Tenure-track Assistant Professor Research Articles

Message from the New Editor-in-Chief

It is my great honor to be the new Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Network and Systems Management. My association with JNSM began before it was published for the first time in 1993. While working as a tenure track assistant professor, I received a flyer in my mail about a new journal in the planning stages of being launched that focused on the network management area and featured Manu Malek as the founding Editor-inChief. This initial announcement listed the journal’s original name, which was a long title that reflected operations, administration, maintenance, and network control—all critical components of network management. However, when the first issue came out, the journal actually bore the much more compact title: Journal of Network and Systems Management. Since then, the journal has been commonly known in the research community by its initials, JNSM. I immediately felt that my research was a good fit for this newly launched journal, so, I submitted a manuscript for possible consideration. To my delight, my manuscript was accepted, and it was published in the second issue of the first volume in June 1993. Around the same time, I started serving as a reviewer for JNSM, but by 1995, Manu had already asked me to serve on the editorial board of JNSM, which I gladly accepted. In 1997, I co-guest edited a special issue on ‘Fault Management in Communication Networks’, and in 2002, Manu asked me to be a Senior Technical Editor for JNSM—a role I’ve continued to serve in until now. With the emergence of the web, I felt that it was important for JNSM to have an online presence. Thus, in 1995, I suggested to Manu that I start and maintain a webpage for the journal, and from this discussion, the JNSM on-line page (http://www. cstp.umkc.edu/jnsm/) was born as a leaf page on my department’s web-site. Here, I added information on issues along with abstracts of each paper. With the plan to publish special issues, Manu forwarded me the call for papers, which I announced

The European Young Chemist Award 2010

The European Young Chemist Award 2010

Stay in the Game: Gender, Family Formation and Alternative Trajectories in the Academic Life Course

Academic careers have traditionally been conceptualized as pipelines, through which young scholars move seamlessly from graduate school to tenure-track positions. This model often fails to capture the experiences of female Ph.D. recipients, who become tenure-track assistant professors at lower rates than do their male counterparts. What do these women do instead? We use panel data from the 1983-1995 Surveys of Doctorate Recipients to explore the early careers of Ph.D. recipients. Our results show that female doctorate recipients are disproportionately likely to be employed as adjunct faculty or exit the paid labor force, especially if they have young children. Contrary to conventional wisdom, adjunct professorships provide a better opportunity for getting a tenure-track job down the road than do non-teaching positions inside or outside of academia. Collectively these findings show that the academic life course is both complex and permeable.

A Black Woman's Journey Into a Predominately White Academic World

The paucity of Black women at predominately White institutions of higher education is well recognized. Like me, some Black women survived the gauntlet of coursework, qualifying examinations, and dissertation research and writing in pursuit of doctoral degrees, followed by the whirlwind campus visits that are integral to the faculty recruitment process. Upon our arrival, we were confronted by the challenges of being African American and female in a majority White university community. This article is a personal journey that spans 40 years of my life—from an 18-year-old freshman to a tenure-track assistant professor—at the same university.

The Relative Earnings of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education

Part-time and full-time non-tenure-track faculty currently represent almost half of all faculty in U.S. higher education, yet little is known about their earnings relative to traditional tenure-track faculty. I find that full-time non-tenure-track faculty earn approximately 26% less per hour from their academic institution and 18% less in total earnings from all sources per hour than comparable tenure-track assistant professors. Part-time non-tenure-track faculty earn 64% less per hour from their institution, but only 1% less in total earnings per hour, than tenure-track assistant professors.

