When is it time to leave your university?

You know the school year is about to start when all the retreats begin. There are the college retreats, the departmental retreats, the retreats for those apparently too criminally insane (or masochistic) to not have made up a reason to be out of the state.... I have spent the most craptastic week going to retreats. I don't have balls, but I feel right now like I've always imagined it feels like to have been kicked in them. These were not only awful soul-sucking experiences, they were down-right demoralizing and demotivating.

When I came to my job at Wonderland University, I was told that were were an R1 institution. But you see, with the new Carnegie rankings we dropped to the second tier of institutions (now called 'high research'. This differs from the top tier of research institutions which is now called 'very high research' or the bottom tier which has no special designation but must be equivalent to 'no research pulse detectable'). It has become clear to me that the focus has been drifting while I have been here from a research emphasis and that everything from paper publications to research dollars has been declining over the past decade. While my department has also experienced this general research decline, it has been less pronounced and is still highly supportive of research. In other departments, things have been more grim. If their research programs were patients at hospitals the doctors would have called time of death a long time ago because there really is no sign of life. In fact, some of them should have had their Ph.D programs buried a while ago because they're beginning to reek. We have watched at least one other highly productive department implode. There has been no discussion at the university-level about whether or how to change this trajectory.

There is nothing wrong with being at an R2 institution if it fits with your career aspirations. What I have been weighing for a while is what career do I want and can this place support it? There are huge benefits here on the personal side - a family friendly, collegial atmosphere where my natural research productivity makes me a rock star. The down-sides are: many of students I am trying to recruit have competing offers from bigger universities that I cannot compete with, even if they come I'm almost embarrassed by the training and financial opportunities available to them, institutional regulations make having post-docs an almost impossible task, and general research infrastructure is frayed.

So this brings me back to this week's retreats. What I desperately wanted was a feeling about where the university was going. Did we have a plan? What were our priorities? The answer is that Wonderland University has no plan. In fact, the responses to pointed questions made it clear that many people would prefer to pretend that the university was still an R1 than deal with the reality that it wasn't. Some even made up ridiculous arguments involving ranking categories that do not exist and clearly we wouldn't be in anyway. Just because I say I'm as rich as Bill Gates doesn't make it true (though I desperately wish it did!) Even more awfully, it was clear that as an assistant professor I knew more about how the research and graduate programs actually worked at this university than any of the higher administration and definitely more about how they should work at an R1. Honestly, I wasn't asking about detailed trivial things either. It was the equivalent of your car mechanic not knowing where the brakes were. I may be young and naive but that seems a little fucked up. The sad thing is that my department is desperately trying to fix things but I am unconvinced that a single department can create an island in a university that doesn't seem to care.

The problem is that while I have been at other universities, this is the only university I have ever been a faculty member. What if everyplace is like this and I leave and the only thing that changes is that I have crappier colleagues?

So, my question to my wise readers is this: how do you know if it is time to leave?

Uh, Welcome Back?

Well, I did it. I survived my week of forced socialization with my peers (it was even kinda fun). Those of you who have read previous posts, you'll be glad to know that I did not (only) hide in my hotel room, but did some good networking. I have a tentative invite to give a talk at a major university, students are already contacting me to join my lab, and I feel like I have a solid feel on the research pulse of my field for the next year. Oh, and I ate some fantastic Ethiopian cuisine! What more can a girl want from a meeting?

The meeting was the smallest I have seen in almost a decade - only 3000 people. It felt small....and subdued....in comparison to other meetings. I suspect the small was a combination of people not being excited about Milwaukee (though I really enjoyed it as a conference location) and the higher travel costs. The subdued part....I'm not sure, but I suspect it may be correlated with the fact that there was a lot of worry about NSF funding rates which apparently hit a new low of ~7% this past cycle. I talked to a former NSF program officer who talked about how exceedingly depressing it was to be making funding decisions under those conditions....no doubt! As I have mentioned before, it isn't a job I would want!

I also got some good fodder for future blog postings, so in the not so distant future look for such gems as: "When you ask current students of a lab that you want to join what it's like to be in that lab, actually listen to what they say", "When the peer-review system breaks (and I think it will), then what?", and "The Young and the Restless: why are so many assistant professors jumping to new universities?".

Finally, for those of you who enjoyed the academic bully posts, I caught up with a number of my former academic bullies. Only in one case was this because I couldn't find a lamp-post to hide behind in time. Strangely they have mostly mellowed with time (or perhaps my miracle academic bully serum has resulted in permanent 'remission' in my presence). My favorite moment occurred when one of the bullies who tried to force his way on to a project of mine and "permanently borrowed" one he was collaborating on with General Disarray complained about people doing that to him. Made me believe in Karma all over again!

