State of the Profession: Tenure in Hand

By Martin D. Snyder

Most of us probably do not read our undergraduate alumni magazines very carefully. Studies indicate that the typical reader scans the class notes to check who has moved, married, retired, or passed away and then adds the magazine to the eternal pile of reading to be gotten to later. I claim no exception to the rule, but the lead article in the summer 2004 Loyola College in Maryland magazine did attract my special attention. The article, entitled "Realm of Possibility," recounted the reactions of six recently tenured faculty members to their new status.

There has been a lot of bad news about tenure in the past few years. We have all read the stories about diminishing numbers of new tenure appointments, the replacement of tenure-track lines with term contract positions, the ratcheting up of tenure standards with impossible publication expectations, and the charges that deeply flawed tenure processes discriminate against women and ethnic minorities. Thus, it was reassuring to come upon an article about real faculty at a real college where tenure seems to be doing just fine.

Tenure, the Loyola article noted, is not a security blanket for a faculty member. "It is an academic milestone that carries with it daunting demands and challenges, yet also exciting opportunities and possibilities." The six featured faculty members saw tenure not as an end in itself but as the means that gave them the academic freedom "to pursue new avenues of teaching, research, and service to the College and to their academic disciplines."

All six credited their senior peers and department chairpersons with helping to ease the tenure process. Neena Din, associate professor of biology, said, "I needed a lot of help from people in the department. They and women from other departments were great mentors for me." But even with such help, said Joanne Li, associate professor of finance, "it's still a lonely process in some ways." Li is keenly aware of how much she owes to others. "The main challenge of a newly tenured person is to grow and evolve in a leadership role. Eventually you will pay back the debt for what people have helped you accomplish in the past by helping whoever comes after you," she said.

Having spent six years in the complex and all-consuming endeavor to attain their goal, the newly tenured faculty expressed a sense of exhilaration and liberation. Richard Klink, associate professor of marketing, felt free to be "more creative in his approach to teaching and scholarship." He noted, "I think you can be a little bit more of a risk taker." The Reverend Kevin Gillespie, S.J., now a tenured member of the pastoral counseling department, chose a sports metaphor to explain. "You're a starting pitcher now; in the rotation," he said. "I'm choosing my pitches, whereas before tenure, other people were calling the signals." Li employed a different image. "You also feel more comfortable in your environment," she said, "so you're in a position where you can actually let your potential blossom."

Of course, along with the freedom of tenure comes the responsibility. Newly tenured faculty members, the article notes, are the building blocks of the future. "We're really counting on them for the next 20 or 30 years," remarked Lee Dahringer, dean of the college's school of business and management. "It's a major investment we're making in intellectual capital. How they perform over the next 20 years will directly define the quality of our programs."

Juggling the components of their careers—teaching, research, and service—is a daunting challenge for newly tenured faculty. Gerard Athaide, associate professor of marketing, with careful planning and by taking advantage of "opportunities in the academic calendar," manages to balance his responsibilities. Writing in the summer, he devotes the academic year primarily to teaching and service. He and his newly tenured colleagues bring love of their work and students into the classroom and to their scholarship. For them being tenured means conveying their own love of teaching, learning, and scholarship to their students. Juniper Ellis, associate professor of English, put it this way: "I think that one of my goals as a tenured faculty member working with students is to try and help others find a path that they can love and thrive in as much as I do in my own."

So it seems that tenure is not quite so dated and irrelevant as its critics claim. The tenuring of six faculty members at a small Jesuit college in Baltimore probably garnered no headlines. But the Loyola experience, in its own small but convincing way, demonstrates a simple fact: tenure works.

Martin Snyder is AAUP director of planning and development.

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