Readers, please note: In the interest of providing information on this subject, we are posting the raw transcripts from the FCRC CRA-W workshop. This is an unedited transcript, but still should provide you with background information of use. The edited transcripts will be completed by spring 2000.


Parallel Session: Jr Grp. The Tenure Process

MI: = Mary Jane Irwin
SC = Sheila Casteneda
Q: = question

MI: ...technology is going to cooperate. Okay, just to make sure that we are in the right session. This is the session on the Tenure Process. Unlike the last session - I just got in last night, so I haven't seen how the workshop has gone previously, but I'd rather take questions online. So, if you have questions, stick your hand up. It looks like we've got half a room, so if people sort of sit more towards the front than the back, we can all shout..... Okay, I'll repeat them and people may need to remind me to do that.

As I said, I'm Mary Jane Irwin from Penn State and Sheila is from Clarke College and we're going to do the "tenure process" part of this workshop. First, I'd like to see a show of hands. How many of you are on the tenure track? I guess the rest are graduate students who are looking at academic positions? Then we have a few miscellaneous. Okay.

Well, I've done this workshop many times and I try to look at my slides and refine them. I've done this sort of workshop several times and I also do it at the university. I try to look for things that are a little different for me to keep me interested.

One of the things I did the last time I ran this was that I ran and looked at the dictionary definition in Webster's of "tenure." I found out that Webster's does not use gender-neutral language, for one thing. It is "a status granted after a trial period to a teacher protecting him from summary dismissal." There used to be very strong reasons - at least there are people who argue there were very strong reasons - for having tenure as part of the academic system. It protected the professor, once they get tenure of course, from being summarily dismissed by upper administration because they were teaching, perhaps, topics or ideas that the academy did not want them to be teaching in the classroom. Or doing research that wasn't considered acceptable.

Those are fairly old ideas and there are a lot of people who are arguing that the tenure system is old and obsolete and should be done away with. We're starting to see some eradication of tenure as part of the system. We're also starting to see senior faculty, who has been tenured, going through a review. So, there is some weakening of the protection of the tenure system.

Some numbers. These are old numbers. These are the most recent numbers I was able to get. Unfortunately, it's hard to track these numbers and keep them current. But, I think this number may be going down and these numbers are certainly changing; the distribution is changing. So, 71 percent of institutions had a tenure system in 1987. At that time, 65 percent of the faculty were tenured. Of course, the numbers were different for women and men. That is, as far as the percentage that were tenured.

Where does tenure come in the typical system? Well, you need to look at the academic ladder. We heard in the last session that post-doc is not typically part of the academic ladder for people in computer science and engineering; although, it is very common in other disciplines and, in particular, in chemistry and biology.

So, we are focusing on the one in red, the Assistant Professor level, and that is usually the "pre-tenure" trial period. At many universities, tenure and promotion go hand-in-hand; so you become tenured and also promoted to the rank of Associate Professor as part of the same process. Then, there is some period of Associate Professor before you get promoted to Professor and then the tracks diverge, depending on whether you really want to stay in the classroom and in the research labs or whether you want to move into administration. This is the typical career track for those people in academia.

At this point, I am going to sort of target the topic in red, Assistant Professor. The first thing you need to do is make sure that you understand the tenure process. It is usually a six-year clock. You spend six years as an Assistant Professor before you become eligible for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure. It varies with the university. There are some universities that have eight-year clocks; some that have two five-year trial periods before the final promotion in tenure.

What you need to do is find out what the rules are at your institution. Trust me, they have some very inspiring document that outlines the rules. Very tedious to read, but go and find them and read them. In fact, at my university, we not only have university guidelines, but we also have college guidelines. Some departments have department guidelines. So these are refinements on a theme. You need to look at them all and make sure that you understand the rules at your university. So, read those guidelines. Make sure you understand the rules.

Make sure you understand the process. The process, as I have found out in giving these presentations, is very different at different institutions. So let me tell you a little bit about the process at Penn State.

The process at Penn State is that every year, everyone on the faculty - including the senior faculty - prepare a yearly *CV*. It just contains the information, the progress from that year. Now actually, the junior faculty, the pre-tenure faculty, complete the entire curriculum *vita* for the first six years.

Then, the department head does an evaluation of those and sits down and does an oral evaluation every year with all of the faculty, looking at the three areas that they use to rank faculty. We'll get to what those three areas are in a little bit.