So, hyper-stimulated by our time in Milwaukee and antsy to get back to work on our research, General Disarray and I came in early this morning only to have our extra morning time (and motivation) eaten by a bewildering array of university-level clusterfucks that should never have happened, are not our fault,  we have no control over, but take substantial time from us to fix. Sigh, welcome back. I'm sure my love-hate relationship with my university is something I will spend more time on in the not so distant future. For now, I will simply say that Professor Chaos is exhausted but back on-line. Thanks to everyone who left comments while I was away, I'll make my way through them shortly and start making the rounds to my favorite blogging haunts! I'm sure I've missed some great stuff while I've been away!

NSF funding rates and University tenuring policies

I read with interest a posting by DrugMonkey on the "undoubling" of the NIH budget. I poked around for similar information on the National Science Foundation, but did not find anyone who put the NSF budget in the context of inflation.

NSF's funding rates have been at ~8% for my field for the past few years. There were rumors that NSF was to undergo a doubling like NIH, but it really never materialized. I suspect, that given various budget cuts, NSF has at best kept up with inflation. At worse, it hasn't even done that.

General Disarray and I have speculated on what the 8% funding rate at NSF means for the tenuring process at universities. Our university, like many others, requires a "federally-funded" grant as part of the promotion and tenure process. Really, though, the requirements for the grant are usually more stringent than that. Grants run through other institutions do not count for the tenure process because the tenuring university does not "see" that money (seeing has nothing to do with it being visible on your CV and everything about whether the accounting office can roll around in the Facilities and Administration returns in some secret back room). At my institution, the grant must be "in operation" at the time of tenure (i.e., if you had a grant while an assistant professor but it ran out before you came up for tenure, it wouldn't count.) I have a friend at another institution who was told the grant must be at least $500,000 to count, meaning his $150,000 in NSF funding did not. (I always meant to ask him if he had 5 grants each $100,000 or 10 grants each $50,000, would that count, but it always sounded too much like an SAT or GRE question).

The current 8% funding rate has us curious. Can universities afford to be so picky about grants now or do they risk losing their untenured faculty because their expectations no longer meet funding reality? I haven't done the math on this, but I am very curious to see what tenure decisions really look like for assistant professors in my cohort. Will the less-mighty and more scarce dollar really play such a big role for us as it has for cohorts past? While I suspect that the answer is "no", I have no intention of being the guinea pig for our brave, new, less-funded world, so back I go to my NSF proposal.

Department Heads: Friends or Foes?

As part of an academic couple, I have invested a lot of time gathering stories and advice on how to solve the "two-body" problem (i.e. how to get two tenure-track jobs at the same institution - or at least the same metropolitan area). The stories are almost always the same: if one spouse has a job and the other does not, the university will not come up with a second job unless an offer from another university is obtained. It is almost like it's written in stone on some University Tablet of Commandments: Thou shalt not make a spousal accommodation unless another institution makes an offer first. I know of only two exceptions to the golden rule: 1) a second job may be thrown into initial job negotiations, 2) a university knows they cannot afford to match offers from richer schools and acts proactively. I have heard of multiple incidences of exception number one. I have only heard of one incidence of exception number 2.

I have a friend, let's call her Prof X. Prof X has a tenure-track position and is married to Dr. Y. Dr. Y does not have a tenure track position and is coming to the end of his postdoctoral funding. For the past couple of years I have been telling Prof X that if she wanted to shake loose a second job, she needed to hit the market ASAP, but she has been reluctant to do so. I never delved into why, but I think part of our difference in perspective results from her landing her job on her first application and interview, whereas I went through a 3-year grueling ordeal that still causes me to break out in dry heaves when I think about applying for jobs. Hence, we have very different perspectives on the job market. Whatever the cause, she and her husband put off applying for jobs until this past fall. They did well on the job market, getting several interviews and one job offer.

Here's the part that links with my question today regarding department heads. Her department head, as per the secret University Commandments referenced above, suddenly came up with the money to offer him a tenure-track position. Dr Y would have to undergo an in-house "interview" process, but this was primarily to be a formality. Prof X turned down the job offer from the other university before the position for Dr. Y was finalized. For whatever reason, (I do not know the details), it now looks like the department head is waffling on his decision and it appears the position for Dr. Y is in some jeopardy. The reason could be innocent, (i.e., budget problems, which are plaguing many states, may make coming up with the money harder), but I have some reason to suspect something more nefarious (though I do admit I have a penchant for conspiracy theories). I suspect that Dr.Y may have some enemies in the department, resulting in some loud voices arguing against his pending position. Furthermore, that a department head might rescind an offer once a competing offer is no longer looming is not out of line with the various horror stories I have heard.

Since I am sure others have had Department Heads go back on their word, let's assume for a moment that Prof X's department head is supremely Machiavellian. This leads me to my current question: should a department head be considered a friend or a foe? I have always felt like a faculty member should be able to count on their department head to be their advocate with the higher administration. I have benefited from mine helping me to deal with a variety of issues that were interfering with my teaching and/or research (though only if it wasn't something he needed me to do for political reasons). However, the story of Prof X, and others like it, suggest that a Department Head should be viewed as a chess opponent not an advocate. As long as you have options on the board, everything is good but beware the Department Head checkmate. It can really suck.