How professors cope after the big rejection
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Article: Try, Try AgainBy PIPER FOGG
It is an assistant professor’s worst nightmare. After years of hard work and sacrifice, his tenure bid is rejected. He is told, in so many words, that slogging away on those book chapters was a waste of time, that those countless hours in the classroom meant nothing.
Being denied tenure, say those who have experienced it, amounts to being labeled a failure.
“No one likes to fail,” says John Tisdale, an assistant professor of journalism who is on the tenure track at Texas Christian University. Two years ago he was denied tenure at Baylor University. “It’s discouraging, and you start to doubt” yourself.
For many professors, being denied tenure prompts a re-examination of their priorities and goals. Some conclude that academe was not the right place for them after all. Others cannot imagine life outside the college gates. Still others focus their energy on challenging the institutional decision. If the college appeals process fails them, some take their complaints to the courts, where tenure denials are rarely overturned.
Colleges usually give professors a year’s grace period before they must leave the payroll. There are no hard statistics on where those who are denied tenure go, but in the aftermath they have been known to hire “career coaches,” seek counseling, or resort to menial labor for hourly wages.
Many who want to remain in academe are forced to consider other options, including some that would have looked less attractive when the scholars were fresh out of graduate school. These include working as an adjunct and taking a non-tenure-track position at a less prestigious college.
Finding one’s way back onto the tenure track after a rejection can be difficult to do.
“Getting tenure is tough enough, and once you’ve been denied it’s that much tougher,” says Cathy Ann Trower, a senior researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an expert on tenure. “It is a stigma and a blow to one’s self-esteem.”
Simon Bott, a chemistry professor, says that following his tenure denial at the University of North Texas, in 1996, he applied for some 100 faculty and staff positions. Most institutions turned him down off the bat, citing his failed tenure bid. But after about 10 interviews over the course of the year, he landed a job at the University of Houston. He says that the experience humbled him, and that he is now more open to his colleagues’ suggestions and is a harder worker.
Mr. Bott credits the job offer to his change in attitude. Initially he blamed officials at North Texas for the denial. “When I grew up about it,” he says, “I realized I was my own worst enemy.”
So in his last year at North Texas, Mr. Bott decided to go out on a high note. He joined several committees, including the Faculty Senate’s university committee, which met twice a month with the president. “I ended up with letters of recommendation from the president” and other top administrators, he says. “It really helped having the whole year to go through the process.”
As the accounts on these pages show, there are more than a few ways to gain professional and personal satisfaction after being denied tenure. There are also those who cannot seem to move past the experience. One former professor now helps others by working on tenure-denial cases for the American Association of University Professors. Another scholar went from the Ivy League to a large state university, but only after finding himself on the street one night with a garbage bag of clothes and nowhere to go. One left academe for industry, where his salary doubled and his lifestyle improved. And another refuses to give up the fight, still suing over his tenure denial 20 years later.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 50, Issue 24, Page A8