COLUMN: Down the tenure track

From Edward Sherwin's, "The Lower Frequencies," Fall '00 From Edward Sherwin's, "The Lower Frequencies," Fall '00History Professor Frederick Dickinson is a very happy man. Last year, however, that was far from the case. In the sixth year of his seven-year probationary period, Dickinson's tenure bid was denied by the School of Arts and Sciences. Coming into his seventh -- and potentially last -- year on the History Department faculty, Dickinson had two options. Dickinson chose the first option. And the second time around, his tenure file was strong enough for a committee of several deans and the provost to grant Dickinson tenure -- essentially, a promotion in rank and an offer of lifetime employment by the University. "It's good finally at 39 to have a secure job," the lanky, bearded academic quipped. "My mom is happy." Mrs. Dickinson certainly has a right to be pleased. Her son made it through what is becoming an increasingly difficult process for a young academic -- winning tenure at an Ivy League university. Already, schools like Harvard and Yale offer little hope to junior faculty looking for job security. In SAS, where 80 percent of professors are tenured, only one in two at the junior level are granted tenure by the University. But over the last few years, steady faculty sizes and an exploding number of newly minted Ph.D.s have combined to raise the bar for those hoping to make it down the tenure track. Dickinson's case is illustrative of the new realities of the tenure process and the pressures faced by junior faculty. Last year, during his first bid for tenure, Dickinson's file was looking pretty sparse. His first book was at the publisher but not yet on the shelves. And because he had been in Japan for a whole year earlier, few Penn students wrote in on his behalf. Going into this academic year, Dickinson's prospects were looking better. His book was released in September and a few chapters of his next book were ready for review. And student evaluations -- which Dickinson admits were subpar during his first years at Penn -- got a lot better. Still, he was hardly a lock. Privately, one tenured History faculty member said that Dickinson's tenure case was too close to call. Dickinson, too, concedes that he was unsure enough to put out feelers to other schools in case he found himself back on the job market. "I was afraid there for a minute that Penn was trying to become a Yale or Harvard," he said, referring to schools where it is nearly impossible to win tenure. But now, he added, "That's absolutely not the case." Dickinson is quick to give much of the credit for his appointment to his students, whose evaluations of his teaching got consistently better over his years at Penn. "The impression I was given was [that] the letters were much different the second time around," he said. "The lesson from that is that students do matter." Still, the biggest difference between Dickinson's rejection last year and his acceptance this year has to be in his research -- still the No. 1 component of any tenure file. It used to be that a completed manuscript could earn a young scholar tenure. Now, administrators say, it may take two books -- or at least the one whole book, several chapters of a second and handful of journal articles that Dickinson submitted -- to make it past a tenure review panel. The facts that teaching evaluations do matter more and that the standards for scholarship have risen as much as they have can make any junior prof go crazy. Part of the problem is that, at Penn at least, the tenure process is not very transparent and there are few clear guidelines. Service to the school -- committee memberships, student advising, etc. -- can help a faculty member get tenure. But figuring out how much that counts versus, say, an extra peer-reviewed article is a difficult calculus indeed. "The pressures are pretty intense," Dickinson said, evidencing the neurosis of one who's been forced to jump through these academic hoops. "It's tough as an assistant professor to feel at every point that you must prove yourself in everything you do. You always wonder if you're doing the right thing -- and who's watching."