Late Night Thoughts on Blogging While Reading Duncan Kennedy's 'Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy' in an Arkansas Motel Room

It has been more than twenty years since Duncan Kennedy published his seminal 'Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy'. In it he called for a radical assault on the hierarchies embedded in American law schools. But that assault failed. Over the past two decades, the hierarchies of legal education have, if anything, become even more fixed, insular, and status-driven, even while the elites of the practicing bar have changed dramatically and become more open to outsiders. It is vastly easier for the graduate of a fourth-tier law school to become a partner at an elite law firm than it is to be hired as a tenure-track assistant professor at even a non-elite American law school. But law school hierarchies may be changing. Not as the result of a critical assault, but because vast changes in communications technologies have seriously eroded the control of information that is necessary for the survival of any non-functional hierarchy. In this paper, written for a symposium on blogging by lawyers and law professors, I revisit the insider world of Kennedy's 'LERH' and contrast it with the outsider-dominated changes being wrought by the Internet.

Women Lawyers of All Colors Steered to Contingent Positions in Law Schools and Law Firms

This article examines the drastic organizational changes that have taken place in law firms and law schools in the last thirty years and how they have seriously disadvantaged women. Women have been almost 50% of law school graduating classes nationally for the last fifteen to twenty years. They have graduated with all the traditional indicia of success, including law review participation and high honors. Many have been judicial clerks, although not in proportion to their numbers and academic success. However, women have not progressed in proportionate numbers to the highest ranks of the legal profession - equity partnerships and law firms and tenured full professorships in law schools. In the 1960's, it was seven years up or out to equity partner in law firms and to tenured full professor in law schools. Today, many large firms have extended the partnership track to nine to twelve years to a new category of non-equity partner, with another three to five years to equity Billable hours did not exist in the 1960s; they are now between 2,000 and 2,500 and growing. A young woman graduating from law school at twenty-five loses her child bearing years if she goes for equity Successful professional men are married with children. Successful professional women are too often unmarried and without children. Women who want a life are presented with several new options at law firms. They can go part-time, they can become permanent Associates, non-equity Partners, Of Counsel, Legal Specialists, non-partner Administrators, or members of the new expanding category of Contract Lawyers. Agencies now supply hundreds of temporary lawyers to large firms. At the same time there are fewer and fewer equity partners, thereby upping the earnings per equity partner. The gap between the highest paid lawyers in a firm and the lowest paid has grown larger. Law schools have also changed drastically in the last 30 years. Full time faculty now consist of a limited number of tenured and tenure track professors with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary and research expertise, growing numbers of full time specialized clinical, legal writing, and other skills teachers, expanding numbers of lower level administrators with some teaching responsibilities, and exploding numbers of adjuncts teaching both substantive and skills courses. Status, money, and job security go to tenured and tenure track teachers. There are strong indications that this category is reverting back to being a white, male preserve. An individual will be hired as an entry level tenure-track Assistant Professor only with an already established publication record. Few women with family responsibilities can manage this. Additionally, highly qualified women of all colors are being steered to lower paying, lower status, less secure contract and at will positions. The organizational changes in the legal profession, their causes, and their devastating effect on women have previously not been analyzed. This analysis of the problem can lead to future solutions.

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Ecological/Water Resources Engineering UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Ecological/Water Resources Engineering UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

When Technology Bites Back: A Case Report Describing an Instructorʼs Experience With Online Teaching

