The assistant professor was shocked. For six years on the tenure track, all the assessments of his work had been positive--or at least not negative. His annual evaluations rated him consistently good or better on teaching, service, and research. The sparse written comments from his chair were in the vein of "you are doing what you need to do." The…

The academic conference is stereotyped in popular culture--not without cause--as a confluence of the bizarre and the boring. But for faculty members, especially those on the tenure-and-promotion track, learning how to get the most out of those meetings has become an essential skill. Even for doctoral students who, once upon a time, did not need to…

In this article, the author talks about the tenure process of being a professor which can be gloomy for assistant professors as they share a common culture of the joyless quest for promotion and tenure. Life as an assistant professor has its bleak moments; however, the downbeat cosmology is, in the end, dysfunctional and hurts more than it…