2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This “tricks-of-the-trade” paper serves as a resource to help future (and new faculty) engineering educators strategize for earning tenure. We aim to reveal the “hidden curriculum” of earning tenure at a research university using our combined experiences as faculty, on journal editorial boards, as leaders in professional societies, assisting with program development, and as a [redacted for review]. Our motivation for writing this paper is to support others’ success by providing advice to make explicit the lessons we learned “the hard way.”
Many faculty are often underprepared for their first faculty position. They start their first day attending orientations which cover general university policies and procedures. Maybe they read a book about what it’s like to be faculty. Finally, they probably start working like they saw their advisor work. But what about all the things that aren’t covered in orientation? What about the advice that’s not in books? What about the lessons your advisor didn’t learn? Through this paper, we contribute to this conversation providing practical advice about three aspects of earning tenure that are rarely discussed: (1) developing and disseminating a compelling narrative about your work, (2) leading a research group, and (3) creating an internal and external support team.
Many future and early career faculty mistakenly believe that their work “will speak for itself” rather than taking control of their public image by actively propagating a compelling narrative. Articulating a clear vision, creating an active web presence, and consistently promoting impact are strategies we have successfully used to support strong reputations in our field. In the paper, we provide personal examples and suggestions for others to consider while working to take control of your narrative.
Graduate school and postdoctoral training prepare us to conduct independent research, but rarely actually teach us how to lead a research group of our own. Advising students and postdocs, managing research administration, and learning personnel processes are aspects of leading a team for which we felt unprepared; these activities can take up an inordinate amount of time and often require support from across the university. We discuss mechanisms we have developed to streamline running our research groups such as developing a group handbook, crafting job ads for research assistants, and creating roles for various group members that aid in delegating tasks.
We were often told as pre-tenure faculty to develop a support system but were rarely given practical advice. We discuss how we eventually learned that hiring coaches and editors to advance our writing was a great investment and drastically improved our productivity and sense of purpose. We talk about how we developed mentoring relationships with professional society colleagues across the country as we served on national committees. We formed support groups with colleagues in our departments and those at other institutions who could help us contextualize our local issues and offer advice for others seeking to do the same.