Perspective: The game of tenure at Penn

Mariangela Bernardi is in her office at the David Rittenhouse Laboratory when a student enters, complaining about the scoring of a question on a test for a class not taught by Bernardi.

She looks at the question and briefly sketches out an answer, explaining which variables and which equations are necessary to solve it.

The student seems reassured - she remembers getting the same answer that Bernardi provided. And while Bernardi can't change another professor's grade, the student is glad nonetheless for her help.

It was a quick and simple interaction of the sort that most professors have with their students during office hours or after class.

But Bernardi is not a professor, at least not in the sense that most people think - a full-time member of a department's faculty with a lifelong, tenured appointment. She is one of scores of Penn assistant professors, each of whom is striving after the unbelievable job security that tenure provides.

The process is long, usually consisting of two appointments of about three or four years each, and often stressful. It has its problems, and its challenges, but, most argue, it's an essential part of any institution of higher learning, one that's very unlikely to be gotten rid of any time soon.

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Legal Studies and Business Ethics assistant professor Kevin Werbach can't just do the work that will get him closer to tenure - he has to decide what work will do him the most good.

A colleague in the Wharton School Press once suggested that he write a book regarding the Supernova conference that Werbach runs. The conference roughly focuses on Werbach's area of expertise, and though he says he would have enjoyed writing a book of that nature, he ultimately had to turn the suggestion down.

"Books don't count as much toward tenure because [they are] not peer-reviewed," he said - and the amount and impact of an assistant professor's peer-reviewed journal articles can, he says, make or break a tenure bid.

"If they're going to give you tenure - which is a lifetime appointment - they want to make sure you're one of the top scholars in the world in your area, and scholarly articles are the benchmark for that," he added.

This can create conflicts, even outside of the context of research - anything that can take away from chances to work on articles has to be considered carefully.

Take classes. Werbach would like to teach some more advanced electives, but when it comes time to prepare syllabi and lectures, it's just that much easier to lead an already established, introductory-level course.

But despite these problems, Werbach is relatively pleased with the process that will ultimately decide his standing at the University.

"The tenure process is hard, but I'm not sure I could come up with a vastly better alternative," he said.

And although it is hard, it doesn't seem to take that much of a toll on his spirits.

"I don't sit awake at night, thinking about" whether I'll get tenure, Werbach says. "I was quite happy with my life before I got here," a life that mostly consisted of public- and private-sector work on Internet telecommunications law. But "I hope to make tenure - I expect to make tenure."

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And Werbach might not even need to focus on his research so much - teaching could be just as significant.

"I think the strongest program . says, 'This person is a very solid researcher and an outstanding teacher, and this person is a very solid teacher and an outstanding researcher, and we need both,'" said Thomas Dunfee, the chairman of Werbach's department.

And although that puts pressure on assistant professors to teach well and produce valuable research, there's only one thing Dunfee would strongly consider changing: the length.

"There's been a debate over the years if . six years is too short" a time to decide someone's tenure status, he says.

It takes a long time for articles to be written, peer-reviewed, published, read by others and, finally, cited in other scholars' works. And, as a result, "if you're looking for impact, it takes a while to" judge it, Dunfee said.

A 10-year period, he suggests, may be fairer for assistant professors.

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That's not something everyone agrees with. Bernardi, a Physics and Astronomy assistant professor, worries about the length of the process and the fact that her standing here at Penn is anything but guaranteed.

"To arrive at 40 years old and you're not sure you'll get a job is not nice," she said.

And that doesn't have to be such a big issue, Bernardi says, since tenure-review committees can look at postdoctoral work done prior to an assistant professorship, in addition to more recent work; that could expedite the process.

But the questionable job security of an assistant professor is only one of her concerns.

There's the subjectivity of the process - "if you do 99 percent good, there's still 1 percent yet that can still screw you," she says, and there's the questionable weight put on grants and on evaluation forms sent by outside scholars.

So, how does Bernardi think the process could be improved?

"The chairman [of the tenure-review committee] should be more close to what you are doing and not judge you on" the opinions sent by outside scholars, she says.

The weight now given to the various factors in the process could also use a second look, Bernardi says.

Financial considerations obviously play a role here. Grants from outside institutions to conduct scientific research, she said, are the foremost consideration in her department. If Bernardi were to receive a $1,000 grant, she'd get $400 for her work, and $600 would go toward her department's budget.

And she says grants are sometimes given out with politics rather than scholarship in mind.

"Some people get funds because they're connected with big-name professors they get their post-docs from," Bernardi said.

Those connections can play into the tenure-review process as well.

The process can become "too political," she said. "If you have political connections - so [even] if they're not strong scientists - they get tenure easily."

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Maybe the process will be different when David Galvin gets a tenure-track position.

Galvin - a post-doctoral member of Penn's Mathematics faculty - will be applying in a few weeks for assistant professorships at a wide variety of institutions. Despite the process' potential difficulties, he doesn't seem to be too concerned.

For one, his work as a lecturer at Penn doesn't seem to be much different from what he'll do while being considered for tenure.

Galvin conducts research - he's collaborated on four peer-reviewed journal articles so far in his year here, two of which have already been published. And, as his title might suggest, he lectures, and quite a bit - a range of classes, from intro-level math courses like Math 114 to graduate-level courses.

"It is not different at all" from work as an assistant professor, he says. "The only difference is that I'm not being reviewed for tenure."

Like Bernardi, he sometimes wonders about the time required to get tenure, but he sees it as a small price to pay for the desired outcome.

When Princeton professor Andrew Wales was solving Fermat's Last Theorem, Galvin said, he had to essentially shut himself indoors for about seven years to work out a proof. That sort of behavior would not have been tolerated had he not held a lifelong appointment at his university.

"If it weren't for the tenure-track process," he says, administrations "couldn't give their [faculty] that level of academic freedom."

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And now that she's finally been granted a tenured appointment, Sociology associate professor Camille Charles can start to enjoy that sort of academic freedom.

Charles was elected to a position as a tenured associate professor at the end of last semester. And, after about three years as an assistant professor at Ohio State, and after eight more as an assistant professor at Penn studying race-related issues, she seems to be glad to finally be tenured.

"Having been an assistant professor for 11 years, I wouldn't wish it on anybody," she said.

Having worked in such a demanding environment for so long, that's understandable. Especially since she's a mother - Charles had to stop her tenure-track "clock" twice in order to give birth to her two children, adding more challenges to an already challenging process.

Charles thinks a strong mentoring program, especially with regard to personal matters, would have been beneficial - and that's only one of her grievances with the process.

For starters, it forces assistant professors to assume a "low profile."

"You don't want to be perceived as a troublemaker," she said.

And that affects the research one conducts.

Charles discussed a conference she spoke at recently about high-achieving minority students in which she discussed some of the positive attributes of minority communities, instead of focusing on typically pessimistic race-related subject matter. That sort of research might not have gone over well with some of her colleagues during the tenure-review process, Charles thinks.

"There's a lot of irrational fear" about the consequences of pursuing certain types of research, Charles said, "and not all of it is irrational. I think I made a good decision making [that] a post-tenure topic."

But in the end, it was worth it, and Charles can finally relax a little.

Being an assistant professor is "like chronic pain, and you learn to live with it . but it's taking a toll," she said. "It's nice that it's over."

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