Looks like I'll be sticking around...

About a week ago, I got a letter from the University's president, informing me that I have been awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. Pretty awesome news.

Portfolio: update

A follow-up to that post from last October: I got my third-year review portfolio back yesterday and everything looks good. My favorite line of feedback was the one that predicted, given what they've seen so far, there are "no obstacles to tenure." Yay.

Portfolio: done!

For those of you keeping score at home, check another item off my huge Fall 2009 semester to-do list. This morning I handed in my pre-tenure review portfolio (also known as "third-year review portfolio").

It actually was a pretty easy process--time-consuming, I suppose, but not all that difficult since I've been saving and organizing all the materials from day one here at Shepherd. (That's a piece of advice to all my friends who are also in new academic jobs--be pack-rats! Save thank-you notes and emails, fliers with your name on them, write-ups in local papers, etc.)

Incidentally, I think part of the reason the process was relatively pain-free is because at UNCG, we were encouraged to create and constantly update our teaching portfolios. The pre-tenure portfolio is a lot like a teaching portfolio, but with sections about your scholarship and service, as well. Anyway, just another reason I am glad to have gotten my degrees at UNCG.

Now...back to work on that SSAWW paper!

Also, someone please explain to me why in the last week or so I agreed to A) serve as a reader for a manuscript submitted to a journal (I can't say which journal) and B) write two introductory essays for an anthology? I might never get out of this hole...but that's okay.

And one book to write...

How do you write a book when teaching a 4/4 load? Well, this article over at the Chronicle has some good advice. Like the author of this piece, I don't need a book to get tenure. But I want to write one. I want to publish more because I like doing it. The problem is, as he explains, finding the time. I've been trying my best to get work done on my book, but it sure is hard. I've found that when I set aside certain afternoons for my writing, they tend to get hijacked by meetings or grading. If only I could give up teaching for the first summer session, but it's too hard to resist the money, however tiny the amount is...

Year 2 on the Tenure Track...

Since I find myself in the same position as the folks in this column, I feel pretty comfortable calling them a bunch of complainers. Yes, there are lots more responsibilities this year and yes, I never seem to have as much time for my research as I would like, but things still get done on each front (teaching, service, and scholarship) and I still love my job. Seriously.

Chasing tenure...

An interesting (and pretty idealistic) column up at insidehighered.com. The columnist's premise: "Stop trying to get tenure and start trying to enjoy life." (That's a rather simplistic summation, of course.)