she struggled to maintain a balance between her personal and professional responsibilities.

Fast-forward: I'm an associate professor and chair of my English department. My former colleague is employed outside of academe. How did the two of us, so similar in many ways, end up in such different places?

The tenure process is confidential, and should be, so I won't presume to point out any missteps she made. The truth is, I made a number of my own. Given that the tenure track is the equivalent of a six-year-long job interview, it's safe to assume that everyone is going to stumble at some point.

But when my department welcomed a new assistant professor this year — another woman with small children — I wondered what advice I could offer. Here, then, are the most important lessons I learned on the road to tenure at a small university.

Forget the research-university model. When I was a student at a large state university, I knew my professors would be on the campus at class time and (usually) during their office hours. Other than that, the chances of an in-person sighting were slim.

I followed that model when I became a faculty member myself. But it quickly became apparent that both my students and colleagues expected more: They expected me to be in my office outside of office hours and to advise students on matters that had nothing to do with the classes I was teaching.

In short, I learned that the life of a faculty member on a small campus bears very little resemblance to that of a professor at a large research university. Yes, we teach more and do research less. But we also spend more physical time on the campus, with students. A good rule of thumb is that where teaching is the primary focus of the institution, availability may well be a primary criterion on which you are judged.

Be prepared to draw the line. While availability is crucial to your career, allowing others total access to your life can quickly become unbearable. Senior faculty members are often too willing to exploit a new professor's desire to please. There's a lot of work for everyone on a small campus, and because most untenured faculty members hesitate to decline an assignment for fear of appearing uncommitted, it's easy for the new hire to become overwhelmed.

For me, the solution was to devise a structure for my week and stick to it. I agreed to teach an 8 a.m. class three days a week in the spring semester of my first year, but I declined to teach a late afternoon class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. On those days, I left campus by 2:30 p.m. so I could be at home with my children when they got out of school. My husband, also an academic, left his campus early on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. On Fridays, we looked at our schedules to see who was free.

That became a pattern in subsequent semesters, too. I didn't always teach an early class, but I was almost always on the campus by 8 a.m., which made early-morning meetings possible. My students knew they could always find me in my office before class. And my schedule left me open for later meetings three days a week, which seemed like a fair balance to me.

Some of my colleagues didn't agree. One went so far as to say, "Find a babysitter or find a different job." But I had already made the compromises I was willing to make, so I declined to pursue either of those options.

Spin, spin, spin. After that remark from my irritated colleague, instead of telling people when I was planning to work from home in the afternoons, I began to say, "I have a commitment off campus" or "I have a standing appointment on Tuesday afternoons." No one ever questioned the nature of those obligations. But occasionally, when my schedule was the only roadblock to a meeting time that worked for everyone else in a group, I would offer to "reschedule" — and then I'd find a sitter or, if possible, swap afternoons with my husband. Making those adjustments showed flexibility while still allowing me to do what I wanted most of the time.

I also spent some of those afternoons at home on the computer, returning e-mail messages from students while my children did their homework or played a game together. I soon gained a reputation for my online presence. Students learned they could quickly get in touch with me even when I wasn't in my office. Most of the time, the point of being at home with my children was simply to allow them to decompress in familiar surroundings after a long day of school. I'm still grateful I was able to provide them with a small luxury that many of their friends didn't get to enjoy.

Know that the rules are different for men and women. At a recent faculty meeting, the dean explained a male colleague's absence by telling us that his son had started kindergarten that morning; my colleague wanted to meet him at home to hear about his first day of school. A collective "Awwww" emerged from the room. I couldn't help but think of how many times I'd had to hide such afternoons with my children under euphemisms like "appointment." Meanwhile, this colleague and my own husband — who spent afternoons at home with our kids on a regular basis and whose colleagues had praised him for being such a good father — could be open about the time they devoted to their children.

The fact that men can advertise their hands-on parenting simply doesn't mean that women can do the same. Imagine the above scenario had the absent faculty member been a woman: Would that announcement have been made? Would it elicit the same response from her colleagues? Maybe. But I'm willing to bet that some of them, at least, would begin to suspect she was less than committed to her academic career, and would view any subsequent absences as evidence.

Be visible. In my first semester, I had the good fortune of being assigned to a committee that met for an hour twice a week. I didn't think of that as good fortune at the time, of course; it seemed like a hefty burden to foist on a new faculty member.

But through that committee, I got to know a wide variety of people — junior and senior faculty members in other departments, as well as administrators. Like a lot of academics, I'm not social by nature; getting to know my colleagues would have been more of a challenge without those committee meetings. As an unexpected bonus, many of those same colleagues had risen to positions of authority on the campus by the time I applied for tenure.

Even with that foothold in the faculty network, though, one of the comments made during my third-year review was that I needed to establish a greater presence on the campus. Some people, I was told, still couldn't match my face and name. Visibility is crucial at small colleges and universities because your colleagues want to know that you're carrying your share of the workload. If they can't match your name with your face, they probably won't notice when you're around — and they might, therefore, assume you never are.

Visibility requires more than schmoozing skill. Whenever I published book reviews in my local newspaper, I mentioned the university in my bio line. I shared links to online columns, like this one. Anytime I had the slightest reason to put my name in our campus newsletter, I did. None of that felt natural. Many women are taught early on to be modest and self-effacing, but the truth is that those impulses are the enemies of progress.

Every university has a culture of its own, and part of the tenure-track experience is figuring out what that culture values. I doubt the journey toward tenure is easy for anyone; I know for a fact that it's especially tricky for women with small children. But if you figure out alternate routes around the roadblocks, rather than assuming there's only one way to go, at the end of the journey you might just find yourself right where you hoped to be.