<p>The recent shooting on a college campus by a university professor got me thinking- Is being denied tenure this mind numbing, OMG I'm gonna kill someone event? Granted, not everyone is missing a few screws like this professor, but really,does being denied tenure suck that much? Why can't you get a tenured position elsewhere, or does it follow you?</p>
<p>There is a reason that a person doesn’t get tenure. Tenure is given based on sustained productivity that indicates the individual will continue to be productive, effective and influential in their field for the rest of their academic lifespan. FAilure to receive tenure indicates a judgement that you are not productive and that you don’t have the stature expected. Basically, your research is not viewed as important or useful to others. If you don’t get tenure at one institution, your options are to try at a lower tier institution (or to leave academia). If you are denied tenure at a lower ranked institution, it is very difficult to find some place to go.</p>
<p>In addition, this is a real judgment about your research productivity and stature in your field. So it is very difficult to deal with receiving news of denied tenure.</p>
<p>Is it possible that her research was too advanced for others to comprehend its importance? I’ve heard stories about genius works not being recognized during their contemporary time until decades later…</p>
<p>From what I understand, denial of tenure is one of those things that sucks, but in most cases isn’t sucky enough to result in shooting people.</p>
<p>I suppose it’s sort of like losing your job/not getting a promotion anywhere else, or getting dumped by your girlfriend or something. In 99.99999314% of cases you move on, find a job somewhere else, and everyone lives. It really has a lot more to do with this particular professor (who apparently has a record of fatal shootings) than with denial of tenure in general.</p>
<p>In asnwer to CCPSUX</p>
<p>For the person in question, the possibility of tenure based on her record would only be considered at an institution that primarily focused on teaching and not research. Her research was fairly routine and her productivity was low. In addition, the research was done in collaboration with labs that were already established in the areas that she published. She failed to demonstrate a truly independent research program. </p>
<p>And as the prior post states, it must feel like a terrible blow to be denied tenure. However, many individuals cope with this devastating news-moving on to other institutes or other fields.</p>
<p>well then, I just found out that she obtained her PhD from Harvard Medical School. This probably implies a top school doesn’t necessarily produce top researchers.</p>
<p>Define productive. How many papers are we talking about a year? What is high, medium, and low?</p>
<p>Also, the fact that the ones who were shot dead were either black or Indian probably connotes racism as well, either against White (the shooter) or non-White (the victims).</p>
<p>productive is field specific and dependent on the journals the research is published in. One would like to see more than one paper a year from her lab (means she would be senior author-with one of her students being first author). </p>
<p>And yes, top universities graduate many researchers-some develop into outstanding independent researchers, but many do not develop into independent investigators. The journal Science published a bit back a follow-up on a class of doctoral students who graduated from Yale. Surprisingly, as a class they did not have high levels of success in academia.</p>
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<p>I don’t think anybody would ever reasonably claim that every PhD graduate from any school - including Harvard or Yale - will become a top researcher. Heck, many Harvard and Yale PhD students won’t even take academic positions at all, instead preferring far higher paying jobs in management consulting or investment banking.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/who_is_mckinsey/who_we_are/our_people/consultant/Daina_G.aspx[/url]”>http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/who_is_mckinsey/who_we_are/our_people/consultant/Daina_G.aspx</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2009/08/25-of-harvard-phd-chemists-go-to-wall.html[/url]”>http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2009/08/25-of-harvard-phd-chemists-go-to-wall.html</a></p>
<p>I’ve known two people who have reacted to tenure denial in extreme ways – not in a shooting, though, unless you count metaphorical shooting yourself in the foot by writing nasty letters and email to administrators, colleagues, and even students. In both cases, the individuals believed that they deserved tenure and would get it. Both were mild-mannered on the surface, thus shocking everyone that they would lash out that way, so yes, I can see it happening, especially if the shooter believed that her research met the requirements. She may have even thought that her Harvard degree would buy her something. </p>
<p>Being denied tenure is probably more stressful than losing a non-academic job because of the lengthy process leading up to it. Five to six years of work get distilled into a single decision based on evaluations from both inside and outside of the university. If one is already prone to violence or emotional instability, this kind of community rejection could have dire results, either by harming others or oneself. Obviously, though, most times it doesn’t. Most times people nurse their disappointment for a week or so, then move on.</p>
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<p>That would be the ideal, but the reality is far messier. I know a guy who is a tenured professor at Columbia, and he states that probably half of the tenured faculty in his department continue to be highly productive, while the other half do relatively little. {He would insist that he belongs to that first half.} </p>
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<p>The trauma probably has to do with the fact that the stakes of tenure are so high. Consider what tenure means: essentially having a guaranteed job for life except under extreme circumstances (i.e. you simply don’t show up to the courses you teach or the school decides to shut down your entire department). - a level of job security that is practically inconceivable in any other profession. For example, you could teach your courses poorly and perform poor research - or no research at all - and still never lose your job. It’s a gravy train if you can get onboard. </p>
<p>Hence, the denial of tenure is traumatic because you almost came into great fortune, but did not. Think of it as the ultimate tease. If I told you that with the flip of a coin, your career trajectory would be determined, with heads being that you can keep your current job for life and tails being you actually lose your current job and have to find another, and the outcome is tails, you’ll surely commiserate on what life would have been like had the outcome been heads. </p>
