Great Tips on How to Get a Tenure Track Job in Academia and Then How to Get Tenure

The academic job market this year, at least in such fields as operations research / management science / operations management, is terrific, judging not only by the number of openings for tenure-track faculty positions and job listings, but also from the number of campus interview visits that my most senior doctoral student has secured this year.

This is great news for our discipline!

Last Friday, we hosted one of my former doctoral students, Dr. Jose M. Cruz, who received 5 degrees from UMass Amherst and who is now a tenured Associate Professor and Ackerman Scholar and Director of the Masters Program in Business Analytics and Program Management at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut (UConn). He gave a fabulous presentation, the slides of which,  he has given us permission to share. His talk was on The Myths and Facts of How to Get a Tenure Track Academic Job and How to get Tenure.

The slides of his presentation can be downloaded in pdf format here.

He interspersed his presentation with many anecdotes and real life experiences and enthralled the audience with useful tips and with his energy and insights gained from many practical experiences.

The slides are easy to follow and very useful and enjoyable (of course, not as great as actually being there but very helpful, nonetheless).

Some photos from his talk and the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party that followed have already been posted.

The Isenberg School of Management constructed a nice photo album of our activities that day. on Facebook.

UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Hosts an Alum and a Great Party

Yesterday, was the last day of classes at UMass Amherst and we had the pleasure of hosting one of our distinguished alums, Dr. Jose M. Cruz, who has 5 degrees from UMass Amherst, including an MBA and PhD with  a concentration in Management Science from the Isenberg School. I was his doctoral dissertation committee chair and am very proud of him. He received his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut this past year and has received accolades for his teaching and his research.

 Many of the students who are part of the UMass Amherst INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Student Chapter helped out with the hosting of the talk and with the party afterwards. Our students know how to do logistics-- I was impressed!

He spoke on The Myths and Facts of How to Get a Tenure-Track Job and How to get Tenure and we will be posting his slides soon since this topic is of interest to many PhD students and Assistant Professors. His insights and energy were amazing and we listened mesmerized. The feedback and questions for the audience were also terrific.

Lunch at the University Club, in a building dating to 1728 (but not the food which was exquisite)

His talk started at 2PM and lasted until shortly before 4PM (there was a lot of territory to cover) and at 4:30PM our end of the semester party was scheduled in the same room. As is our tradition, we had international cuisine and it was truly a fabulous way in which to mark the end of another semester. The students handled the logistics of procuring the food, and preparing it in some cases, and then transporting it in a timely manner. The food was so delicious!!! Although I have been engrossed in writing a long research paper I baked cookies and we even brought varenyky (pierogies, for some of you) and kielbasa. We had all earned our appetites.
 The delicious international cuisine at the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter Party

It takes a lot of people to build a community and this student chapter with members from the Isenberg School of Management and the College of Engineering I commend not only on its great activities, but on its creativity, organizational skills, and the esprit de corps of its members. Student members are from the US, India, Korea, China, Nigeria, Iran, Turkey, and other countries and they work so well together.
Some photos of the great people who came to our party

 

 

There is hope for the world when I see such great students.

We had fun and Dr. Cruz also enjoyed the party very much!

If I Were Dean

I have been approached over the years by headhunters and by administrators as well as faculty asking me whether I would be interested in being a Dean.

Having seen a lot as a faculty member, not only at my own university, but also at other universities at which I have had various appointments (Harvard, MIT, Brown, the Royal Institute of Technology, the University of Innsbruck, and, most recently, the University of Gothenburg), and having had numerous discussions with many faculty and having served on numerous search committees, I have given such invitations serious thought and consideration.

I have been a faculty member under "permanent," interim, and, my favorite -- "acting" deans. I have also worked under DITS (just this past weekend a colleague told me that this acronym stands for "Dean in Training").

Dr. Christina Paxson, the recently inducted new President of Brown University, in an interview published in BAM, stated why she moved into administration: “When you’re not an administrator,” she explained, “your impact can be great, but it’s still somewhat limited to your own students and your own research. When you move into administration, if you do well, you have a positive impact on the education and research of a lot of people. You sort of amplify what you can do.”