Background and Purpose. The purpose of this case report was to describe the experiences of an assistant professor of physical therapy at a single university when she converted a lecture-based course to one that was Web-assisted. The instructor is a tenure-track assistant professor with 8 years of teaching experience at the professional and college levels. She was the primary instructor for a 12-week undergraduate course, PTH1405-Research for Physical Therapists, that included 56physical therapist seniors and 16 cardiopulmonary science junior students. case Description. Course materials for PTH1405 were placed online using Blackboard, which is a Web-based educational software package. In addition to attending lectures and a weekly 1-hour recitation, students were required to use the discussion board and virtual chat room capabilities of Blackboard to complete selected course assignments. Outcomes. Numerous arose that significantly impeded the ease of introducing PTH1405 as a Web-assisted course. Barriers included institutional infrastructure problems that resulted in considerable Web site dow time and Internet traffic flow problems. Instructor and student workload was magnified as a result of the infrastructure failure. In addition, many students exhibited a strong learning preference for face-to-face interaction. Confronted with major obstacles, the instructor relied on a model of self-reflective thinking that allowed her to gather data about and examine her teaching experiences in PTH1405 using 6 methods: (1) student e-mails, (2) student reflection papers, (3) student discussion board transcripts, (4) student chat room transcripts, (5) personal reflection, and (6) peer evaluation. The instructor analyzed the 6 data sources using a qualitative research methodology, and 4 themes were identified: (1) online behavior, (2) communication feature use, (3) what is learned, and (4) barriers. This article focuses on the results that emanated from the barriers theme and describes how the instructor used the data to adjust her teaching approach and assignments related to the use of technology during the academic term. PTH1405 has subsequently been reworked using the knowledge gained from this initial experience and is currently being taught in a modified format, with the anticipation of a better result for both the students and the instructor. Discussion. Webassisted instruction has great potential for increasing the pedagogical repertoire of physical therapist instructors, a major benefit being the ability to address the preferences of different learner styles. However, the successful introduction of Web-assisted instruction is heavily dependent upon institutional network resources. Also, faculty may need to exercise restraint and monitor closely their selection and the number of assignments that are Web-based due to the increased workload imposed on students and faculty. Finally, acceptance of Webassisted instruction by physical therapist students appears to be an evolutionary process. This process requires time for increasing student familiarity with technology and the Web to reduce resistance that may accompany the introduction of new instructional delivery methods. Key Words: Barriers to instruction, Discussion thread, Physical therapy education, Reflection, Virtual chat, Web-assisted instruction. INTRODUCTION The growth and availability of the Internet and health-related computer software packages has resulted in increased opportunities for physical therapist educators to incorporate technology into their classrooms. A review of the current literature indicates that physical therapist educators are using computers in 2 major ways. Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in the form of CD-ROMs and multimedia software programs has been gaining popularity in physical therapist curricula.1-6 Physical therapist educators are using CAI to enhance anatomical instruction1,2,4,5 and clinical assessment acquisition,3 or for distance learning purposes. …

Millennial Possibilities: Entering the Profession at the Jahrtausendwende

As an undergraduate German major in the late '80s and early '90s, I was told that employment prospects in post-secondary education would be exceptionally good for my generation of students. When I began a PhD program in 1993, however, it was already becoming apparent that these predictions were not entirely accurate. I heard sobering reports that the number of new PhDs produced outnumbered the number of new vacancies considerably, not to mention the recent PhDs who remained unemployed or in adjunct positions. Either the anticipated retirements were delayed, or existing faculty lines were being eliminated upon the retirement of their holders. Despite the general consensus that employment outlooks were bleak, I resolved to complete the PhD program and to pursue an academic career. There were and still are no guarantees of tenure-track appointments for new PhDs, but I remain confident that graduate students and junior faculty who are sufficiently committed to the profession and receive the necessary training, guidance, and support from their departments and mentors can create a niche for themselves in today's and tomorrow's Germanistik/German Studies. Because I am personally in the transitional phase from graduate student to visiting assistant professor to tenure-track assistant professor, I will share my pragmatic views on some practical measures which I believe might ensure the vitality of a strain of German Studies which can continue to attract and retain students at all levels, and in turn permit a new generation of PhDs to continue in their chosen profession. While a graduate student, I served as graduate student representative on the departmental Self Study Review Committee. This granted me the opportunity to see our own programs from a variety of different perspectives: those of graduate and undergraduate students in the department, of faculty and administration, and of external reviewers. By participating in a single case study of the past, present, and projected future of a single German program, I gained an understanding of the widely varied and often-competing interests which both departments and individual faculty and students must negotiate in the attempt to ensure the continued integrity and vitality of our profession. The seemingly irreconcilable nature of these competing interests is most apparent in discussions of enrollments. With the advent of responsibility-based (or market-driven) budgeting systems, we frequently hear from above that we are too expensive, that especially graduate courses are under-enrolled. While a simple remedy might be to increase the number of graduate students admitted into German graduate programs, the MLA and others have cautioned that it is unconscionable to produce PhDs far in excess of the number of projected available academic positions. One possible solution to this dilemma would be the development of attractive alternate master's degree programs, for example a combined MBA and German MA, or master's degrees in Education and German. In addition to recruiting degree students in German, graduate programs can increase enrollments by developing courses which attract students from History, Art or Music History, Philosophy, Comparative Studies, Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, etc. While this would necessitate teaching in English translation, additional discussion sections can easily be offered in German for students who need to develop their language skills further. Many graduate schools are also encouraging the development of graduate minors, including interdisciplinary minors. Interdisciplinary minors would serve the dual purpose of increasing enrollments in German graduate courses and promoting collaborative projects (research projects and publications, conferences and symposia) among participating programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Conversely, German graduate students should be encouraged likewise to pursue graduate minors and specializations in related fields. …

