Streaming Media

Start Date

3-17-2022 4:00 PM

End Date

3-17-2022 5:00 PM

Author(s) Bio

Danilelle Skaggs is the Online and Distance Services Librarian at West Chester University. She is an Associate Professor who has been on the tenure track at two different universities, and currently chairs her university-wide committee that provides training and advice for faculty on the tenure and promotion process. Rachel McMullin is the Humanities Librarian at West Chester University. She is currently an Associate Professor and recently submitted her application for promotion to Professor (which she won’t hear back on for months!). She has learned how to balance family, work, and scholarship while only feeling insane about 25% of the time. She also serves as her library’s evaluation committee chair.

Keywords

tenure, promotion

Description of Proposal

Whether you are a brand new librarian or have years of prior experience, becoming a tenure-track librarian is scary. You have to juggle scholarship and service with learning a new job. Throw in a strict timeline with a big portfolio due at the end, and the pressure can feel overwhelming. In this presentation, we will offer concrete advice to help librarians navigate the tenure and promotion process from beginning to end. As the tenure/promotion process can vary greatly from institution to institution, we will try to focus on advice that can be universally applied, like finding and carefully reading the documents that govern tenure at your institution. However, we will also focus on providing specific tips (vs broad suggestions) as much as possible. For instance we won’t just say ‘make time for scholarship’, but will also recommend how to be strategic with your professional responsibilities/job duties to make that time. The goal of the presentation will be for the participants to walk away with ideas relevant to having a tenure/promotion mindset and also a selection of strategies that they can start employing right away. Topics covered will include: getting the process started on the right foot, thinking about narratives, evidence, select tips for scholarship and service, and pulling it together.

Both presenters have been granted tenure and promotion at an institution where the library faculty go through the exact same process as the teaching faculty, so can speak to the challenge of maintaining scholarly and service agendas on par with non-librarian faculty. We also developed a team mentoring program in our library for our tenure-track librarians, so have a great deal of experience in supporting and encouraging those who are in the midst of the process.

Just a note-- if you happen to get other proposals related to tenure/promotion, we’d be happy to collaborate on a 50 minute group session!

What takeaways will attendees learn from your session?

We hope attendees will take away several things.

  • a strategic mindset related to the tenure and promotion process
  • a set of concrete steps to help them prepare for tenure
  • ideas for prioritizing scholarship and service

Download

Share

COinS
 
Mar 17th, 4:00 PM Mar 17th, 5:00 PM

Preparing for Tenure and Promotion: Advice from Some Survivors

Whether you are a brand new librarian or have years of prior experience, becoming a tenure-track librarian is scary. You have to juggle scholarship and service with learning a new job. Throw in a strict timeline with a big portfolio due at the end, and the pressure can feel overwhelming. In this presentation, we will offer concrete advice to help librarians navigate the tenure and promotion process from beginning to end. As the tenure/promotion process can vary greatly from institution to institution, we will try to focus on advice that can be universally applied, like finding and carefully reading the documents that govern tenure at your institution. However, we will also focus on providing specific tips (vs broad suggestions) as much as possible. For instance we won’t just say ‘make time for scholarship’, but will also recommend how to be strategic with your professional responsibilities/job duties to make that time. The goal of the presentation will be for the participants to walk away with ideas relevant to having a tenure/promotion mindset and also a selection of strategies that they can start employing right away. Topics covered will include: getting the process started on the right foot, thinking about narratives, evidence, select tips for scholarship and service, and pulling it together.

Both presenters have been granted tenure and promotion at an institution where the library faculty go through the exact same process as the teaching faculty, so can speak to the challenge of maintaining scholarly and service agendas on par with non-librarian faculty. We also developed a team mentoring program in our library for our tenure-track librarians, so have a great deal of experience in supporting and encouraging those who are in the midst of the process.

Just a note-- if you happen to get other proposals related to tenure/promotion, we’d be happy to collaborate on a 50 minute group session!