From the Desk of the Committee for Early-Career Anatomists
Molding nervousness into confidence: How to strategically plan for promotion and tenure
By Adam Wilson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Rush University
This commentary highlights some thoughts to consider as you plan your career trajectory for success in attaining promotion and tenure (P&T).
Suggestion 1: Familiarize yourself with your institution’s P&T guidelines and document all professional accomplishments/activities. The expectations for what constitutes excellence in the areas of teaching, research, service, and clinical practice can vary widely by institution. Becoming familiar with P&T procedures and dossier templates will help to ensure you collect and document the appropriate data. Excellence in one or more areas is evidenced through regular and detailed documentation which comes in a variety of forms including teaching portfolios, publications, service activity reports, etc. Throughout the 5 or 6 years leading up to P&T, it is best to over document your activities and accomplishments so that information is readily available when time comes to draft your dossier.
Suggestion 2: Busyness does not equal productivity. Productivity is typically measured through defensible documentation (e.g., awarded grants and publications), whereas busyness (e.g., time spent on numerous local committees) is more challenging to document because measures of effectiveness may not exist. “Busyness can look like productivity, it can feel like productivity, it might even enable productivity.” However, unlike busyness, productivity requires focus, strategic thinking, and often feeds into a larger plan/goal that relates to (or even defines) your career trajectory. Some like to say that “Busy people have many priorities. Productive people have few priorities. Busy people talk about how busy they are. Productive people let their results do the talking.”
Suggestion 3: Take advantage of ripe low-hanging fruit, but be selective. A robust dossier is often one that highlights the breadth of one’s activities and accomplishments. Put simply, the more line items on your CV/dossier the better. However, before capitalizing on opportunities (i.e., before saying ‘yes’), ask yourself, “Will this opportunity make a meaningful contribution to my CV/dossier?” And “Will this contribution carry substantial weight when reviewed by the P&T committee?” For example, serving as an interviewer for medical school applicants is likely to consume more time and carry less weight than serving on a national committee. That said, prioritize opportunities from highest to lowest yield. Metaphorically speaking, resist the temptation to pluck the most appealing fruit if the time commitment required to consume it limits the number of fruits you’re able to pluck from the tree of opportunity. Circling back to ‘Suggestion 2’ above, “Busy people say yes quickly. Productive people say yes slowly.”
Suggestion 4: Build rapport with regional and national colleagues. Eventually colleagues whom you may know well and those whom you may not know at all will be called upon to review and critically evaluate your dossier. As such, gradually developing a broad and diverse network of colleagues may prove advantageous when time comes for your chairman to request formal letters of endorsement and support. For those who are apprehensive about networking (myself included), try engaging in a national service related committee. I have personally found this to be one of the best forms of indirect networking because it forces interactions with colleagues at a national level in the context of a specific task or topic. This tactic often removes the pressure of needing to devise awkward conversation starters and allows you to get to know your colleagues in a more relaxed and informal way.
Suggestion 5: Create a unique and distinguishable brand. The basics of marketing 101 teach us that 1) marketing is an ongoing process, not a one-time project, and 2) marketing starts with product conception. Drafting your dossier requires that you market yourself and your accomplishments/work products. What is it you want to be known for, and what work product do you hope to produce/execute uniformly and consistently? In asking myself these questions, I decided I wanted to be known as a rigorous medical and anatomy education researcher. Hence, over the past five years, I have expanded my repertoire of educational research methodologies to demonstrate scholarly versatility in the area of educational measurement and evaluation. Simultaneously, I published 3 meta-analyses on anatomy education topics in an attempt to develop a recognizable and distinguishable brand of research. To fully develop this brand has taken the better part of 3 years reinforcing the notion that marketing is a continuous and ongoing process which should be thought through and started sooner rather than later. Creating a unique cohesive brand that reaches across the areas of teaching, research, and service will surely make for a strong dossier submission.
As anatomists we know very well that the whole is evaluated by exploring the sum of its parts. This is also true of how your record of accomplishments and activities will be reviewed and evaluated to determine whether you have earned promotion to the rank of associate professor with tenure. All of the parts matter, and the more you demonstrate productivity, achievement, and/or success across each part, the more versatile and accomplished you will appear to the committee. Though promotion with tenure may seem lightyears away, early strategic planning for this important milestone will undoubtedly help to reshape any apprehensions you may have into a calm confidence that you can and will succeed.
Note from the author: As a faculty member who is currently compiling a dossier for P&T, I can attest that having subscribed to these suggestions has given me confidence that I’m well positioned to meet my institution’s P&T expectations. I hope these suggestions will benefit you as well.
The quotes on busyness used throughout this commentary are from the website “Lifehack”.
