A few weeks ago, I left a comment on a Prof. Hacker post about academics and social media where I said I was surprised at the role that my blog played in my tenure dossier. Julie referenced that comment in a comment she made on her own post about the role social media played in her life as a graduate student. We at Prof. Hacker try to offer concrete strategies that evolve from our lived experiences, and it made sense to me to present how exactly I discussed my blog in my dossier. This may help others think about how they might present their own experience in their own tenure and job application documents (taking into consideration the particular contexts in which those documents are written, of course).
There was a section in my dossier where I had to describe my research direction and contributions. This is where I listed my publications and described how they fit together into my overall research agenda. I ended this section with the following paragraph:
The final text I need to mention as part of my professional development is [the blog I had been keeping for the previous five years]. When I started this blog my first year here, I did so entirely for personal reasons, never expecting that I would mention it as part of my tenure file. I had maintained an online presence since the first year of my doctoral program, and I saw this blog as another way for family and friends to keep up with me after another change in my life. Soon after I started, blogging became another genre that rhetoric and composition studies scholars began exploring intently, and my blog became a vital part of my professional life. It was through a Google search that the conveners of [a lecture series at a local university] learned of my work and invited me to speak. Because [a professor at a university in another state] was a regular reader of my blog, he learned of my essay on I Am My Own Wife and asked to include it in the graduate seminar I describe above. My blog has been mentioned in Inside Higher Ed’s “Around the Web” column eight times, which led to [an editor] asking me to breakfast during the Conference on College Composition and Communication in New Orleans in April 2008. It is through this blog–and the conference presentations and workshop participation I list below–that I initially explore issues and interact with peers in ways that influence the development of the essays I describe above as well as my teaching of these texts and ideas.
I want to highlight that I did not present my blog as a piece of scholarship. I considered it to be a part of my professional development, meaning it played a vital role in the creation of my scholarship even though it was not scholarship itself. Also, in my teaching philosophy, I described my use of emerging technologies in my classes and the university teaching award I received for this work. In the section on service, I listed a few workshops I gave at my university on blogging as a personal and pedagogical tool. In other words, I mentioned my blog in each major section of my tenure application, showing how it contributed positively to my teaching, scholarship, and service. This may not work for everyone at every institution, but this did work for me at mine.
Can anyone else offer us other specific examples of talking about social networking tools like blogging in tenure documents or job application materials?
(Photo by me and licensed through Creative Commons)
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