Planning For Promotion & Tenure Review

[Therapist4Chnge]

While I am still probably 2-3 years away from making a serious push to be considered for an Associate Prof position, I decided last year to make a concerted effort to give myself the best shot. I have attended a number of meetings/presentations/talks about the Promotion & Tenure (P&T) process, and while I feel like I have a much better game plan than say a year or two ago….I'd still like to solicit some feedback/suggestions and also share what I've learned thus far, with the hope of generating some additional ideas. Instead of talking about the nitty-gritty of requirements, which can vary greatly by setting/university, I'd like to talk about a more general "game plan" that can be tweaked to at least get people on the right path.

Here are a couple of topics to start with, but please feel free to add more…

1. How are people keeping track of their productivity?
Obviously I update my CV, but I also keep a second document, which I'm going to call my Other Contributions List (OCL), that includes a lot of the "other" contributions I am making to my dept and hospital/university that are a benefit to the system. The idea of an OCL was a pearl of wisdom I picked up from one of the presentations I attended by some folks on our P&T Committee. It's been suggested to me to at least look at my CV once a month as a way to prompt me to update it, so I'm going to take the same approach with my OCL. I've been bad about updating both….but I guess I can change that.

2. Do you have a mentor or mentors to help with this process?
This was strongly recommended to me by multiple people who have served on P&T committees. I don't yet have an official mentor, but I'm in the process. I'm actually looking outside of my dept, hopefully with someone who has served on a P&T committee at some point in their career.

3. Any recs about how to increase collaboration across departments?
I know…I know…this seems to be a problem basically everywhere. The most common suggestion I get are to join hospital committee that go across depts and/or are outside of my regular sphere of colleagues. Any other good ones?

Please feel free to add more questions/areas to this.

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[erg923]

When I was faculty, the college had an entirely online system that you entered stuff into each year for your performance review. So that there was a E database for everything you had done each year. Thus, when it was time for you submitt the monster paper stack needed for the formal tenure application...it was already there, done step-by-step each year and saved electronically for you and for the committee.

 

[PsyDr]

3) IME, the easiest way to increase collaboration across departments is to attend grand rounds in another department, assuming you are in a AMC. I learned this on a fluke as a young Psydr looking for free lunches, but it continues to work for me. Endocrinology, cardiology, neuroradiology, pulmonary, pharmacy, etc. Shut up. Sit in the back. Eat. Do not ask questions. If you do this consistently, someone is eventually going to come up to you and ask who the hell you are. Tell them you are a psychologist with an interest in XYZ. Boom. Now when endocrin has a neuropsych question, they have a person to call. They get to trust you, maybe publish a case report or a short research thing. Be prepared to hit the goddam books, because a lot is going to be beyond your knowledge base. But, if you are nice some departmental PhDs will likely give you a brief overview and/or allow you to attend their lectures. This gives you an easy in for collaboration. If you are truly bright, you'll find an obscure department to get switched to, making you almost impossible to fire. For example, I know a psychologist who is on staff in the School of Dentistry.

One of the NAN presidents got her start in a similar fashion.

 

[Pragma]

While I am still probably 2-3 years away from making a serious push to be considered for an Associate Prof position, I decided last year to make a concerted effort to give myself the best shot. I have attended a number of meetings/presentations/talks about the Promotion & Tenure (P&T) process, and while I feel like I have a much better game plan than say a year or two ago….I'd still like to solicit some feedback/suggestions and also share what I've learned thus far, with the hope of generating some additional ideas. Instead of talking about the nitty-gritty of requirements, which can vary greatly by setting/university, I'd like to talk about a more general "game plan" that can be tweaked to at least get people on the right path.

Here are a couple of topics to start with, but please feel free to add more…

1. How are people keeping track of their productivity?
Obviously I update my CV, but I also keep a second document, which I'm going to call my Other Contributions List (OCL), that includes a lot of the "other" contributions I am making to my dept and hospital/university that are a benefit to the system. The idea of an OCL was a pearl of wisdom I picked up from one of the presentations I attended by some folks on our P&T Committee. It's been suggested to me to at least look at my CV once a month as a way to prompt me to update it, so I'm going to take the same approach with my OCL. I've been bad about updating both….but I guess I can change that.
2. Do you have a mentor or mentors to help with this process?
This was strongly recommended to me by multiple people who have served on P&T committees. I don't yet have an official mentor, but I'm in the process. I'm actually looking outside of my dept, hopefully with someone who has served on a P&T committee at some point in their career.

3. Any recs about how to increase collaboration across departments?
I know…I know…this seems to be a problem basically everywhere. The most common suggestion I get are to join hospital committee that go across depts and/or are outside of my regular sphere of colleagues. Any other good ones?

Please feel free to add more questions/areas to this.

1. Best advice I got - set things aside in a drawer as they occur. I literally keep a drawer where I put stuff I do that I would otherwise forget. Then update my records with that stuff (CV, keeping electronic documentation of things I am involved with) regularly. I have to report with documentation of my activities on some level every year (either formally or through informal departmental review), which forces me to stay on top of it.

2. Initially yes (as far as figuring out the P & T system the first couple of years). I have a couple of informal mentors I run questions by now, but am fairly independent.

3. I get involved via committees and then that turns into requests for me to come speak in other departments, discussions on research collaboration, etc. Hasn't been a problem at my R2 - I think it is more of a mindset. I don't think it needs to be that way at an AMC either, if you engage in other disciplines first as PsyDr mentioned. I've had opportunities to publish collaboratively when I've been at an AMC and open to hitting the books/trying something new.

 

[PhDToBe]

3) IME, the easiest way to increase collaboration across departments is to attend grand rounds in another department, assuming you are in a AMC. I learned this on a fluke as a young Psydr looking for free lunches, but it continues to work for me. Endocrinology, cardiology, neuroradiology, pulmonary, pharmacy, etc. Shut up. Sit in the back. Eat. Do not ask questions. If you do this consistently, someone is eventually going to come up to you and ask who the hell you are. Tell them you are a psychologist with an interest in XYZ. Boom. Now when endocrin has a neuropsych question, they have a person to call. They get to trust you, maybe publish a case report or a short research thing. Be prepared to hit the goddam books, because a lot is going to be beyond your knowledge base. But, if you are nice some departmental PhDs will likely give you a brief overview and/or allow you to attend their lectures. This gives you an easy in for collaboration. If you are truly bright, you'll find an obscure department to get switched to, making you almost impossible to fire. For example, I know a psychologist who is on staff in the School of Dentistry.

One of the NAN presidents got her start in a similar fashion.

Why is someone less likely to get fired from the dentistry or some other "obscure" department than the psych department? Just because you are unique in an obscure department?

 

[Pragma]

Why is someone less likely to get fired from the dentistry or some other "obscure" department than the psych department? Just because you are unique in an obscure department?

I won't speak for PsyDr, but I would imagine that the job security is because of a few factors. Aside from lack of peer review, there is having political support of people around you that lack intimate knowledge of your training. If you get along well, and have good experiences with mutual patients, there could be good "synergy." If you function competently in an environment like that, then you are not even accountable to your peer psychologists (at the day to day level), because you are valued by a system that has more power and prefers a token psychologist.

 

[PsyDr]

Pragma is essentially correct. But I also think that having a psychologist in an atypical department adds a lot to their research data set as well, which can increase their publications.