Molding nervousness into confidence: How to strategically plan for promotion and tenure
By Adam Wilson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Rush University
This commentary highlights some thoughts to consider as you plan your career trajectory for success in attaining promotion and tenure (P&T).
Suggestion 1: Familiarize yourself with your institution’s P&T guidelines and document all professional accomplishments/activities. The expectations for what constitutes excellence in the areas of teaching, research, service, and clinical practice can vary widely by institution. Becoming familiar with P&T procedures and dossier templates will help to ensure you collect and document the appropriate data. Excellence in one or more areas is evidenced through regular and detailed documentation which comes in a variety of forms including teaching portfolios, publications, service activity reports, etc. Throughout the 5 or 6 years leading up to P&T, it is best to over document your activities and accomplishments so that information is readily available when time comes to draft your dossier.
Suggestion 2: Busyness does not equal productivity. Productivity is typically measured through defensible documentation (e.g., awarded grants and publications), whereas busyness (e.g., time spent on numerous local committees) is more challenging to document because measures of effectiveness may not exist. “Busyness can look like productivity, it can feel like productivity, it might even enable productivity.” However, unlike busyness, productivity requires focus, strategic thinking, and often feeds into a larger plan/goal that relates to (or even defines) your career trajectory. Some like to say that “Busy people have many priorities. Productive people have few priorities. Busy people talk about how busy they are. Productive people let their results do the talking.”
Suggestion 3: Take advantage of ripe low-hanging fruit, but be selective. A robust dossier is often one that highlights the breadth of one’s activities and accomplishments. Put simply, the more line items on your CV/dossier the better. However, before capitalizing on opportunities (i.e., before saying ‘yes’), ask yourself, “Will this opportunity make a meaningful contribution to my CV/dossier?” And “Will this contribution carry substantial weight when reviewed by the P&T committee?” For example, serving as an interviewer for medical school applicants is likely to consume more time and carry less weight than serving on a national committee. That said, prioritize opportunities from highest to lowest yield. Metaphorically speaking, resist the temptation to pluck the most appealing fruit if the time commitment required to consume it limits the number of fruits you’re able to pluck from the tree of opportunity. Circling back to ‘Suggestion 2’ above, “Busy people say yes quickly. Productive people say yes slowly.”
Suggestion 4: Build rapport with regional and national colleagues. Eventually colleagues whom you may know well and those whom you may not know at all will be called upon to review and critically evaluate your dossier. As such, gradually developing a broad and diverse network of colleagues may prove advantageous when time comes for your chairman to request formal letters of endorsement and support. For those who are apprehensive about networking (myself included), try engaging in a national service related committee. I have personally found this to be one of the best forms of indirect networking because it forces interactions with colleagues at a national level in the context of a specific task or topic. This tactic often removes the pressure of needing to devise awkward conversation starters and allows you to get to know your colleagues in a more relaxed and informal way.
Suggestion 5: Create a unique and distinguishable brand. The basics of marketing 101 teach us that 1) marketing is an ongoing process, not a one-time project, and 2) marketing starts with product conception. Drafting your dossier requires that you market yourself and your accomplishments/work products. What is it you want to be known for, and what work product do you hope to produce/execute uniformly and consistently? In asking myself these questions, I decided I wanted to be known as a rigorous medical and anatomy education researcher. Hence, over the past five years, I have expanded my repertoire of educational research methodologies to demonstrate scholarly versatility in the area of educational measurement and evaluation. Simultaneously, I published 3 meta-analyses on anatomy education topics in an attempt to develop a recognizable and distinguishable brand of research. To fully develop this brand has taken the better part of 3 years reinforcing the notion that marketing is a continuous and ongoing process which should be thought through and started sooner rather than later. Creating a unique cohesive brand that reaches across the areas of teaching, research, and service will surely make for a strong dossier submission.
As anatomists we know very well that the whole is evaluated by exploring the sum of its parts. This is also true of how your record of accomplishments and activities will be reviewed and evaluated to determine whether you have earned promotion to the rank of associate professor with tenure. All of the parts matter, and the more you demonstrate productivity, achievement, and/or success across each part, the more versatile and accomplished you will appear to the committee. Though promotion with tenure may seem lightyears away, early strategic planning for this important milestone will undoubtedly help to reshape any apprehensions you may have into a calm confidence that you can and will succeed.
Note from the author: As a faculty member who is currently compiling a dossier for P&T, I can attest that having subscribed to these suggestions has given me confidence that I’m well positioned to meet my institution’s P&T expectations. I hope these suggestions will benefit you as well.
The quotes on busyness used throughout this commentary are from the website “Lifehack”.
