5 years, 7 months and 25 days (Tenure)

You may think it's a bit silly, but I do have a thing for a well-made watch. I have a tradition of picking up a new one for major milestones at work (if you can call something you've done twice a tradition!). At right is the Seiko Premier Moonphase from my hiring as an Assistant Prof in 2012, the 62MAS Prospex Diver at left is the latest addition, doubling the size of the "collection." There's something about the simplicity and clarity of the latter that I appreciate now, much as I did the clockwork complexity of the former six years ago.

On the 26th of July this year, I finally got the good news from my President - I have been granted tenure! For those fans of this classic post that makes it 5 years, 7 months and 25 days since I began work at York University as an Assistant Professor. It's significantly longer than I spent as a postdoc and just a shade over the time spent in graduate school (5 years, 4 months and 7 days). I would have posted earlier, but I've been processing this news. In fact, I'm still processing. But, as is typical for this space, I'm feeling the itch to write and so I'm sharing my half-formed thoughts with you now.

But first; not all of you might be familiar with the concept of tenure. Why does it exist? What does it mean? Why do I/we care? And, what is it for? Perhaps a little background is called for. At most Universities, (but notably not all) most starting appointments, what would be in Canada and the United States called an "Assistant Professorship," is in fact a limited-term contract. The deal is that you will teach, research, serve the community/university and mentor graduate students for a period of time (typically 5 years). At at the end of that time, your fellow professors (Associate and Full) will weigh in and determine whether or not you meet the standards of your profession and merit being awarded a continuing position. Deans and other Senior Administrators also get a vote on this, however, at least at York it tends to be the lower-level committees that present the largest hurdles.

Despite what you may have heard in the popular press, getting tenure does not make someone "un-fireable." There remain a significant number of circumstances under which a tenured professor can be let go. However, it is intentionally more difficult for such a professor to be dismissed, especially over matters of simple professional disagreement between that professor and their peers, their superiors and external community members (i.e. politicians).

The reasoning behind this is that someone who has earned tenure is worthy of the trust of the institution and of the society in which that institution is housed (I will note that my University is a creature of my provincial government). As such, they should be permitted to take risks which they judge to be in the interests of their institution and of society without putting up their job as collateral. Classically, this means "talking truth to power." But, in the sciences and engineering, often what this means is the freedom to pursue long-term goals and projects of great importance (and perhaps uncertain odds of success) to the detriment of short-term metrics. Let's call those by their venture capital term: 'moonshots.'

Thus, tenure is a balancing act by an institution. They need to have a fraction of their professors who are making constant incremental advances with frequent publication: such metrics are important. Yet they also have a need for the infrequent revolutionary advance of a moonshot that makes a splash. Tenure therefore means that your University has enough faith in your abilities and intuition to trust you to be a gambler.

Not every bet will pay off, but enough do to make the system worthwhile. Ask Carl Sagan whether working with PBS on on an extensive documentary about the Cosmos was a good idea, or Steve Squyres whether a mid-career internship with Ball Aerospace was a good use of his time. I'm sure each had naysayers at the time that wondered why they weren't rushing to publish another Icarus paper, take on another student or write another grant application instead. But I can guarantee you that we'd be living in a very different planetary science world without those choices by those scientists.

So what about me? On what will I spend my tenure dividend? I do have some embryonic ideas*, but I must admit that, as with my PhD work, I feel a bit like the dog who actually caught the car. By that I mean that I focused so much of my time an energy on achieving my goal that I reserved an unhealthily small amount of consideration for what comes next. And by unhealthily, I do mean that literally (I'll get into this more in my annual "state of the blog" but just as with my PhD, I was dogged by an initially mysterious health issue in the closing days of my assistant professorship).

Though I was productive beyond my wildest dreams during this time - I published over 40 papers (!) from 2012-2018, including co-authorships - my colleagues were somewhat puzzled of my concern regarding tenure. I understand why that would be so - the stats show that, at least in Canada, it's obtaining an Assistant Professorship that is the main hurdle to clear, not getting tenure. Nevertheless, channeling that concern into work proved to be effective. Frankly, I wasn't able to relax until I had that piece of paper from my president in my hands.

The process itself is very nerve-wracking and I'd be lying to you if I said it went smoothly. At some institutions you prepare your own tenure file. But at York, it is your colleagues who do that work for you, theoretically without much input on your part. The point of this post is not to rail against the system or anyone in it, so let me say simply that you must learn that you are your own best advocate. While you can't pick up the ball if it gets dropped, it is up to you to holler from the sidelines until you are hoarse about what needs to happen. That won't make you many friends amongst your colleagues, but you must persevere: this is a process in which failure is simply not an option**.

A brief note of advice for those heading down this path, particularly at the point where you have just been selected for an assistant professorship. This is a time when you have significant leverage. You'll notice that it took me longer than the 5 years I mentioned earlier to get tenure. There's a reason for that - I negotiated that my first year of work would be 24 months long. While I probably didn't need the extra time (a senior-author Nature paper is surprisingly helpful), this is probably the most important period of your academic life. There's no shame in giving yourself an edge to rack up more papers, more mentor-ships of graduate students and in general to make a better case for why you deserve to keep doing what you are doing.

Getting back to that initial comment about processing, the short version here is that I don't feel about my tenure in quite the way I anticipated I would. Part of that is that I don't yet believe it's real, part of it is probably that there are a few different conflicting feelings after nearly 6 years on the job competing in my head. A little reading over at stackexchange seems to suggest that mixed feelings once tenure is achieved are common.

But at least I can look forward to a little change of pace this coming January. At that point I will be off on my first Sabbatical, this one in sunny Australia. But more on that in a later post.

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*One interesting thought that appeals to me and that won't leave my head is to write a popular science book. We'll see whether that actually happens, but writing here in this space makes we wonder if I could do something compelling. Before you ask, no, nothing autobiographical - my time on Earth has not been remotely that interesting to others.

**I do recognize that there are fulfilling jobs outside of academia, but it can be challenging to make a career transition out of academia. Most professors get tenure in their early to mid 40s. I'm lucky enough to be a bit younger than that.