Indeed, she nailed it -- having a positive impact. But what concrete steps can result in a truly positive impact?

If I were Dean I would:

• Communicate regularly with faculty and outside constituencies through such simple (but very important) things as giving pats on the back for great work, writing a nice personal note, making sure that newsletters are published and are online, publicizing accomplishments to all electronically and otherwise.  I would nominate my deserving faculty for rewards, awards,  and recognitions and would celebrate their achievements, recognizing that different individuals have different strengths and talents. A wonderful past Dean would have flowers delivered to my office and even to my home when there was a notable accomplishment and I still have certain thank you notes from him. (Is it surprising that he was also outstanding at raising funds -- clearly not -- everyone responded to his genuine warmth and caring and although he is no longer a Dean, he is still sought after for advice).  
• Have integrity and right wrongs when and where needed. Be proactive. I have seen too much of a "it's a departmental issue." But if there is no leadership at the departmental level, this is a major copout.  True leadership MUST come from the top. My model of a truly outstanding Dean was Dean Robert J. Birgeneau of MIT. He was the Dean of the School of Science at MIT who not only established the Committee on Women Faculty with a report that demonstrated with data how women faculty were marginalized there and what was needed to be done. You can read the historic events in The MIT Faculty Newsletter Special Edition. The study and analyses demonstrated that making institutional change must come from the top and that administrative support is needed. The problems that needed to be addressed regarding female faculty included:  unequal resources and rewards; undervaluation of equal accomplishments, marginalization of women as they rise (this never stops, does it?), family-work conflicts, and the small number of female faculty. Now for a fascinating fact -- in 1960 there were ZERO female faculty in science and engineering at MIT. Birgeneau helped tremendously to change the environment at MIT but, once he left, the momentum receded.  He left MIT to go to UC Berkeley and the hiring of female faculty went flat again.  If you have the time (I listened and watched spellbound) you can learn more about these issues in a video lecture by Dr. Nancy Hopkins of MIT given recently in Hong Kong, entitled:, "Addressing the Under-representation of Women Faculty in Science and Engineering at MIT - A Data-driven Approach" A faculty member at HKUST who was in the audience and is a dear friend brought this video to my attention. You can hear Dr. Hopkins talk about how she walked around at MIT at night with a tape measure to measure the lab spaces given to various faculty. 
• Support the intellectual life of the community. Education happens not only in the classroom but also outside the classroom. In a university it is essential to have speakers. I have personally used my own funds to support speakers over many years. You can see the lists over many semesters of individuals from whom we learned a tremendous amount. These talks were not required and we packed them in. Faculty came from throughout the UMass Amherst campus and some audience members came from as far as Boston, and even Vermont, and New Jersey. However, there comes a time when (and I did this for 14 semesters) when it is time for the administration to step up and support such activities and not just have a single female not only helping the students through the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter to organize the series but to also fund the majority of it.
• Shape the direction of the school through inputs from faculty, students, staff, alums, and other constituencies. Be a bridge builder. Without substance and content a "brand" has no meaning. A reputation is built on the quality of the curriculum, the advances in research and knowledge, and on the excellence in terms of both breadth and depth of outreach activities. It also rests on the ability to work as a team and with proper incentives in place.
• Give others a chance. Don't just appoint and reappoint those who have had opportunities in the past. Invite new faces to serve on important committees or as administrators, if they so wish to.

When Great Things Happen to Really Nice Professors -- Election to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

The great news arrived this morning from Sweden and came from a doctoral student who is doing some really interesting research.

He was notably proud and wanted to share the wonderful news about his doctoral dissertation advisor.

I have been smiling non-stop since it is special to see individuals who are not only scholars but who are genuine mentors to their students, colleagues, and beyond being recognized for their contributions. Also, when really nice people get recognized one gets the sense of some justice in this world.

Now for the news -- Dr. Jonas Woxenius of the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden is one of twenty-four elected recently to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. A news article can be found here and for those of you who are rusty in your Swedish (and thanks to Google translator and Niklas Arvidsson,  the proud doctoral student) you can read the translation to English below (with my edits):

Johan Woxenius, Professor of maritime logistics and transport economics at the School,  has been named a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, IVA.

