Advice needed for junior faculty member on TT at R1

[tenuretrack_socsci]

Hi All,

I am hoping that some of you have experience with the following scenario and can give advice:

I am in my 2nd year on the tenure track at a non Ivy, but still wealthy'ish R1 university. My contract includes a semester of pre-tenure leave that is fully paid. I was recently approved to take that leave next academic year (2020-2021) in the spring semester. Then, I learned that I won a fairly prominent external award/fellowship that more than covers a full year of my salary. However, fellowship is set up to send the $$$ directly to my own institution.

How would you negotiate this? My department chair and senior colleagues are all supportive (both of me leaving for the year on the external fellowship but ALSO preserving my pre-tenure leave benefit in some way, shape or form). What would that look like? Could I ask to defer the semester to combine it with post-tenure sabbatical? Or, can I just insist on taking everything all at once (basically leaving me with compensation of 1.5x the usual amount).

Other factors if it matters. It's a private R1 and the fellowship is external and residential (i.e., I won't be sucking off any overhead at current place since I'll be housed elsewhere).

[apostrophe]

Never turn down paid leave!

I recommend that you take the year-long leave now to finish the book (or equivalent) with the clear expectation that you will take your pre-tenure leave when the R1 gods intended it--before tenure. You can always use another semester down the line to get articles out the door. I doubt that you can insist on the timeline, however, so sit down with your chair to make a plan about when you'll take that paid leave so that there are no surprises.

Congratulations and good luck.

[Hibush]

The action that sounds most obvious is to take the external fellowship now, and to do the fellowship stuff at that time. Then take the semester leave later than initially planned, and do what you intended on that leave, perhaps updated to reflect what you accomplished in the fellowship.

Applying fellowships concurrently to get 1.5x compensation isn't normally possible.

Since you will have to be more productive with campus-bound activities when you are there, perhaps the external fellowship produces savings that might be partially applied to a graduate assistant.

[tenuretrack_socsci]

Since you will have to be more productive with campus-bound activities when you are there, perhaps the external fellowship produces savings that might be partially applied to a graduate assistant.

Hi, can you elaborate on what you meant by this specifically? It was unclear to me.

[tenuretrack_socsci]

Never turn down paid leave!

I recommend that you take the year-long leave now to finish the book (or equivalent) with the clear expectation that you will take your pre-tenure leave when the R1 gods intended it--before tenure. You can always use another semester down the line to get articles out the door. I doubt that you can insist on the timeline, however, so sit down with your chair to make a plan about when you'll take that paid leave so that there are no surprises.

Congratulations and good luck.

Thank you. The only problem is I am half way through my tenure clock. I have been told point blank that all I need to clear the tenure hurdle is X. X can be accomplished fairly soon, perhaps entirely with the fellowship year. However, I want to make sure I don't jettison a benefit in my contract: that semester of paid leave. Would you try and petition to apply it to the sabbatical year after tenure if there's not enough time to use it before going up? Has such a thing been done before?

[Hibush]

Since you will have to be more productive with campus-bound activities when you are there, perhaps the external fellowship produces savings that might be partially applied to a graduate assistant.

Hi, can you elaborate on what you meant by this specifically? It was unclear to me.

I expect that you will have to amass merits in campus-bound activities like teaching, graduate training or mentoring undergraduate researchers. Maybe some service. If you are on leave for three of the six semesters leading up to tenure review, you'll need to double down on those things when you are in town.

[apostrophe]

Never turn down paid leave!

I recommend that you take the year-long leave now to finish the book (or equivalent) with the clear expectation that you will take your pre-tenure leave when the R1 gods intended it--before tenure. You can always use another semester down the line to get articles out the door. I doubt that you can insist on the timeline, however, so sit down with your chair to make a plan about when you'll take that paid leave so that there are no surprises.

Congratulations and good luck.

Thank you. The only problem is I am half way through my tenure clock. I have been told point blank that all I need to clear the tenure hurdle is X. X can be accomplished fairly soon, perhaps entirely with the fellowship year. However, I want to make sure I don't jettison a benefit in my contract: that semester of paid leave. Would you try and petition to apply it to the sabbatical year after tenure if there's not enough time to use it before going up? Has such a thing been done before?

It sounds like you intend to go up just as soon as you can. That is not usually encouraged in my university because of the time it takes to tick some boxes (graduate students who have successfully defended, teaching a core course X number of times, etc., as Hibush was suggesting).

With that context, I have two thoughts. First, unless you go up for tenure while you are on fellowship, you still have a shot at that pre-tenure leave. You need to learn your department/college's expectations for being on-campus vs on leave. Ours are pretty flexible but not totally flexible, as you can imagine. Second, sure, you can ask about adding the pre-tenure leave to your sabbatical if your tenure case is successful. If you get only one semester of sabbatical, asking for a year down the road seems reasonable to me.