{"id":427,"date":"2016-01-27T15:19:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T15:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/?p=427"},"modified":"2016-01-27T15:19:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T15:19:10","slug":"navigating-the-pre-tenure-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/2016\/01\/27\/navigating-the-pre-tenure-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating the pre-tenure years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lessons learned so far<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am just a couple of days away from starting my second semester as an Assistant Professor, and it seems like a good time to reflect on what I\u2019ve learned so far. First, a brief background. I received a PhD in Ecology and Evolution from Stony Brook University in April 2014. I began a postdoc at the University of Connecticut in June 2013 (yes, there is something wrong with that). And I started as an Assistant Professor at Pace University in Westchester, New York in September 2015. Pace is considered a \u201cNational University\u201d, with two campuses where almost 13,000 students attend classes. There is a strong emphasis on undergraduate education, but there are several masters and a few doctorate granting programs. The faculty are expected to have active scholarship\/research, but we are not an R1 university. My teaching load is essentially 9 credit hours a semester, provided I\u2019m scholarship active, but the way it gets counted means its unlikely that I, or many other faculty, will have to \u201cprep\u201d three full courses. In short, I teach a lot more than the faculty at Stony Brook or UConn did, but less than many other places. Like many universities, Pace has a fairly traditional tenure system. In my sixth year I will be given a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and proceed one way or another from there. In terms of what I\u2019ll be evaluated on, the simplest way to describe it is 40% scholarship, 40% teaching, and 20% service. In terms of reaching those goals, here\u2019s what I think I\u2019ve learned so far.<\/p>\n

I need to schedule time for research and writing<\/strong> \u2013 I\u2019ve seen this advice in countless places, and even tried to implement it as a grad student to some degree. For me, it\u2019s vital that I set aside time each day and block it off as if it is a class I have to teach, because \u2026<\/p>\n

There are always more meetings to attend<\/strong> \u2013 Whether it\u2019s a faculty meeting, a curriculum committee meeting, a student advising meeting, there is always another meeting waiting for me. This is one of the things that surprised me most about becoming faculty, and I think this is partly because Pace is relatively small, and my department is particularly small (four faculty member). If there is a \u201cdepartmental committee\u201d, we are essentially all involved. Also I\u2019ve attended many meetings offered by the university administration on topics such as syllabus development, grant writing, and advising undergraduates through our core requirements. You might think, \u201cwell, I know how to write grants, so why would I go to that meeting?\u201d, but each institution has quirks about how grants get submitted, what overhead is charged on, or how much review they want to do on your budget before submission. I think it\u2019s important to learn the institutional policies to be successful. And to be frank, attending these types of meetings helps people recognize your face.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fueling my research right now, and that\u2019s ok<\/strong> \u2013 Research\/scholarship is important where ever you are. It keeps you connected with your areas of expertise. It inspires your teaching. And if you\u2019re early career, you need to demonstrate scholarship for tenure, promotions, and staying competitive for other jobs. That said, by the time you have landed a faculty job, you are probably a pretty good independent researcher. I don\u2019t absolutely need students in my lab, so I\u2019m doing my research on my own and with mostly previous collaborators. I was advised to do this from a more experience faculty member, who suggested that I establish my reputation locally and let the lab grow organically. I\u2019m looking forward to mentoring students on research related to my own in the years to come, but for now, the research I\u2019m doing is sans<\/em> students.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know what expectations to have of your students<\/strong> \u2013 In other words, assessment is difficult. Prior to coming to Pace, I\u2019ve never been the \u201cinstructor of record\u201d for a course, nor had I designed a full course from scratch. The greatest challenge I\u2019ve had is not in deciding course content, putting together slides decks, or setting up class activities, it\u2019s been in figuring out appropriate ways to assess my students learning. From a purely self-serving perspective, this is important with respect to my tenure package. I need to demonstrate \u201cTeaching Excellence\u201d, which in part means demonstrating adequate assessment \u2013 my students shouldn\u2019t all be failing, but they also shouldn\u2019t all be getting A\u2019s. For the spring semester, I\u2019m putting a lot more time into thinking about how to assess my students and trying to come up with objective ways that aren\u2019t simply exams. But for now \u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sticking to my syllabus when it comes to assessment<\/strong> \u2013 I\u2019ve gotten to the end of the semester. I\u2019ve finished my grading. And my students all far exceeded my expectations. How did I grade them? I followed my syllabus and rubric strictly. Sure, my students received high grades, but I\u2019m comfortable with that because in the end, the syllabus and rubric act as an agreement between me and my students, and it\u2019s my opinion that I shouldn\u2019t change my expectations after the fact. As an early career professor, I\u2019m learning, and next year I\u2019ll have new expectations. I just hope to not swing to far the other direction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matt Aiello-Lammens is assistant professor and interim director of the graduate program in Environmental Science at Pace University. He\u2019s currently focusing on quantitative ecology and plant ecology, becoming a better teacher and mentor, and bringing his 15-month-old daughter to beautiful places outside.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lessons learned so far I am just a couple of days away from starting my second semester as an Assistant Professor, and it seems like a good time to reflect on what I\u2019ve learned so far. First, a brief background. I received a PhD in Ecology and Evolution from Stony Brook University in April 2014. I began a postdoc at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,16,17],"tags":[31,32,38,68,71,75,77,78],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-early-career","category-research","category-teaching","category-tenure-track","tag-career","tag-challenges","tag-curriculum","tag-promotion","tag-scholarship","tag-students","tag-teaching","tag-tenure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/earlycareer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}