Johan Woxenius has been elected to the IVA, Title III Planning. He has an MSc and a PhD in transport engineering from Chalmers. He is a Professor of business administration, with a focus on maritime logistics and transport economics at the School.

Woxenius is one of the driving forces in the cooperation between Chalmers and Göteborg University in competence centers Lighthouse Maritime and Northern Lead in logistics. He sits on the Göteborg Energi Research Council and is a board member for the School.

IVA chose the 24 new members at its recent academic gathering. Among those also noted: Klas Eklund, senior economist at SEB, Stockholm Stock Exchange CEO Jens Henriksson, Swedish Radio's former CEO Mats Svegfors and the President of Nordstjernan Viveca Ax: son Johnson. IVA was founded in 1919 and is the oldest engineering academy of sciences and has now 904 Swedish and 265 foreign members. 

Professor Woxenius has been a wonderful colleague during my visits to the School of Business, Economics and Law as a new Visiting Professor there. He is outstanding at organizing workshops and conferences and bicycles to work. Conveniently, our office suite even has a shower! His energy and enthusiasm light up the school and our suite of offices.

Below, in his honor, I have posted a photo taken at the Future Urban Transport conference, which took place in Gothenburg in October.

Congratulations to Professor Johan Woxenius on this great and much-deserved honor.

 

 Professor Woxenius is standing between me and Professor Michael Browne of the UK, who is also a Visiting Professor in our group at Gothenburg.

I have promised to take him out for a celebratory meal with treats when I am back in Gothenburg (Göteborg) and could not resist, to whet appetites, posting some of the treats in the city below.

Congrats to Dr. Hanlon -- The New President of Dartmouth

Several Ivy League universities have been searching for Presidents this year and Dartmouth just announced that its 18th President will be a Dartmouth alum, Dr. Philip J. Hanlon, who graduated from Dartmouth in 1977 and then went on to get a PhD at CalTech.


But what I find especially exciting is that he is a mathematician and, as Provost of the University of Michigan, has been teaching freshman calculus! He hopes to also teach some math courses as President of Dartmouth, which is terrific and time will tell, and his schedule, whether he will be able to pull this off.

Plus, his PhD advisor at CalTech was a female, Dr. Olga Taussky-Todd, as you can see from his cv!

The New York Times has a nice photo and article on Dr. Hanlon.

I remember taking calculus for two semesters as a freshman at Brown University and I was taught by Professor Joseph LaSalle, who was one of the founders of dynamical systems. I would regularly visit him during his office hours to chat and together we would model how his coffee would get cold, among other problems. I'll never forget having one of the most famous applied mathematicians of his time teaching me calculus and I hope that it was worth it since I ended up getting a PhD in Applied Math from Brown and my love of math modeling and computing is in part due to my great freshman calculus teacher.

Coincidentally, I used one of Taussky-Todd's theorems in my PhD dissertation since I needed one of her results to prove some of my theorems!

I wish Dr. Hanlon much luck in his new position. Dartmouth has made a terrific choice.

The suspense continues, though. I wonder who will be the next President of Princeton University?

The Myths and Facts of How to Get a Tenure-Track Job and How to Get Tenure

We  are pleased to announce a guest speaker, Dr. Jose M. Cruz. He will be visiting us on Friday, December 7th, 2012.  Dr. Cruz is an Isenberg PhD alumnus, class of 2004, and also holds an MBA from the Isenberg School. He has a total of 5 UMass Amherst degrees! His talk is being hosted by the award-winning UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter that I have served as a Faculty Advisor of for 8 years.

Dr. Jose M. Cruz is an Associate Professor and an Ackerman Scholar in Operations and Information Management, and the Director of the Masters of Science in Business Analytics and Project Management Program at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut. His research is multidisciplinary and combines his background and interests in management science, engineering, computer systems, and applied mathematics. His general area is complex decision-making on network systems with a specific focus on global issues. He is especially interested in international financial networks with intermediariation and electronic transactions, global supply chain networks, corporate social responsibility, and risk management. The methodological tools that he utilizes are: variational inequalities, dynamical systems, network theory, multicriteria decision-making, game theory, and optimization. He has published in many journals, including the European Journal of Operational Research, Naval Research Logistics, and Quantitative Finance. He is the recipient of several awards including UConn's School of Business' Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Title of the Presentation: The myths and facts of how to get a tenure-track job and how to get tenure.

