I am pulling together my case for a step promotion. Currently, I'm an associate professor. At my university, we have steps within each major category, and I can't remember the details but it is something like four or five steps within each category, until you are a full professor and then can go off-scale as you keep moving up. The HR person in my department recommended that I put my case in for a step promotion this year, as then when I go up for full, I'll be at the highest associate pay level, and my full professor salary will be a little bit higher as I move through those steps.
This makes a lot of sense, and I am grateful that the HR person went to the trouble to "strategerize" for me. But the whole process brings me immense angst. And it takes so much time.
I could also put in for promotion to full, but I am not ready. I could possibly get it with my current track record, but I don't think it'd be a slam dunk by any measure.
See, I had a serious mid-career stumble.
Not sure if any of you have read my blog for long enough, or remember the occasions when I've mentioned what happened to me, but my tenure case was mishandled by my dept chair, terribly. So bad, in fact, that I ended up being invited to a one-on-one lunch with our Chancellor so that he could apologize (and attempt to keep me from getting a lawyer).
And then, the next year, the chair of my dept followed none of the equity officer's instructions for attempting to reconcile the situation. In fact, he ostracized me -- no departmental committee assignments, nothing.
The next year, I was well positioned to co-PI a proposal to NIH that would fund a part of my research program that I had very specifically moved to this university to do -- and had invested just about all of my start-up funds to get myself established. I had cobbled together shared lab space and equipment, and made it work, and well. But then it was time to move it up a notch with external funding -- I was ready. I talked to the Dean and explained that there was absolutely no way that I could do the to-be-proposed work in the cramped shared lab space that I had been using (in which I had recently suffered significant contamination issues that lost 5 months of work). I have/had absolutely the smallest lab space in my department, and yet, at the time, I had one of the bigger labs in terms of students and postdocs. But what did he say? I will quote:
"You'd be amazed what you can do in a closet."
"All of us are replaceable."
"If you don't like it, you can leave."
And so, I did interview elsewhere. But you know, it was really, really unfair to tell me to get an outside offer or else my needs wouldn't even be considered. See, I'm married to a much more senior faculty member who is well established, and would be extremely expensive and difficult to move. Very few universities could pony up the money to even come close to what he's got here. And the Dean knew this. So, he basically told me to go screw myself 'cause he knew he didn't have to do anything for me. In fact, you know what he said, "The University doesn't actually care whether or not you do good research. That's your problem, not mine."
That's BS. Good research is all that I'm evaluated on. So what he was telling me is that faculty have to fight the system in order to do good research, as the university isn't going to make it easy in the slightest. And it is even harder for me, as I have no bargaining power given my married-life situation.
By this point, I was so beaten down that I seriously looked for jobs outside of academia. I'm in a really competitive and nasty discipline, and so I was getting nastiness from every direction I turned. There is really only so much of that that I can take.
From a personal perspective, life got so much better when I had my daughter. I took a significant mental break from my career. My lab kept running and all of that, but I had lost the fire in my belly. Things hobbled along, but only hobbled. That isn't the expected pace at an R1 university. But I had tenure already, so fuck it. I really needed the break.
And so here I am, getting my umph back, but nowhere near what I used to be. I found peace through my family, through the university-level service I've gotten involved with (and it's been a lot, but worth it as I've met some really inspirational faculty from other departments), and through focusing on the students in my lab. This isn't the behavior and priorities that make superstar academics, but in my case, it has made me a much happier one.
About a month ago a colleague came through town. I don't know her well at all personally, in fact I don't think we'd ever actually spoken to each other specifically but know each other's work quite well. She's a few years behind me professionally, and is a superstar. One of those people who would be easy to dislike 'cause she's really made a name for herself, but who I have lots of respect for because she has been really creative and worked really hard. I think she totally deserves her kudos.
When she was in town, we had dinner. Just the two of us, and talked for hours.
She is coming close to going up for tenure at an Ivy league university. One of the ones that just about never actually gives tenure. And she's had some political disharmony with people in her department, and is pretty sure that she'll need to leave. She's very disgruntled, and unhappy with her departmental colleagues and how she's been treated by past very senior colleagues who should have felt mentor-y to her, and given some other professional crappola that she's dealt with, she's in the place I was a few years ago. Completely disenchanted with high-level academia.
As I am pulling my promotion case materials together, all of my bad feelings are returning to the surface. Over the last three years, I closed down half of my research project because, despite what the dean said, I really can't do that part of my work in shared closet space, especially under the new EH&S safety rules and moving more and more of the responsibility onto faculty shoulders. If I have to bear full responsibility, I want full control over the space. So I shut down an extremely exciting research program. I gave the work away, the ideas, the people. They are now in my competitors' labs. And me? I'm back to more traditional research, work that I do overseas. I am disgruntled about this, as now that I have a small child, I really would prefer to be focusing on the lab work and not the field work, but I've been forced to focus on the latter. I'm good at it, but it isn't where my passion lies, and so I have dragged my feet on the work. I have about 12 publications from that work waiting to be completed. And I need to submit for another grant, but given how little I want to invest the months and months of time away from home on one of those projects, I can't bring myself to do it.
