Full Description
The Road to Tenure offers humorous recollections of the messiness and confusion that fill the days of a pre-tenure academic—from graduate school through the postdoc and into the assistant professor days. The book's three sections roughly map onto the chronology of academic life, beginning with graduate school and the job search experience; followed by teaching, research, and service; and finally the challenges of family and academic identity.
The book is not a how-to, nor does it emphasize "lessons learned" on the way to tenure. Instead, the collection earnestly, and with good humor, captures a significant and meaningful slice of the experience of pursuing academia in contemporary colleges and universities. For the doctoral student or newly hired faculty member, these essays will provide some comfort with their implicit suggestion that, while it's certainly hard work, you are not alone.
Contents
Introduction
By Erin Marie Furtak and Ian Parker Renga
Section 1: Startup Costs
Warning: Scholarship Can Be Hazardous for Your Health
By Ian Parker Renga
Lucy and the Football: My Search for a Job in a Charlie Brown World
By Steve Newton
Chocolate Frosting & The Art of Interviewing
By Heather M. Bandeen
Changing Clothes in the Phone Booth
By Jessalynn Strauss
Section 2: Occupational Dissonance
Whose class is it anyway?
By Julie C. Mitchell
When Homer Simpson Writes Homer's Iliad: Preventing Plagiarism while Keeping Your Promotion
By Troy Appling
How Not to Teach a Class
By Andrew Shtulman
Publish, Perish, or Apply for Social Security: Reflections on the Tenure Process
By Logan Greene
The Life of the Mind...In the Company of Others
By Amanda Jansen
Section 3: Professors Are People, Too
The Village Idiot
By Erin Marie Furtak
Hot Mess Times Three
By Hindi Krinsky
Who's Pro-creating Now?: Two Sides of Parenting in the Academe
By Lara Narcisi and Scott Dimovitz
How I Got Dismissed from Jury Duty: A Reflection on Philosophy and Public Life
By Rick Anthony Furtak
Acknowledgements
