Long hours of hard work in the lab and the library, nights spent drawing up lesson plans for the next day's classes, over 20 years of eduction -- all for the chance at a tenured position. It is the final hurdle to cross for a guaranteed lifetime job as an academic. It means that no matter how controversial your work is, no matter how much your department head or dean doesn't like you, none of it counts. And it shields professors and their work from the biases and opinions of their colleagues, their superiors and the outside world in general by making it almost impossible to fire them. Tenure comes about six years after an assistant professor is hired at Penn, granted only after a lengthy review process of research and teaching by administrators and professors alike. And if they like what they see, these professors are promoted to the tenured ranks -- meaning they have a job at Penn for life, barring serious infractions. But tenure is by no means an easy thing to acquire -- only half of School of Arts and Sciences professors reviewed for tenure receive it -- and sometimes, being a good, or even great, teacher is just not enough. Universities, especially ones such as Penn, are looking for more than dynamic personalities. The great research institutions are looking for scholars at the absolute top of their field, people who regularly publish and help to maintain the lofty reputation of their school. But some wonder if there are enough hours in the day to be both a scholar and a teacher, arguing that this might impede scholars working for tenure. The grueling demands of the system have met scrutiny. Popular young professors have been denied tenure to the shock of both their students and their colleagues. And the criticism that having a job for life may cause a professor to lose motivation has often been floated nationally. Yet administrators and faculty continue to defend the system, maintaining the need for academic freedom and charging that the tenure system is the only way to ensure that this freedom exists. And every day, for those pursuing tenure, the challenge of balancing research and teaching responsibilities, making it through the tough review process, and ultimately being granted the academic freedom that tenure affords remain on the forefront of their minds.
Striking the balance
Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Peter Struck has been at Penn for two years now. Struck says he is "boringly happy" right now, content working on his upcoming book -- which focuses on ancient ways to read Homer -- and teaching classes. But he says that he has already begun to think about tenure, even though he still has several years before his case will be considered. "I think there's a certain kind of productive nervousness," Struck said. And Struck is not the only young professor to know first hand the stress of the all-important tenure decision. Assistant Professor of History Jeffery Fear -- who withdrew his name from consideration after being given a job at the Harvard School of Business -- already endured most of Penn's tenure process. "It's one of the most stressful things you can go through, because you have all these people, some of who are your friends, some of who you've never met before [making the decision]," Fear said. He said it was hard to devote oneself to research and teaching simultaneously. A professor's research portfolio remains a crucial part of his tenure review -- requiring published work, whether it be based in work in a chemistry laboratory or an archaeological dig. And Provost Robert Barchi said that just because a professor is a good teacher and popular with students doesn't mean that a tenure grant is sure, if his or her research is not above par. "Teaching isn't enough," Barchi said. "We're not interested at Penn in having faculty members who are twentieth in their field." This, ultimately, has a huge affect on how those looking for tenure spend their time. "The biggest thing is balancing out teaching and scholarship," Fear said. Lisa Bolton, a Wharton Marketing assistant professor, also finds a challenge in balancing teaching and research. "It's difficult, there's no question about it," Bolton said, adding that "Wharton has very high standards regarding who gets tenure." And Struck also knows full well the time-commitment of juggling research and teaching duties, but he has figured out a schedule that he says allows him to spend enough time on both. "I get up at 5," he said. "I do all of my work from 5 till 9 in the morning, and then I can start the rest of the day. If I can put in a good three, four hours a day on my own research, that's how I try to do it." Struck says that research and teaching are by no means mutually exclusive endeavors. "I think that my teaching is much better as a productive researcher," he said. For Zhi-Long Chen, an engineering assistant professor, doing the majority of his research in the summer and devoting himself to teaching during the school year seems to be the most effective. But Chen did say that, for him at least, research is the priority. "Research is viewed as the most important factor," he said. "So the first priority will be research. And after that I think of teaching."
Making the cut
Over the past few years, there have been two notable cases in which very prominent and well-liked professors were denied tenure, leaving many students and faculty scratching their heads trying to figure out why. The first of these cases was that of Gregg Camfield, a popular English Professor denied tenure by the School of Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee in March of 1996. This was followed in 1997 by the rejection of Political Science Professor Daniel Deudney by the Provost's Staff Committee, despite the unanimous approval of his department. Today, Political Science Professor Avery Goldstein -- who originally criticized the University's decision -- acknowledges that there are several things involved in the tenure process that are simply out of the department's hands. "There are parts of the process that go beyond what we discussed in the department," Goldstein said. After being denied tenure, Camfield wrote a Daily Pennsylvanian guest column about the tenure process. Camfield -- now heading the honors program at the University of the Pacific -- called for "the development of clear, discipline-specific, publicly articulated standards for tenure" in his column. Today, Camfield says he still feels much the same way, saying that he was denied tenure because of the avant-garde nature of his research. "The fact of the matter is that my research is cutting edge, and it cut people," he said. "They [Penn] want it to be safe, they want it to be conventional." "Basically, the tenure process is trying to protect academic freedom, but, in fact, it makes for a very conservative process," Camfield said. And Camfield, who says that his current university has a much more open process, still maintains that the tenure process at Penn needs to be more open. "You're [professors at his current university] not wondering what happened, and you don't have to worry about some in the profession stabbing you in the back," he said. "All they [at Penn] do is trust this Star Chamber process." However, Classical Studies Professor and former Department Chairman Ralph Rosen says that, in his experience, the tenure system has been mostly fair. "The true, absolute injustices, when you just look at the file and say, 'you know, it just doesn't make sense [that the person was denied tenure,' I haven't seen too many," he said. And though Rosen admits the system is only "kind of, basically" working, he doubts that there is an alternative. "If a committee were drawn up to look at alternatives, I'd be interested to hear them," he said.
Reaching the Ranks
And if one gains the ultimate protection of tenure, professors argue that they now have the freedom to research without concern about how their colleagues, bosses and administrators will react. "I can't myself think of a good alternative on the assumption that you want some kind of security for academic freedom," Rosen said. Chairman of the English Department John Richetti agrees with Rosen about the need for academic freedom and security. "The pursuit of knowledge requires a degree of security from economic uncertainty," Richetti said. And while acknowledging arguments against tenure -- like the possibility of tenured professors developing "complacency [and] laziness" -- Richetti didn't feel that these concerns are always valid. "There are people like that, but many more are just driven," he said. And Struck definitely doesn't buy the idea that tenured professors could become less inclined to work after they are granted such great job security. "The funny thing about such arguments to me is that they don't take into account the personality of someone who gets tenure," Struck said. "I think part of what happens with this question is that it comes from the assumption that a job is just a check." Fear agreed with this assessment. "For the most part, people are at this level because it's what they love doing," he said. "It's part of your nature."