(I recently gave a talk to a research group on campus and a recently hired senior hot-shot professor, who had been incredibly dismissive of me, came up to me after, shell-shocked with awe over how interesting he thinks my work is. But of course, half of that work is over, and not being followed-up on because I was given absolutely no support by the chair or the dean. I didn't get into it with him, as we both had other meetings to go to, but he makes me feel so, well, I guess bitter and jaded.)
And so I'm not ready to go up for full professor. I'll do it in a couple of years. But I will do the step promotion, but I'm stewing as I pull my case together, revisiting past wrongs.
And I keep thinking of what my colleague had talked about with her own situation.
How many professors go through this? I wonder if it is more common at some universities than at others. Are some places more nurturing, so that the fire-in-the-belly continues? Or are all places this demoralizing? Is it just places that consider themselves "elite"? Is it discipline-specific? Is it male or female specific? I don't get into such personal conversations with many of my colleagues. These kinds of things are things we never confess to -- it looks weak. It is contrary to who we are supposed to be. But maybe most of us go through this? I don't know.
It makes me sad. Two very promising fire-in-the-belly women completely demoralized by assholes. It isn't so much the family issues that have made us stumble, its the assholes we have had to deal with. I don't see studies referring to this as the reason why so many women in academia stumble mid-career, take longer to get to promotions, leave academia, etc. But my guess is that it is a significant factor.
This makes a lot of sense, and I am grateful that the HR person went to the trouble to "strategerize" for me. But the whole process brings me immense angst. And it takes so much time.
I could also put in for promotion to full, but I am not ready. I could possibly get it with my current track record, but I don't think it'd be a slam dunk by any measure.
See, I had a serious mid-career stumble.
Not sure if any of you have read my blog for long enough, or remember the occasions when I've mentioned what happened to me, but my tenure case was mishandled by my dept chair, terribly. So bad, in fact, that I ended up being invited to a one-on-one lunch with our Chancellor so that he could apologize (and attempt to keep me from getting a lawyer).
And then, the next year, the chair of my dept followed none of the equity officer's instructions for attempting to reconcile the situation. In fact, he ostracized me -- no departmental committee assignments, nothing.
The next year, I was well positioned to co-PI a proposal to NIH that would fund a part of my research program that I had very specifically moved to this university to do -- and had invested just about all of my start-up funds to get myself established. I had cobbled together shared lab space and equipment, and made it work, and well. But then it was time to move it up a notch with external funding -- I was ready. I talked to the Dean and explained that there was absolutely no way that I could do the to-be-proposed work in the cramped shared lab space that I had been using (in which I had recently suffered significant contamination issues that lost 5 months of work). I have/had absolutely the smallest lab space in my department, and yet, at the time, I had one of the bigger labs in terms of students and postdocs. But what did he say? I will quote:
"You'd be amazed what you can do in a closet."
"All of us are replaceable."
"If you don't like it, you can leave."
And so, I did interview elsewhere. But you know, it was really, really unfair to tell me to get an outside offer or else my needs wouldn't even be considered. See, I'm married to a much more senior faculty member who is well established, and would be extremely expensive and difficult to move. Very few universities could pony up the money to even come close to what he's got here. And the Dean knew this. So, he basically told me to go screw myself 'cause he knew he didn't have to do anything for me. In fact, you know what he said, "The University doesn't actually care whether or not you do good research. That's your problem, not mine."
That's BS. Good research is all that I'm evaluated on. So what he was telling me is that faculty have to fight the system in order to do good research, as the university isn't going to make it easy in the slightest. And it is even harder for me, as I have no bargaining power given my married-life situation.
By this point, I was so beaten down that I seriously looked for jobs outside of academia. I'm in a really competitive and nasty discipline, and so I was getting nastiness from every direction I turned. There is really only so much of that that I can take.
From a personal perspective, life got so much better when I had my daughter. I took a significant mental break from my career. My lab kept running and all of that, but I had lost the fire in my belly. Things hobbled along, but only hobbled. That isn't the expected pace at an R1 university. But I had tenure already, so fuck it. I really needed the break.
And so here I am, getting my umph back, but nowhere near what I used to be. I found peace through my family, through the university-level service I've gotten involved with (and it's been a lot, but worth it as I've met some really inspirational faculty from other departments), and through focusing on the students in my lab. This isn't the behavior and priorities that make superstar academics, but in my case, it has made me a much happier one.
About a month ago a colleague came through town. I don't know her well at all personally, in fact I don't think we'd ever actually spoken to each other specifically but know each other's work quite well. She's a few years behind me professionally, and is a superstar. One of those people who would be easy to dislike 'cause she's really made a name for herself, but who I have lots of respect for because she has been really creative and worked really hard. I think she totally deserves her kudos.