For pre-tenure faculty, there is a regular, written evaluation for pre-tenure faculty. At Penn State, it happens, for sure, at year two and year four and then, for absolutely certain, at year six because we're a six-year clock institution. We can have special third- and fifth-year reviews if there are problems. So find out what the written evaluation process is.

Now, at Penn State, the written evaluation - so remember this is year two and year four - we get written evaluations by the department head, by a department promotion, and a tenure committee that evaluates your *CV*; and perhaps, by a college committee.

I left it off of this, but there is a college promotion and tenure committee. I happen to be in the College of Engineering and just finished my two-year stint on that committee, thank goodness. Actually, it was a three-year stint on that committee. That committee actually looks at fourth-year *CV*s. For all of the faculty in the college that are coming through. The dean also looks at the *CV*. So all four of those review committees write letters talking about your progress towards tenure and evaluating your case and your progress towards tenure in the three areas that we're going to talk about in a second.

Then, of course, in the sixth year, all of those levels look at your case. That is, the department head does an evaluation; the department promotion and tenure committee, senior faculty in your department; the college promotion and tenure committee, which at my institution is an elected group of senior faculty from the college; the dean; and, very importantly, external letters of recommendation that have been solicited from the senior people in your research area at institutions; and, perhaps, industrial labs outside your home institution. That whole packet then goes up to a university level promotion and tenure committee, which also does an evaluation. Then, where I am, it goes to the provost with recommendations to the president. At some places it has several more steps.

Q: How are the external letters (garbled)?

MI: How are they chosen? Actually, I've got some details on that. I've got a special slide on external letters. So we don't spend too much time here, I'll address it when I get to that point.

So, understand the rules and the process.

What are the three areas that are important? Well, there's teaching. There's research and scholarship - that's the Penn State jargon - but think of it as research. And there's service, but notice that there is this big gap in the middle.

Now we're going to drop down another layer. Realize that there are two types of institutions. I'm going to talk about one and Sheila's going to follow-up and talk about the differences from what I've told you at the other. I'm from a primarily research university. You know whether you're at a primarily research university that has a strong research focus and, certainly, has a research mission. Don't mistake the fact that teaching is not counted because it is. Good teaching is important.

And then there are universities that have a primarily education focus. They may have a master's program, may have a very small PhD presence, usually not, where the emphasis is on teaching; but, as I've discovered in going to these presentations and listening, there is also some research that is expected of the faculty at those institutions. It's a different kind of research as Sheila is going to tell us about.

So, I'm going to talk about research-focused universities. So now we're at year six. So **** at year two and four, where you're going up for evaluation. The first thing to think about is dossier preparations. That's when this comes in handy. At Penn State, we use these dividers that divide the dossier into multiple sections so that when the file is complete, we affectionately call it the "rainbow file" and you can see why.

There are stacks of these in the back. The reason I brought them along is because on the front, and some of them on the back, outline in detail what goes in each of those sections. So, it is sort of good to help you get an idea of the kinds of things you need to be keeping track of.

The first one talks about teaching ability. It talks about the documentation that goes in that section about your teaching. Also in that section, at least at Penn State, is the supervision of graduate students, supervision of research undergraduate students, your classroom evaluation, teaching evaluation, your in class evaluation by students, also by your faculty peers if they come and sit in on your class and write evaluations, etc. So, it's detailed. I used to go over this in the workshops in detail, but I think it is better just to hand it out and let you read it. Kind of boring, but it helps you get an idea of what counts in there.

This sort of grayish one is research, creative accomplishment, and scholarship. Remember that this is for a university where there are many types of faculty. For example, faculty in the arts are expected to do performance-type creative accomplishments rather than actual research, typically. It has to span all of the different sorts of activities that faculty at a research institution would do.

What goes in this section, surprisingly, are your publications. There is a list of them in there. In fact, this one, you might notice, does not specifically say "publications and *refereed conference* proceedings, but they are included. They are included, actually, in number one. So we have a finer granularity, at least in the College of Engineering. It is *refereed* publications. First comes journal *refereed* publications, then comes conference proceedings that are "refereed* publications.

Okay. Creative accomplishments. That's for the people in arts; although, we have in that category, as well, software and hardware prototypes that fit in there. Papers presented at meetings. Participation in seminars and workshops and invited talks at other universities. Other activities and, of course, funding. That fits in the research and scholarship section. Notice that there are things on the back. Don't forget to turn that one over. Pretty long section.

