Rebounding on the Tenure Track: Carving Out a Place of Your Own in the Academy

Typically, this decision is made under the advisement of scholars from outside the department who are trusted arbiters in the discipline, and after the untenured faculty member completes a probationary period of five to 10 years (Adams 2007, 78; Alleman, Nelson, and Allen 2017).6 In their working paper on how individuals cope with the aftereffects of being denied tenure, Nathan F. Alleman and his colleagues report that although approximately one in five tenure-eligible-faculty are denied each year (with variation by field, discipline, institutions and other factors), scholarship on negative outcomes of the tenure process is unsystematic and rare (Alleman et al. 2017). Women and men earn doctorates at about the same rate, but the academic ranks remain disproportionately male (Schuster and Finkelstein 2006 and disproportionately white (Katz and Belo-Osage 2016, 13), particularly in full time and leadership positions.9 At HWIs, challenging institutional conditions such as the absence of role models or intellectual community, or the weight of hostile climates are often unrecognized or discounted by department and college leadership. Faculty of color are asked to provide a rationale for attending conferences where the experiences of people of color are centered, in addition to the major conferences in their disciplines.10 The time we spend in African American, Latino, Asian American, or Women’s and Gender Studies is questioned as a preference—and often viewed as a distraction— rather than recognized as key to intellectual development and soul-saving (Few-Demo et al. 2016).11 My experiences are not universal, but the experiences of others and the numbers suggest that some of you will find yourselves in similar circumstances. The department had a multi-layered mentoring program for junior faculty, and every year, faculty are reviewed in a fashion that signals progress toward tenure or promotion (see Alex-Assensoh et al. 2005).12 My colleagues at Purdue valued the work that I do on race and politics and viewed my record as tenurable. [...]began what I call my French’s mustard years.