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My tenure denial

I was denied tenure at Oregon State University (OSU). This page is basically me processing that fact.

I’m sharing it on the internet because it’s a taboo subject in academia that you mostly only hear about after someone is successful again at another university or in another context. I am not yet successful again! I am in the midst of a major life and career crisis here! If you are too, maybe the fact that someone else is going through this helps you in some way.

There’s also an element of self-preservation to sharing this publicly. When you’re denied tenure, people wonder why. If your record looks OK, they might reasonably wonder if you were denied because of an ethical violation of some kind. I wasn’t, and writing about what happened will hopefully help curb such speculation.

How the tenure process works

Since I’m sharing this with friends, family, and students who may not know how the tenure process works (and why I can’t just apply again next year), here’s a quick summary.

At most universities in the US and Canada, new professors are hired on a probationary basis as so-called “assistant professors”. During your sixth year, you undergo a major evaluation, the outcome of which determines whether you: (1) get promoted to “associate professor” with tenure and have a mostly guaranteed job for the rest of your life, or (2) get fired.

If you get denied tenure, that’s it. You have one year to tidy up loose ends, help your grad students finish their degrees if you can, then you leave to find a new job.

The promotion and tenure evaluation process involves dozens of people, including external reviewers from other universities (or sometimes industry) within your research area, a committee within your department that spends a significant amount of time evaluating your case, all of the tenured faculty within your department who vote based on the findings of the department committee, and multiple committees at higher levels of the university.

The evaluation ostensibly focuses on all aspects of being a professor. This includes research productivity (papers and grants) and research impact, teaching quality, service to the university, service to your research community, and contributions to diversity and inclusion in the university and in your field. In practice, however, research productivity and impact tends to dominate the evaluation at R1 universities like OSU.

Some of the details and timelines vary across universities, but the model described above is how it works at OSU and is very typical.

How and why I was denied tenure

TODO

For now, here is my letter requesting a grievance hearing, which contains my side of the story as of September 2020. I know more details about what happened now, thanks to information I was granted as a result of this grievance process, which I’ll describe when I write this section later.

What it feels like

Really terrible! Here’s a sample:

• Embarrassed. Getting denied tenure is somewhat rare,¹ so it’s extremely embarrassing both professionally and personally.

  I am friends with many of my colleagues that were on the same tenure-track timeline as me, both within my department and across the university. The university makes a big deal of celebrating all of the newly tenured faculty. I am unreservedly happy for them, but it’s also painful to see everyone celebrated without me. Like, from the university’s perspective, I did nothing worth celebrating in the last six years and they’re ashamed to have had me there at all!

  I am well-known in my little research niches and have a huge network of friends, collaborators, and acquaintances around the world. They will soon find out (possibly by reading this) that I was denied tenure. They know that it’s rare and some will probably lose some respect for me and my work.

  My family and my in-laws were proud of the fact that I was a professor. Nobody in my family even knew a professor before me. I was a first-generation college student and “professor” is a high-prestige job that they were proud of me for, and which I now failed at.

• Isolated. Because tenure denial is rare and embarrassing, it’s also a bit taboo. There’s no announcement of tenure denials, just an announcement of those that were promoted and awarded tenure; the denials (me) to be inferred by omission.

  Surprisingly few people reached out to me after the announcement. I suspect many were trying to avoid prodding an open wound (and I certainly don’t hold it against anyone), but the effect combined with self-isolating during a pandemic left me feeling very isolated from the rest of my colleagues. I am profoundly thankful to those who did reach out.

  However, the feeling of isolation started well before the final announcement. In February, when I got the negative recommendation from the College, I only told my wife and a small handful of friends and senior colleagues whose advice I sought. For the rest of the year, I felt like I had a dirty little secret that was impacting my behavior and motivation in subtle ways, but which I was too embarrassed to share.

• Angry. If I had received one more large grant, I almost certainly would have been awarded tenure. Given the arbitrariness of the funding process and that I came very close to winning multiple additional grants, it is maddening that this played such a major role in a decision that affects the rest of my life.

  Also, I poured my heart into making OSU the best place to work, teach, and learn. This is reflected in my work for the faculty union, additional outreach to students, and the significant effort I invested in teaching and all of my service obligations. None of this work was valued by the university at all. Through my grievance, I obtained transcripts of the University-level discussion of my P&T case where the decision to deny was made. Besides being full of frustrating factual errors, the most infuriating thing is that the following two sentences were the entire discussion about aspects of my case outside of research productivity: “His teaching reviews are very strong. He’s a good citizen.”

• Resentful. I was a strong faculty candidate coming out of graduate school and chose to come back to OSU as a faculty member because my wife and I love Corvallis and I loved OSU.

  I underestimated how much coming back would negatively affect my research career (despite accurate warnings from some senior colleagues in my research community). When you change institutions, you get a whole new set of people to collaborate with. Instead, I had only one other researcher in my area (my former advisor) whom I was recommended against collaborating with. Despite mostly not collaborating with him,² my supposed lack of independence was a factor in being denied tenure.

  Ultimately, I gave 13 years of my life to OSU and made career sacrifices to be there. I loved OSU and was proud to work there despite its occasional shortcomings (which I was trying to help address through our faculty union). Now I feel a profound resentment towards OSU for not valuing my contributions and rejecting me.

• Sad. I’m sad that I now resent an institution that I gave so much to and loved. I’m sad that my failure has been so disruptive to my wife, my students, and our friends. I’m sad that my wife and I now have to choose between my career and living the life that we’ve made for ourselves. If I want to stay in academia, we will have to leave Corvallis, a city that we love and that’s full of very dear friends, a place with 13 years worth of memories, a house that we’ve put years of sweat into making our own, and my wife’s job, which is rewarding and that she enjoys. We haven’t yet decided if that’s the route we’re taking, but the fact that we have to make it all is depressing.

What I could have done better

TODO

Things I’m proud of

TODO