Then, in service - this pink one - there is different kinds of service. There is service to the university. There is service to your department; perhaps to your college, perhaps to your university-at-large on committees that are university-level committees. There are out-reach service as a representative of the university for, perhaps, service to NSF if you serve on an advisory or panel review committee. And there is service to the profession, service to the Association for Computing and Machinery, or **** Computer Society, or *AAAI*, etc. Service to the profession. So, there are different kinds of service, as well.

Q: (inaudible)

MI: Count this panel as. Let's see, I think I usually put it under the gray as "participation in workshops."

One of the things that Penn State has done that we pushed hard for - and I'm not sure how seriously taken yet, but at least it's documented - is under service to the university, Item #4, record of contribution to the university's program to enhance equal opportunity and cultural diversity. There is at least an attempt to start to make that count.

The gray one are the external letters. Notice that has to be a description of how the letters were solicited, which I am going to talk about when I get to letters. A sample of the letter that was sent out to those people and then a tracking of when the letters came in, etceteras, and some information about those people. Typically, we have a short paragraph that says who these people are, what research area they're in, if they are a member of the national academy, or a fellow of *IEEE* or *ACM* - to establish their seniority in the discipline. Description of the procedure for selecting them, which we'll talk about.

Then - this last blue sheet - are all of the other letters. These are the internal letters. In year two, you have letters from the department head and the department promotion and tenure committee and the dean, that fit in there. Typically, the college doesn't look at it at year two. Then at year four, you have those two-year letters and you have the four-year letters from the department head, the department committee, the college committee and the dean. Then in your sixth, you have the two-year letters, you have the four-year letters, and you have a special set of six-year letters.

The reason for keeping those letters, from year two to year four to year six, is because it is the responsibility of the committees to look at previous letters; to look for areas that were problem areas, perhaps, or areas where the candidate needed to put some extra emphasis or focus; to see if, in fact, they have done that. So it is the committee's responsibility to go back and say, "We said you really need to pay more attention to publishing in *referee* journals." Then in year four, you go and look to see if there has been an effort in that direction. You can say, "They followed the advice and they have two papers in submission, one that has been accepted, and they're working on several." Or, "They didn't follow the advice. They really need to take this seriously the next time around." So it is important that you also take those letters seriously because the university committees take those seriously.

So, survival skills. This is when I am eventually going to talk about how the people are selected. Establish your file right away. What you should do is find a space in your file drawer, label it "Promotion and Tenure", and every time you have some sort of activity that you think is going to be - and now you have sort of an idea of what sort of things count. Every time something like that happens, if you don't have documentation, write it down on a slip of paper. The date, the location, and what the activity was and put it in that drawer because you forget. If you have two years of this stuff accumulated and at year two you have to sit down and write all this down, you've lost track of the date and when and where and the title, and you forget about some of the things that you've done. So practice good data collection. You don't have to put it on your *vita* right away, but at least keep track of it somewhere in a file.

I think it is good to make a "hit list" of external letter writers. Now, this varies depending on department. I may have - I'll talk about it right now because now's a good time and it may be on a slide in a little bit.

At Penn State, the candidate is not allowed to pick the external letter writers. That is different at different universities. This is "find out the rules at your university" and the process. Although, when I was department head, I would suggest to the candidate that it wouldn't hurt for them to let me know a list of names of people who knew their work.

Then the department committee would sit down and come up with a list of names. Typically, we try to pick some from the list that the candidate has suggested and some additional ones. How do you find additional ones? You look at their papers and see whom they reference. You look at the conferences where they've given presentations and see who was on the program committee. So that's a typical way of doing that.

So, find out, though because some universities let the candidates pick all of them. Some universities say the candidate can't suggest any of them. Find out the rules at your own university. What I recommend is that you make a list now of those people who in year six, you think will be people that you would want to target to write letters for you. Now that list will change because, as your research evolves, there will be people who drop off the list and people who will add on.

I had a dean tell me once that his first week - actually the first day - in his new office as a junior faculty member, he made two lists on his board that he revised. One of them was this "hit list" of who, in year six, he wanted to write letters for him. The other was a list of senior faculty in the department that he didn't want to piss off. We won't get that in the transcripts, right?

People that were going to be on these department- and college-level committees that he didn't want to go out of his way to irritate. That didn't mean he went out of his way to "butter" them up, but just make sure that you don't antagonize those people.

