Exploring Tenure and Promotion Strategies of Racially Minoritized Faculty

• In Event: Exploring the Unspoken Racialized Processes for Minoritized Tenure-Seeking Faculty

Abstract

This scholar will discuss recent research on how RMFC negotiate the ambiguous tenure and promotion processes. Drawing upon theories of performance, surveillance, and evaluation (Bourdieu, 1973; Foucault, 1977) the study investigates how personal and professional meanings are derived by RMFC as they negotiate evaluation in the face of ambiguous criteria.
The promotion of faculty has proven a generative subject of research, with substantial empirical literature on the foundational components of the review areas - teaching, service, and scholarship (e.g. Huber, 2002; Youn & Price, 2009). Other scholars have looked at the outcomes of the promotion review process. Important work has examined the underrepresentation of racially minoritized (Perna, 2001) and women (Barrett & Barrett, 2011) faculty at the highest levels of promotion. Though women and RMFC have grown in number over the last few decades, this overall growth has not been matched by equivalent growth at the level of tenured professor (Turner et al., 2008; Croom & Patton, 2011; Terosky et al., 2014).
Scholarship on faculty evaluation and promotion abounds yet little has been done to empirically investigate how faculty make meaning of the process that asks for authenticity (for example, your research interests) but requires strategy to demonstrate excellence across all areas. Importantly, this research examines how faculty of different ages, races, and genders respond to ambiguous evaluation regimes. This work contributes to our understanding of broader institutional decision-making behavior and how questions of promotion matter in social and organizational pursuit of equity and inclusion.

Author

• Karly Ford, The Pennsylvania State University