Bureaucratic, Professional and Managerial Power in University Tenure Track Recruitment

In this chapter, our interest lies in analysing the different powers in recruitment and, particularly, how they are manifested in the new tenure track model in technical fields in Finland. Traditionally, recruitment in higher education has mostly relied on the bureaucratic application of processes and on academics, representing professional power, evaluating academic merit. The new university legislation, granting universities more autonomy in recruiting, has allowed the development of increasingly strategic recruitment models. The novel tenure track recruitment criteria exceed traditional notions of individual merits to include assessments of the strategic visions of universities and departments. We see the use of the tenure track model as a shift both in the recruitment for identity building related to the technical university’s strategy and as a shift in using more managerial power in recruitment. We use a case study approach where we look at recruitment in a similar field in two different kinds of universities utilising tenure track, and we examine how bureaucratic, managerial and professional powers are manifested in the processes. The comparisons are used to highlight the powers in the tenure track process in a technical university.

Care Work and Academic Motherhood: Challenges for Research and Tenure in the Canadian University

In Canada, women are earning an increasing number of doctoral degrees; yet, they are less likely to secure a tenure-track position. A feminist thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 20 academic mothers from two Canadian universities reveals the range of challenges that mothers encounter in relation to care on the tenure-track. First, the theme of “fear of post-partum academic erasure” captured faculty mothers’ experiences of feeling compelled to assert their physical and intellectual presence in post-partum during peak periods of infant care. The second theme, “the mommy tenure track and care choices,” encapsulated academic mothers’ experiences of feeling unsupported by the university in their pursuit of promotion and tenure given care responsibilities associated with motherhood. The final theme, “research while caring,” captured the tensions academic mothers experience between the research process and caring. The findings of this research are particularly relevant in a pandemic and post-pandemic environment, where academic mothers have seen their care work swell to unprecedented proportions.

Beyond El Arrebato: the seven stages of Conocimiento as instruments for radical reflection and the unlearning of white supremacy culture

PurposeTo be actively antiracist requires an internal reckoning, what Chicana activist and scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa referred to as “el arrebato.” Used to describe the first of seven cycles through which conocimiento, or knowledge, is formed, el arrebato presents a shift in the understanding of the world as it has been prescribed by both patriarchy and white supremacy. This paper will use Anzaldúa's Seven Stages of Conocimiento to trace a Latinx librarian's journey in unlearning white supremacy toward a shift to antiracist practices.Design/methodology/approachThis ethnography follows the author from her time as a Diversity Alliance resident librarian in an R1 library to her current position as a tenure-track librarian in a primarily white institution, outlining how the seven stages have led toward active interrogation of not only library structures but with the legacy of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous discourse within her own Latinx identity.FindingsAs an ongoing reflective practice, this paper presents a journey of learning and unlearning toward critically deconstructing the culture of “niceness” within librarianship, where the principles of neutrality and vocational awe lend to library structures that place responsibility on the individual for institutional trauma rather than rightly examining and reconstructing the environments and structures themselves.Originality/valueThis autoethnography presents the viewpoint of a first-generation Latinx librarian growing up in a tricultural context in the Midwest.

Der unendliche Wandel wissenschaftlicher Personalkategorien zwischen Promotion und Lebenszeitprofessur. Eine Untersuchung zur Eingliederung der Tenure-Track-Professur in die institutionalisierten Strukturen an der Universität

Das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) hat die Karrierephase nach der Promotion bis zur Berufung auf eine Lebenszeitprofessur in der Vergangenheit wiederholt umgestaltet. Der Beitrag widmet sich dem derzeitigen Implementationsprozess der Tenure-Track-Professur von der politischen Intention von Bund und Ländern bis zur institutionellen Verankerung an den Universitäten. Anhand einer explorativen Fallstudie werden Hypothesen darüber gewonnen, wie Universitäten diese neue Personalkategorie in ihre institutionalisierten Strukturen eingliedern. Dazu wurden die Profilpapiere für die Berufung von Tenure-Track-Professor*innen analysiert und Expert*inneninterviews mit Dekan*innen zur Gestaltung der neuen Personalkategorie an ihren Fakultäten geführt. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass die Tenure-Track-Professur vornehmlich in aktuellen Forschungsgebieten und abseits des profilbildenden Kerns der Fächer implementiert wird. Eine Folge könnte sein, dass die Tenure-Track-Professur für Randständiges in den Forschungs- und Lehrprofilen reserviert wird. Damit scheint ihre Etablierung als gleichwertiger Karriereweg auf die Lebenszeitprofessur zweifelhaft.

A New Effort to Diversify Faculty: Postdoc-to-Tenure Track Conversion Models

Calls to diversify the professoriate have been ongoing for decades. However, despite increasing numbers of scholars from underrepresented racial minority groups earning doctorates, actual progress in transitioning to faculty has been slow, particularly across STEM disciplines. In recent years, new efforts have emerged to recruit faculty members from underrepresented racial minority groups (i.e., African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and/or Native American/Native Hawaiian/Indigenous) through highly competitive postdoctoral programs that allow fellows the opportunity to transition (or “convert”) into tenure-track roles. These programs hybridize some conventional aspects of the faculty search process (e.g., structured interview processes that facilitate unit buy-in) along with novel evidence-based practices and structural supports (e.g., proactive recruitment, cohort communities, search waivers, professional development, enhanced mentorship, financial incentives). In this policy and practice review, we describe and synthesize key attributes of existing conversion programs at institutional, consortium, and system levels. We discuss commonalities and unique features across models (N = 38) and draw specific insights from postdoctoral conversion models developed within and across institutions in the University System of Maryland (USM). In particular, experience garnered from a 10-year-old postdoc conversion program at UMBC will be highlighted, as well as the development of an additional institutional model aimed at the life sciences, and a state-system model of faculty diversification with support from a NSF Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) grant.

Professorial Advancement Initiative: A Cross-Institutional Collaboration to Increase Faculty Diversity in STEM

In this paper, we describe the model for faculty diversity developed as part of the Professorial Advancement Initiative (PAI) funded under the NSF AGEP program. The PAI, consisting of 12 of the 14 Big Ten Academic Alliance universities,1 had the goal of doubling the rate at which the universities hired tenure-track minoritized faculty, defined by National Science Foundation as African Americans, Hispanic/Latinx, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. This paper reviews the key programmatic elements of the PAI and discusses lessons learned and the practices developed that helped the Alliance achieve its faculty diversity goal.

APSA Graduate Placement Report: Analysis of Political Science Placements for 2018-2020

The Graduate Placement Report details findings on political science placements for the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years, preceding and during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. More candidates, specifically candidates from top National Research Council (NRC)-ranked institutions found first placements in contingent academic positions, still indicating an alteration to the most desirable placement path, with a post-doc or research position immediately after receipt of a PhD. Having a PhD, and full funding are strong determinants of placement. Men and non-URMs continue to take full-time post-doc positions as their first placements. There were more URMs and women in tenure-track positions in 2019-2020 than in 2018-2019. There was an overall increase in the number of candidates who did not find placement during the 2019-2020 academic year, which can most likely be attributed to impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and a lower than usual response rate.