Tenure statements advice

[Puget]

Tenured colleagues, and especially those who have been in T&P committees:

What is your best advice for writing effective tenure statements (research, teaching, and service)? It is time for me to start writing (due by end of May). I will of course get lots of feedback from my dept. mentor and some other trusted senior colleagues, but the more advice the better!

For context, I'm in psychology at a private R1. I'm not too worried about my case (I recently got an R01, which about seals it here), but certainly still want to put my best foot forward and make a good impression. One bit of uncertainty is that we will be changing both chairs and deans in the middle of this process (with currently no clue who will take either role), so I'm writing in part for an unknown audience.

[Ruralguy]

Make a strong positive and evidence based case. For research discuss the arc of your career, and you went from  X when you first arrived to Y where you are now. Even though its in your CV, mention at least some of the articles and grants that best represent your path, especially your recent path. I you got any awards or assignments to a national committee on the profession, or whatever, mention that. Then go on to similar discussion of teaching and service. For teaching, mention anything you think is innovative that has helped the students .

[lightning]

The CV takes care of communicating what you have done.

The statement, if done correctly, takes care of communicating (making it easy to understand to anyone who looks at your materials) who you are (your identity) as a researcher, teacher, and collegial member of the university community and why you matter. CVs don't make it easy to communicate your identity and why you matter. The statement can do that for you, in tandem with the CV.

Also, your statement is your opportunity to DEFINE who YOU are, so that no one else can define who you are. This is important because too many people will have pre-conceived notions about your field and your specific expertise, and they are often wrong. So then they start judging you by their mis-informed criteria. So,take this statement portion seriously. [And, as a side note for newbies reading along, research statements should be crafted in your first year, so that all your publications and grants during your 6 years of Indentured Servitude, I mean Assistant Professor, will point to that over-arching research statement, which ultimately becomes the core of your tenure statement.]

Also, some, maybe most, T&P committee members will simply be lazy, and they won't read through all your materials. They will read your "executive summary," your tenure statement, and then make decisions based on that and what they know about you.

Also, never forget to mention why your research is important (hopefully it is important).

[Sun_Worshiper]

Similar to the last two comments:
Explain your contributions and, in doing so, show that you have published in top venues and/or received large grants. If you can, show that your stats measure up to those of a typical associate professor. Showing your research is relevant in the real world is not a bad thing, if space permits and if people at your place care about that kind of thing. Link your teaching and service to your research contributions if possible.

Ask friends who were recently tenured to see their materials. Most will be happy to share.

Good luck!

[Puget]

A belated thanks to everyone who gave advice on these. I've now submitted drafts to my senior department mentor who was very, very happy with them, and they will now go to the tenured faculty in the department to see if they have any suggested revisions before they are sent to the outside letter writers.

I ended up being able to pull a lot of text from my annual faculty activity reports, which I now (begrudgingly!) must admit are actually a good thing to have to write! And I had good, fairly broad-audience, summaries of my various lines of research from my NIH biosketche "contributions to science" sections which were also really useful to pull from. So in the end it was much less intimidating of a task than I was anticipating.

For those reading along now or in the future, a few more pointers I got from my senior mentor here (which of course may or may not apply elsewhere, YMMV)--
• Organize everything into short sections with clear subheadings to make it easier for someone to skim or quickly locate a particular section.
• Screen grab the citations per year graph from your google scholar profile (presuming it looks good) to show not just citation count but upward trajectory of citations. I also found some data from my field on average H-index at different career phases to show that mine was very good.
• Note how many publications had mentees at your institution as authors, especially first authors (I'm in a field were PI = last author and lab trainees should be first author). 

[darkstarrynight]

That is great news, Puget! I am going to be spending a lot of my summer putting together my materials for promotion to full, and I scoured the provost's web site for the format I used for P&T but the standardized packet is missing from all files and mentions. I will wait for direction from my department head, but previously our statements were limited to one page for each area (teaching, research, service) and then supplemental materials could be unlimited. I got a lot of praise on my previous materials by the college P&T committee, so mine are used as an example for all tenure track faculty in my college. Thus, I feel confident I can start with those and maybe get a little wiggle room on the one-page-per-statement restriction.

[Puget]

That is great news, Puget! I am going to be spending a lot of my summer putting together my materials for promotion to full, and I scoured the provost's web site for the format I used for P&T but the standardized packet is missing from all files and mentions. I will wait for direction from my department head, but previously our statements were limited to one page for each area (teaching, research, service) and then supplemental materials could be unlimited. I got a lot of praise on my previous materials by the college P&T committee, so mine are used as an example for all tenure track faculty in my college. Thus, I feel confident I can start with those and maybe get a little wiggle room on the one-page-per-statement restriction.

Wow, 1 page would be really hard! Mine were ~5 pages for research (plus references), ~3.5 for teaching and ~3 for service. That was a little longer than the initial suggestion from my mentor, but there is no actual limit and she didn't want me to cut anything.