Members: Rick Archibald, Brian Bird, Bong-Sik Kim, Jimmy Mopecha, Leslie Shelton, and Shelly Smith
Leaders: Deiter Armbruster and Matthias Kawski
Speakers: Rosemary Renaut, Dennis Young, and Michelle Zandieh
Guests: Horst Thieme
Agenda
Faculty issues were discussed from the point of view of a department chair (Rosemary Renaut), a senior tenured
faculty member (Dennis Young), and a junior tenure track faculty member (Michelle Zandieh).
Interesting Items
Michelle stated that she feels more pressure as a young faculty member seeking tenure than she did as a
doctoral student.
ASU has 2-year, 4-year, and 6-year reviews. The 2-year review is conducted just after 1 year of service and is
non-confrontational in nature. Its purpose is to make sure that you are fitting in. The 4-year review is
conducted after 3 years of service. At this point in time, you had better be getting published and making a
reputation for yourself. The 6-year review is conducted after 5 years of service. This is a pre-tenure review
and you better have all your ducks in a row.
If you do not like a university or they do not like you, leave before 3 years. If a person works at a university
for 6 years and applies elsewhere, everyone knows it is because they did not get tenure.
Don’t teach in the summer. Summer is the time to get your research done as it is very difficult to do this
during the academic year.
Post-doc positions give you the opportunity to get published which makes you more marketable and relieves
some of the pressure when starting out at a university.
You have the most bargaining power between the time the university makes you an offer and you accept it.
Try to get a bump in salary (it helps if you have, or say you have, multiple offers or if you are in a hot field like
math ed or statistics). Ask for a nice computer set-up. Ask for $2k per year for 3 years for conferences. Ask
for money to buy books. This is the only opportunity you will have to get something for free.
ASU pays post-docs about $40k per year and tenure track faculty start at about $50k per year.
The pay raises at ASU have been inconsistent and have been nothing to brag about. There appears to be no
real pay for performance.
Even after tenure, there are still reviews. However, it seemed as if the reprimands for poor performance in
teaching, reasearch and/or service were mild.