Take these oral and written evaluations seriously. As I said, your department does. I think written evaluations are really good because with oral evaluations, it is sometimes too easy to hear what you want to hear, not what is being said. Criticism is not fun. None of us like it. Getting a paper rejected is not fun. Getting a proposal rejected is not fun.

This is the same advice you heard about proposals. When you get your written letter, the first time you read it remember they are trying to help you succeed in this process. There are going to be things in that letter that say, "You need about addressing this shortcoming. You need to work here. You're doing great here." So the first time you read these letters, if you're like me, what you read are the criticisms and not the great part. It's like when I read my teaching evaluations. If there is one bad one in there, that's the one I remember. You can't please all of the people all of the time. I keep telling myself that, but it still hurts.

So you read it and you're kind of upset. Put it away. Come back and read it again in a couple of days when you can actually read all the way through it. You may have to do that a couple of times. When you can finally read it, and read it and stay calm, take out your highlighter and highlight the sections of criticisms. Make a list of the things that you're going to do in the next year or two years to address that. And deliver on those. These people are trying to help. They're trying to give you guidance to help you make your way through the system.

Take them seriously. Make a list of actions. Find a good mentor. These are not in any sort of rank order. I'd recommend find a good mentor, preferably one at your university who understands the system at your university, as one of the most important things you can do. Sometimes that is hard to do.

Q: (inaudible)

MI: So is it valuable to find a mentor outside your particular department? It's better if it's one in your department because they understand the department politics, but sometimes that just doesn't happen. Actually, sometimes it may be better to get the perspective of the college. Remember, the college is part of this. So if you can find someone in the same college. The problem with going outside your college... I've served on college-level promotion and tenure committees at Penn State in Engineering and Science. They should be the same, right? They're not. So, the advice I would give to someone in science would be slightly different than the advice I would give to someone in engineering. It helps to find someone in your college. If you can't do that, find someone in a college that is closely related. The rules in Liberal Arts, in arts and architecture, are going to be difference than the ones in engineering and science.

Some universities have formal mentoring programs where you're assigned a mentor. I've heard that sometimes works well if you get assigned the right mentor. If you get assigned the wrong mentor, then find the right mentor and do it quickly.

I've got a slide on each of these areas. Then there are a bunch of recommendations that I pulled out of a great reference that I am going to let your read offline.

Teaching. Work towards a positive ****. You don't have to be the best teacher in the world the first time in your classroom. Probably you're not going to be, but try to show improvement. The best thing is to have a positive *slope*. It's not good to have a negative *slope*.

Take advantage of instructional assistance on your campus. Most campuses have lots of help out there. Take advantage of them. They will even come in and video your tape and have someone sit down and critique it with you, which is hard but it helps. Ask colleagues for help. They've got a file of test questions and sample homework so you might not have to start from scratch when you're teaching a course you've never taught before. Having to make up all the homework and all the exams from absolute scratch takes a lot of time. So, ask your colleagues for help.

I'm using more and more Power Point slides and it helps if you're using a text where some slides are prepared. I always augment them and update them and modify them. Once again, if you don't have to start from scratch, it really helps.

Set up your kudos file now. Every once in a while, you'll get a piece of e-mail from somebody that you may not even remember because they may have graduated several years ago and been one of these people in the eighty-person class. They send you a piece of e-mail from industry now and they write to you and say, "You know, the class I took from you taught me skills that I really needed to know in industry and it was the best class I took at your university." Save that. Put it in a file, just sort of accumulate them, then you can give them to your department head and, if they're smart, they'll figure out how to use them.

Try to teach - and you're not always in control, I understand this - a blend of courses. Try to make sure that you're not only teaching the low-level introductory programming classes. That you're not teaching only the graduate research classes. Because they like to see ability to teach undergraduates as well as graduates, some lower division, some upper division, etc. So, try for a blend, if you have a supportive department head, which is an important part of this process. They will work with you.

Try not to teach a different class every semester. It's very draining, it takes a lot of extra time. You don't get to reuse those slides and the homework, etc., that you prepared and you don't get to show this track record in a course that you're really trying to show.

Research. I think it helps if you are able to articulate your research goals and plans. So, we, in fact, now require it as part of the dossier. The first page is a one-page statement of your research goals and plans. It's not just research, it's research, teaching, and service.

It should fit on one page. Not six-point type, no margins. So you have to be succinct when you say it. You should be able to talk about how the funding that you've attracted and the papers that you've attracted, and the students that you've worked with, all fold into this research plan. Where your research is going. What the next steps are and how they evolve from the current work that you're involved with. It may spill over into your instructional plan. Your activities, as far as research with undergraduate students. How you take that research and talk about it in the classroom.

