Professional Development for Faculty
Processes by which young lawyers, attorneys business professionals rise to the top of their professions are well known to be competitive, arduous and stressful. The challenges facing young assistant professors, aspiring to tenured full professorships at major universities are at least as demanding, but less well understood. Requirements for “Appointment with Tenure,” spelled out in American University’s Faculty Manual, emphasize multiple objectives: high quality scholarship or creative activities, high quality teaching, positive contributions to the University community an a demonstrated ability to continue significant growth. To earn the rank of Full Professor, a candidate must have achieved a record of “continuing distinction in scholarship/creative endeavors, demonstrated excellent teaching ability, shown continuing active engagement with students…and a record of relevant and effective professional service…”.
Young academic professionals are granted far more discretionary time, and discretion in setting professional goals, than young doctors, lawyers or executives. Along with opportunities to work with students and to engage for a lifetime in creative endeavors, discretion is one of the most attractive features of life in the academy. But along with discretion comes the task of mediating not-always-complementary claims of multiple stakeholders – peer reviewers, funding organizations, publishers, journal editors, students, department heads and deans. Some stakeholder claims are framed by the imperatives of external reference groups, while others are beholden to institutional imperatives within the University.
To successfully negotiate the tenure and promotion process at American University (or any major university) an aspiring professional scholar/teacher must be intellectually gifted. He/she must be passionate about scholarship and teaching, He/she must be, simultaneously, creative, productive and disciplined. He/she must be willing to take risks. And he/she must become skillful in mediating conflicting stakeholder claims, while moving forward with well articulated professional/personal agenda.
Pedagogical Consultations
Colleagues, department heads and deans will be important support-persons for those seeking promotion and tenure. Sometimes, it can also be useful to have a support person at hand, who has experienced the process and is knowledgeable about American University’s institutional culture, but not directly involved in evaluating the faculty members’ performance.
CTRL Associate Director, Professor John Doolittle is very familiar with the AU campus, having taught in the School of Communication for the past 30 years. His teaching involves a variety of types of courses related to broadcast journalism and mass media. He has served on the faculties of several other major universities including Stanford University, Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin. Professor Doolittle has experience with issues related to faculty issues and governance. He was Director of the Journalism Division for over seven years and served on various School of Communication and university-wide committees, including Rank and Tenure and Faculty Relations.