Bigger, Smaller, Richer, Poorer: Trends in Agricultural Economics

AbstractThe 1996 American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) Employment Services Committee (ESC) survey results reveal that although enrollments are declining in both undergraduate and graduate programs, faculty numbers are increasing. These trends belie the fact that the increase in faculty has come among nontenure track faculty and that the number of tenure track assistant professors has declined markedly because of fewer hires, promotions, and attrition. One result is an aging tenure track faculty. Salaries among all faculty have been increasing at over 2% per year; however, a greater proportion of faculty is in the nontenure track at lower salaries. Key strategies to reverse declining enrollments are for departments to improve diversity, to gather information on placement of students at all levels, and especially to learn more about private‐industry placements at the undergraduate and masters levels and about foreign employment at the graduate level.

What's Worth Doing: Reflections on an After-School Program in a Denver Elementary School

How can concerned physical educators in higher education show more of a commitment to addressing the growing crisis among children and youth? A physical activity-based after-school program in a Denver elementary school provides the context for an account of how I, as a third-year tenure track assistant professor, have answered the question, “What's worth doing?” Ongoing program evaluation and dissemination of demonstrable results ensures that my work is not merely a service activity but also applied, scholarly research. In this essay, I trace the three-year history of the program, describe my struggles and successes, and conclude with my reflections on the personal benefits and strains which accompany my commitment to undertaking community work.

Allocation of time in three academic specialties

A survey was done to: 1) characterize the allocation and distribution of time by tenure track emergency physicians, and 2) compare the time distribution of emergency physicians to two other academic disciplines. All emergency medicine residency programs were surveyed by telephone to determine if faculty were eligible for tenure and if tenure was available, how many hours per week were spent on clinical duties, research, and administrative tasks. Similar information was compiled from cardiology and orthopedic surgery faculty at the same universities. Data from the survey revealed that a tenure track assistant professor spends 23 hours (46%) working clinical shifts in the emergency department; 11 hours (20%) doing research and 18 hours (34%) in administrative tasks. In contrast, cardiologists spend significantly more time in clinical duties (32 hours) and research (18 hours). However, cardiologists spend significantly less time in administrative duties (10 hours). Data for orthopedic surgeons showa similar pattern. Distributions within each academic discipline were also analyzed and a significant difference in research time was found between four tenure track emergency medicine programs and the other eighteen. Data from this survey may help academic emergency physicians evaluate how they are allocating their time in comparison to other busy clinical specialties.

Professional Networks of Junior Faculty in Psychology

Composition and functioning of academics' professional networks were assessed in a study of 47 women and 43 men holding tenure-track assistant professor positions in psychology at sixty universities. Women's networks had significantly more women colleagues, more higher-status women colleagues, and fewer associates from their previous institutions than men's. Women also consistently rated their networks as less effective at helping them build a professional reputation. However, women were similar to men in terms of the number of “important colleagues” and higher status associates in their networks and ratings of colleagues' effectiveness at providing professional socialization, friendship, career information, and access to current research. The results suggest that by the third year at the assistant professor level, women in psychology have established a small same-sex support network, but that their larger network functioning may be beginning to diverge from men's in one important area: building a professional reputation. Implications for women's career strategies are discussed.