Dr. Cruz was my doctoral student and his dissertation was entitled: INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL NETWORKS AND GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS:  A UNIFIED FRAMEWORK FOR DECISION-MAKING, OPTIMIZATION, AND  RISK MANAGEMENT.

Specific information on the talk as to time and location can be found on the nice poster featured above, which was prepared by the students. 

Building Your Networks Before Promotion and Tenure

This past year I was a very proud "Academic Mom" since not only did one of my doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management receive her PhD and assume an Assistant Professor position (Dr. Min Yu is now at the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland in Oregon) but 3 former doctoral students received promotion and tenure -- Dr. Jose M. Cruz is now an Associate Professor at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and also an Ackerman Scholar, Dr. Fuminori Toyasaki is an Associate Professor in the School of Administrative Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada, and Dr. Ke "Grace" Ke is an Associate Professor at the College of Business at Central Washington University.in Ellensburg. 

Also, this year, another doctoral student of mine is on the job market and another former one is preparing his dossier for his promotion and tenure case. So, I have a lot of experience both placing doctoral students and also seeing them get promotions and tenure, which is wonderful! Tenure, for the non-academic readers, means that one has a job for life (unless there are some very rare circumstances or one gets into real trouble).

In academia, if one is in a "tenure-track" position and an Assistant Professor, one, typically, comes up for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in the sixth year. The packet that one prepares has to include research contributions, teaching contributions, and also, usually, service ones.

When it comes to the evaluation of research, outside letters are solicited from those who are deemed knowledgeable to be able to comment on the candidate's research. The person coming up for promotion and tenure is usually asked for a list of names and contact information and then other names are decided upon by the chairman and personnel committee (there may be variants of this process, but this is, more or less, the typical process).

The chairman may request as many as 8-10 names from the candidate.

Now, certain colleges and universities have quite stringent restrictions as to who may be on the list. This is why it is important to start building one's networks shortly after receiving the PhD and assuming the tenure-track Assistant Professor position.

Advisors (dissertation chairs) often are not allowed as outside letter writers and neither are your collaborators or often students who had the same advisor as you did. Oftentimes, one cannot have another faculty member as a letter writer from the same university and college system.  Of course, who knows you the best -- those that you have worked closely with (such as your dissertation advisor) and those that you have co-authored papers with (usually members of your doctoral committee also are not appropriate letter writers).

It is important that when you get asked to present such a list that you are not left with an "empty feasible set," meaning that you cannot think of anyone who would be willing to write a letter for you (and, hopefully, the letters will be positive). Usually, the letter writers have to be tenured Associate Professors, if not Full Professors. so they are senior to you. Some colleges and universities do not allow letters from industry (which I find strange since some outstanding research can be done in corporations and if you are a faculty member at a business school having impact in business to me is a plus).

So how does one begin to build a network of individuals that might be willing to write letters for you once it is time for promotion and tenure?  Every year I get asked to write such letters and enjoy doing the evaluations.

Clearly, if you have published regularly in a journal and have also refereed and done a great job, then having an Editor or Associate Editor of a journal that is familiar with your work as a possible letter writer is  an excellent possibility. Also, if you have contributed to edited volumes of books or special issues of a journal, then the cognizant Editor may be willing to write a letter for you.  Also, those whose work you cite in your papers and who know you and your work are also natural ones to evaluate your research. Now,  another challenge is that some schools forbid you to contact the prospective letter writers beforehand so you should have sufficient "good will" that when you suggest a name that person will not only know you but will be an enthusiastic letter writer for you.

It is important to be active not only in writing papers and getting them published but also in talking about your work at conferences and seminars. Be willing to organize sessions at conferences and do speak to people at conferences so that they become familiar with your work. Do let others know about your research and papers and do your best in being visible in a positive way, of course.

To all those undergoing promotion & tenure this year, best of luck, and to those who have a ways to go, I hope that this post is helpful.