Getting to Full Professor

By Erika Engstrom

At the 2008 AEJMC Convention in Chicago, CSW and MAC (Minorities and Communication Division) co-sponsored “Wisdom from Senior Women Scholars: Getting to Full Professor,” a panel that featured women who achieved the rank of full professor in recent years. The panelists, Therese Lueck (University of Akron), Mary Beth Oliver (Penn State), Linda Steiner (Rutgers), and Julie Andsager (Iowa) offered their experiences and advice to a standing-room only audience.

To give context to the panel, consider the 2006 American Association of University Professors report titled, “Faculty Gender Equity Indicators” (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/research/geneq2006). Regarding gender parity in salary, in the academic year 2005-06 the average salary for women faculty was 81% of the amount earned by men across all ranks and institutions. The report’s authors attribute this difference to two reasons: (1) women are more likely to hold positions at institutions that pay lower salaries, and (2) women are less likely to hold senior faculty rank. For example, at doctoral universities, women make up a fourth of the tenured faculty. Regarding the most senior of senior faculty, among full professors at all institutions nationwide, 76% of them were men. At doctoral universities, 81% of full professors were men.

While more women are in full-time faculty positions today than just 30 years ago, as we look at the promotion ladder, we see women basically falling off: gender parity decreases drastically when we consider the rank of full professor, an achievement that requires an even more substantial record than that for tenure and promotion to associate.

Panelists in Chicago shared their own stories of success in the academic world to give us, both women and men, direction and advice on how, once tenure is earned, to move to the next step which serves as one measure of women’s progress not only in higher education, but in our society in general. 

[Note: Therese Lueck shares her comments from the panel in the following post. Check back in the coming months for comments from Mary Beth Oliver.]