<p>Having said all that, it should also be said that tenure denials are routine, particularly at the top schools, and should therefore be seen as no insult. I don’t know about UAH, but only a small minority of junior faculty at many schools will ever make it to tenure, and indeed there are entire departments at Harvard and MIT who literally haven’t tenured anybody in years. Heck, it wasn’t that long ago when Harvard was notorious for practically never awarding tenure to their own junior faculty but instead filling their tenured ranks with full professors from other universities, to the point that new scholars would join Harvard with no serious expectations of winning tenure, but simply to use the extensive resources and establish a network before inevitably moving onto another school. {Harvard has been tenuring some of its own junior faculty lately, but the rates are still abysmal.} </p>
<p>Granted, UAH surely must have a tenure rate higher than Harvard’s (which, granted, isn’t saying much). Nevertheless, no junior faculty should ever assume that they are going to win tenure, and hence should brace themselves accordingly. The psychologically healthy way to view a junior professorship is a temporary job that you pursue for a few years before you may have to look for another job - no different from how many employees in the private sector only work at one company for a few years before moving on to another company. That’s the only way to remain sane. </p>
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<p>Well, the issue is that, in academia, people talk. It’s rather obvious to everybody that if you spent a number of years as junior faculty at a university and are back on the job market, everybody suspects you didn’t win tenure, and they can easily confirm that through a few phone calls or emails or through the gossip grapevine that is pervasive within academia. </p>
<p>But having said that, I think that her career prospects were still excellent. Maybe she had no future in academia, but she still could have built a fine career in the private sector. For example, the fact that she has a PhD from Harvard and spent years as a faculty member - despite the fact that she didn’t make tenure - means that she probably could have found a quite nice position at a consulting or a venture capital firm, especially given her research background in bio/neurotechnology. Whatever shortcomings she may have had within academia, she clearly knows far more about the science of biotechnology than most other biotech-focused venture capitalists, most of whom don’t even hold PhD’s, forget about having published scientific papers or served as faculty. Or, she probably could have launched her own biotech company using her Harvard PhD as a tool to land meetings with investors.</p>
<p>[Guidance</a> for Handling Tenure Denial - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Guidance-for-Handling-Tenure/64208/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en]Guidance”>http://chronicle.com/article/Guidance-for-Handling-Tenure/64208/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en)</p>
<p>Unless someone got tenure recently, the Harvard Philosophy department hasn’t tenured anyone in decades.</p>
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The latest stats I’ve seen for the HMS biological sciences PhD program (the same one from which Amy Bishop graduated) is that fifty percent of alums are in non-academic careers. That, my friends, is a pretty high number.</p>
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In academia, top schools don’t “produce” anything. The point is for the programs to select talented graduate students, who use the resources within the program to produce top-quality research. Graduate school is a training period, and all the program can do is train students to think critically and ask interesting experimental questions – they can’t cause people to have successful future careers. Success in an academic career is dependent on many, many factors.</p>
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Unlikely.</p>
<p>What baffles me is how she got the references to even get a job anywhere in academia in the first place. She was the prime suspect in a mail bombing attempt on a Harvard professor, yet she still got a few references to get a tenure track position somewhere…How is this possible? What am I missing?</p>
<p>Well, actually, that’s not surprising the least. While she was a suspect in the mail-bombing case, no charges were ever filed, and hence no public records were available to link her to the case, nor was anybody under any obligation to inform anybody of her possible involvement. </p>
<p>Secondly, come on, let’s face it: we all know that references are a farce. People simply nominate those who they already know are going to be supportive. Certainly you’re never going to ask your enemy to serve as your reference. Hence, any list of ‘references’ is basically a list of that person’s friends.</p>
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<p>I don’t think I’ve heard of that with respect to scientific research. It is not reasonable to think that her research was misunderstood, but it is possible that politics may have helped in denying her tenure. For example, if a junior faculty member comes out with research that contradicts the results of a more senior member, it is possible that some bitterness will ensue.</p>
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<p>Well, let me provide two famous examples from the history of science. </p>
<p>Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift was greeted with widespread skepticism upon first publication and indeed the American Association of Petroleum Geologists later organized an entire symposium specifically to criticize and reject the theory. Only decades after Wegener’s death was continental drift theory revisited and found to contain merit, and indeed it is now considered to be a cornerstone principle of modern geology. </p>
<p>Similarly, Gregor Mendel’s now famous paper, Experiments on Plant Hybridization, that described his revolutionary pea plant experiments and documented the principles of genetic inheritance, had practically zero impact and was widely ignored upon publication - to the point that Charles Darwin, who searched in vain for the remainder of his life for the actual biological mechanism of inheritance underpinning natural selection, was apparently unaware of Mendel’s work, which was highly ironic in that Darwin and Mendel were contemporaries to each other (Mendel’s paper having been published between the publication dates of On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man ). Mendel died an obscure monk, and his scientific work was rediscovered years after his death, and he is now hailed as having made one of the most paramount scientific discoveries in world history - so important that it’s hard to find anybody who has taken high school biology who has never heard of Mendel’s pea plant experiments.</p>
<p>i worked for a prof who was denied tenure…he was then given tenure at another arguably better university with better pay within the year.</p>