When she was in town, we had dinner. Just the two of us, and talked for hours.
She is coming close to going up for tenure at an Ivy league university. One of the ones that just about never actually gives tenure. And she's had some political disharmony with people in her department, and is pretty sure that she'll need to leave. She's very disgruntled, and unhappy with her departmental colleagues and how she's been treated by past very senior colleagues who should have felt mentor-y to her, and given some other professional crappola that she's dealt with, she's in the place I was a few years ago. Completely disenchanted with high-level academia.
As I am pulling my promotion case materials together, all of my bad feelings are returning to the surface. Over the last three years, I closed down half of my research project because, despite what the dean said, I really can't do that part of my work in shared closet space, especially under the new EH&S safety rules and moving more and more of the responsibility onto faculty shoulders. If I have to bear full responsibility, I want full control over the space. So I shut down an extremely exciting research program. I gave the work away, the ideas, the people. They are now in my competitors' labs. And me? I'm back to more traditional research, work that I do overseas. I am disgruntled about this, as now that I have a small child, I really would prefer to be focusing on the lab work and not the field work, but I've been forced to focus on the latter. I'm good at it, but it isn't where my passion lies, and so I have dragged my feet on the work. I have about 12 publications from that work waiting to be completed. And I need to submit for another grant, but given how little I want to invest the months and months of time away from home on one of those projects, I can't bring myself to do it.
(I recently gave a talk to a research group on campus and a recently hired senior hot-shot professor, who had been incredibly dismissive of me, came up to me after, shell-shocked with awe over how interesting he thinks my work is. But of course, half of that work is over, and not being followed-up on because I was given absolutely no support by the chair or the dean. I didn't get into it with him, as we both had other meetings to go to, but he makes me feel so, well, I guess bitter and jaded.)
And so I'm not ready to go up for full professor. I'll do it in a couple of years. But I will do the step promotion, but I'm stewing as I pull my case together, revisiting past wrongs.
And I keep thinking of what my colleague had talked about with her own situation.
How many professors go through this? I wonder if it is more common at some universities than at others. Are some places more nurturing, so that the fire-in-the-belly continues? Or are all places this demoralizing? Is it just places that consider themselves "elite"? Is it discipline-specific? Is it male or female specific? I don't get into such personal conversations with many of my colleagues. These kinds of things are things we never confess to -- it looks weak. It is contrary to who we are supposed to be. But maybe most of us go through this? I don't know.
It makes me sad. Two very promising fire-in-the-belly women completely demoralized by assholes. It isn't so much the family issues that have made us stumble, its the assholes we have had to deal with. I don't see studies referring to this as the reason why so many women in academia stumble mid-career, take longer to get to promotions, leave academia, etc. But my guess is that it is a significant factor.
Ugh... My department has been pretty supportive, I have to say, but to a degree. For instance, I think my department Chair may have decided where my place would be and it's of a valuable workhorse, but not a superstar, and that pisses me off. I do theory so I don't need a lot of money, and I have decided to lay low on the service, keep my mouth shut, cut back on collaborations, and just work my heart out with my students and spend time reading, writing, and learning.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you that my fire in the belly had all but extinguished but I am finding it all over again, so I am confident you might too. It's not gone, just temporarily suffocated by crap. Let me ask you: can the chair actually make your life any worse? What would be the penalty for just starting to pester him without mercy about space? He already thinks you are the shit on his shoe, which I suppose could be liberating if you have nothing to lose. Could you in fact go legal on him? Could you just incessantly bother him until he totally flips out? Do you have allies in the department or outside of it? Perhaps your DH would consider a move elsewhere, have you asked him? Perhaps your DH could go intervene for space from the chair? If everyone already thinks you are DH's appendage, you might as well profit from it, right?
It's all about you and your science, and perhaps there could be space elsewhere for you? Another department, another lab (in the Hills perhaps)? Could you do more theoretical work?
No matter what you decide, stay strong. It can get better.
Btw, if you ever need to chat, we can connect IRL. Let me know.
ReplyDeleteThere are more supportive environments. It probably varies from discipline to discipline, but most of the physical sciences here at my uni seem to be reasonably functional, with college-level administration wanting success of their faculty. If you don't mind the cold, maybe you and DH can head over here to the University of Academic Jungle?
OH. I don't think I'd ever read this full story. How incredibly infuriating. And how borderline ILLEGAL.
ReplyDeleteI do think that this is a gendered problem. I don't think your chair would have said the same thing to a man. I've seen more and more women leave academe because they've been more or less crushed by situations like this. How long does it have to go on before something changes?! Reading this makes me angry for you all over again.
Great to find your blog, and wishes for fast and permanent improvements in the political climate of your dept.
ReplyDelete