Write that up now. It's very hard to write I find, but if you've got a start at it, you can keep revising it and having it evolve. There is nothing worse than being told, you know, the day before this dossier has to go in, that you have to write this one-page statement and have it to your department head the next day.

I think it is important that you establish you independence from your research advisor pretty quickly. So don't continue to put their name on the papers that you have done once you've left their university - or even maybe, while you're still there - just because you think you owe it to them. They should understand. If they don't, they need to be educated.

Find out the rules at your university. Some universities make rules that any co-author on a paper cannot serve as an external letter writer. I have found this particularly problematic for women, because we tend to do lots of sort of collaborative work and have numerous co-authors, not just from our own institution but from many other institutions.

Find out if that is a rule at your university because, if it is, be careful - at least in the first six years - how widely you collaborate. You may hurt yourself. You may have eliminated a lot of people from the pool of potential letter writers. Think about that. Be careful.

I think it is important to think about quality over quantity in publications. We all know about LPUs - least publishable units. But, the impact is more important than the number. The number can't be zero, but the impact is more important than the number. That will particularly show in external letters because external letter writers don't talk about the number of papers you publish. They talk about the impact of your work.

Understand the importance of publishing in *refery* journals. This is a sore point, especially in our community because we prefer, at least I do and a lot of people I know, to publish in conference proceedings - in *refree* conferences. These are highly *refereed*, I understand that. They are very competitive. They are the preferred outlet for many people. You get to come and talk about your work.

It is *refereed*, but we understand that in computer science and engineering. When it gets up to the college level where industrial engineers and mechanical engineers or if you're in science, mathematicians, and astronomers and chemists, are looking at your folder, they don't understand that. Their rule is journal publications. Accept it as a fact of life. Shouldn't be all of your energy, but certainly some of your energy should go into taking that conference publication and turning it into a *refereed* journal publication. Sad but true. That's not fun news to convey.

Also, make sure that your department head or your department committee is able to document the importance of conference publication in our discipline. That's the place to document it, at least at Penn State. So we've started being very careful in our letters talking about the importance of conference publications in our discipline. There's even a *CRA* publication; I think it's experimental careers in computer science. Larry *Schneider* was one of the authors. There are some wonderful quotes in there about the importance of conference publications in computer science and engineering. If your committee can pull those sorts of quotes from an externally published document, it adds even more credibility. You department head can also do that.

This is one we've been hoping would go away. I'm afraid that at many universities it has not gone away. I have a statement from John *Hennesey*, who's Dean of Engineering at Stanford, who says, "Conference publications count." That's great if you have an enlightened dean, but don't count on it.

At least in a research university, it's really important to work with graduate students. At Penn State, it's very important. You need to show publication with your graduate students and support graduate students. So, figure out how to attract graduate students to your program. One way, if you don't get to teach a graduate-level course in your research area your first year - which, if you don't, shame on your department head - but if you don't, offer to teach a reading course as an overload. It's a one credit course; meets once a week; collect your favorite papers that you wish you had time to read; the first class make everybody pick one. You pick one. You give the first talk, right? So you're sort of showing them how to give a talk, make sure it's a good talk. You require everyone to ask two questions at every presentation; therefore, they're forced to read the paper as well.

You get up to speed on things and you start to train - educate is a better word - these graduate students in your research area and start to attract them to your area.

Use your startup money wisely. Hopefully, you've got startup money.

Learn when and how to say. "No." Weak students take more time. Lots more time sometimes. Sometimes it's better to say, "No." Master students can also take time. They do count, but be careful that you're not trading lots of master students for fewer PhD students.

Target prime funding areas. You heard that in the last session, so I think you've heard lots about funding.

Service. Find out how service counts. You notice, like I said, in the three areas it was at the bottom. In particular, for example, at Penn State in science, they don't even look at service. In engineering they do. Now it counts 5 percent, but still they want to see some service.

Learn when and how to say, "No." If your department head asks you to be the undergraduate advisor, that's service that takes a lot of time. Be careful. If you decide that you really commit the time, explain to your department head that your primary goal right now is to get promoted and tenured. It should be their primary goal for you, as well. Tell them you'd really like to do that, but right now you're really involved with getting your research program started and you would hope you would be approached after you've gotten things off the ground. Learn how to say "no" nicely.

