Preparing Pre-Tenure Materials

1. Preparing Pre-Tenure Materials John Holcomb Cleveland State University Mathfest 2010

2. Caveat • Some of the advice in this presentation may not be appropriate for your institution or circumstances • You MUST learn the expectations and procedures for your institution • Please cultivate mentors and discuss procedures with your chair

3. Youngstown State University • 1995-2000 • Masters granting comprehensive state university • Open enrollment • High Teaching load (12-15 hours per quarter) • I believed the expectation was 2 peer reviewed papers for tenure • Tenure dry run year before tenure review

4. Cleveland State University • Comprehensive Masters-granting institution • Almost open enrollment • Low teaching load (8 hours per semester) • Higher research expectations • 4th and 5th year reviews prior to tenure year (reviewed by dept, chair, and college committee)

5. Documenting Scholarship • Very challenging for Mathematicians • Pitch mathematics to multiple audiences: department, college cmte, dean (less may be more) • A paragraph or section on each paper/project/collaboration • Find a quote somewhere in the Notices (I think) about how impact factors and citation indexes in mathematics are not necessarily helpful. • Number your papers on your vita and reference them by number in your narrative

6. Documenting Scholarship • Get the AMS Notices Article • January 2005 "Patterns of Research in Mathematics" by Jerrold Grossman.  • 43% of mathematicians have only published a single paper • 15% for 2 papers, 8% for 3, 5% for 4, and 4% for 5 papers, and 10% for 6-10 papers and 7% for 11-20 and 6% for 21-50 and 2 % for 51-100

7. Publishing

8. Documenting Scholarship • Co-authorship • Take the pulse of your department and college • You have to explain your contribution • Solicit letters from co-author or lead author that testifies to your contribution to include in Appendix

9. Documenting Teaching • Student Evaluation Data • Necessary evil that administrators seem to love • If it is a Likert Scale, give the percentages for each category and then collapse • Make a bar graph for the percentage in each category • If classes are small, describe the impact of single students • If the scores began lower and improved, make that clear • Get data for department/college norms • Explain the steps you have taken to address the issue

10. Documenting Teaching • Do a Master Teaching Swap • Visit a colleagues class and interview the students for 10 minutes • Tell them you will share their concerns after final grades are posted with no attribution to specific students • Have the colleague do the same thing for your class • Think deeply about the questions the colleague should ask

11. Documenting Teaching • Make scholarly in some way major course overhauls • Articles, presentations, etc. • Give workshops or colloquiums on curriculum enhancements • Get letters of support from others who have used your innovations • Learn if you need to include every course syllabus or simply ones that are a result of redesigning on your part

12. Documenting Teaching • Document Teaching Effectiveness • Clearly articulate the “threshold of understanding” and describe how you evaluated success or failure • Show success rate in class (especially upper level courses) • Describe the process • Colleagues reviewed materials and get it in writing • Caveat: This is more rare and I have yet to see it done

13. Documenting Service • Choose fewer committees/projects, but have more of an impact • Document the impact • Realize that Service may make or break your tenure

14. General Thoughts • Do not leave this for the last minute • It is up to you to make the case • Have others read it • Find out what is expected in terms of documentation • Ask a lot of people the same questions • Size does NOT matter • It is like a grant in that it is never quite done

15. Final Thought Organization, Organization, Organization!