People always ask me what is good service and it's kind of hard to come up with a list. You have to know the rules - and the unwritten rules - at your university. But, graduate-recruiting committee is always good service because then you get first crack at graduate students who are coming in. You get to review the folders. You get to try and make sure a student is working in your area or on the list of students to be admitted and possibly supported. You get to know some of them. So, that's a good one to be on.

I find *colloquium* chair for junior faculty, al though it is a fair amount of work, can be really good because it is a way to get letters. So volunteer to be *colloquium* chair in your fourth or fifth year. At Penn State, we like to see for junior faculty, student-oriented activities, like faculty advisor for the *ACM* student chapter etc.

Become active in your professional societies and conference activities. The way to do that is to volunteer. You have to figure out how to start. So you want to become involved in this conference and become part of the conference community and the place to start is probably not the program committee. If you've looked, they tend to be the senior people in your area. But there are all sorts of other jobs at conferences that need to be done; like local arrangements chair and publicity chair. That's where you start. They're always looking for people to volunteer to do this. That's the place to start. Then make sure you do a good job. That's the way to impress people and make sure that you can work your way "up the food chain" on that conference committee.

Here's the external letters. We've already talked about it a little bit. Make the hit list. They should be knowledgeable people in your research area or areas. They should be from the senior ranks. This doesn't have to be full professor, it can be some associate professors, but it should be mostly full professors.

They can be people from industrial labs or industries where the people are fellows or research fellows. There needs to be that research content.

They should be from schools primarily that are ranked equal or above yours.

Prime the list of candidates. Send them preprints. Don't bombard them with papers, but make sure they know who you are. The other way to make sure they know who you are is to talk to them at conferences. You heard about networking yesterday, so now you're all prepared to do that.

This ties back to the bullet about good service being *colloquium* chair. What we encourage, our *colloquium* people to do, are to invite the people on their "hit list" to give a colloquium at their department. There's travel money to support these people to come in and give a talk. What that means is that you get to spend an entire day hosting this person. They're going to talk about their work some, but you're also going to talk about your work. So, they'll get to know you, they'll get to know your group, what your work does. It's nice if your graduate students get to interact with them some. That's a way to make sure that they know, first-hand, what it is that you do. You've brought them to your university.

It also sometimes means that you can reciprocate. If they've come to give a talk at your university, they might invite you to give a talk at their university. Now I find this bullet particularly hard. Believe me, the guys do it. Invite yourself to give a talk. If you're going to be in an area, call up the university or, hopefully, your friend at the university or call someone you know and say, "I'm going to be in the area. I'd be happy to come by and give a talk." If you could put two or three of those together in a certain geographic region, you can save on travel expenses, the universities can share travel expenses. It's another way to make sure that people know about your research.

Remember that the letters are going to be solicited at the beginning of year six. So waiting till year six is problematic. Start this is the fourth - some people say the third - year. It's good to get a start early, but to sort of have it peak at the fifth year because you want this to be fresh in people's minds when they start writing those letters.

Last slide that I'm going to talk about. The rest of them are for your reading pleasure.

Who's important in this process? It's really important that you're able to talk to your department head, I think. You need to work hard to establish and maintain good communication channels. Now remember that they're the ones who are writing these evaluations and they can be harsh. They're hard to read. Make sure that you're able to go to them and talk about it. In fact, I think the best this is that once you make this list of things you're going to do to correct this problem, go in and talk to the department **** and say, "I've read your letter. I've thought about this. These are the things I'm going to work on. Do you think that's the right track? That's what I should be doing? Do you have other suggestions of things I should be doing in that area?" So, make sure that they know you're thinking about it and working on in and also get their input.

Senior faculty in your department. Remember they're going to be on this department committee and they're also going to be potential research colleagues. There are some group proposals that are solicited by the various agencies that we heard from earlier today. Senior faculty tends to take the lead in those, but they are also looking for other faculty members who are interested in participating. Research colleagues. Let's see, I guess I sort of blended those together. Research colleagues at your institution and elsewhere.

The final bullet here is, don't forget you have a life. You should have a life, even if you're pre-tenure, you should have a life. You may also have a family and children. So don't neglect yourself and your family. If you come out of year six with promotion and tenure but you're not happy, then you need to question if you're doing the right thing. Try to keep some balance in your life as well. We'll hear about balance after lunch.

Are there any questions for me? We'll take questions at the end as well.

SC: I always like it when Janie goes first because she covers just everything and then she makes my part really easy.