Getting to Full Professor

By Therese Lueck

Professor Therese Lueck earned her Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University in 1989. She joined the faculty at the University of Akron that year, was promoted to associate professor there in 1994, and to full professor in 2000. Here are her experiences and advice for becoming full professor.

There are basics that you learned from your earlier tenure and promotion and decisions that are still good ideas for effectively scaling the ranks to professor: Let me do a quick review of some of these important concepts that I’m sure my colleagues will address in more depth: (1) find a mentor – someone who has experience in the system—and seek advice; (2) know the rules—particularly proper procedure; (3) be ready to play hardball; (4) document everything: Keep a log of the process and a file of all the letters and memos. These basics are still essential.

But let me also note: Promotion to Professor is not the same as your earlier promotion.

By now, you know the system, and your university knows you—whether you’re at the same institution at which you received promotion to associate professor, or you’ve transferred to remove yourself from another school’s prejudices.

As feminists, you’re probably still ruffling feathers, and this is the last chance colleagues, upper administration or middle management has to get rid of you. That may not be possible formally – after all, you have job security through your tenure – but it may turn into a last ditch attempt to thwart your feminist best.

Today’s discussion continues a conversation that Linda Steiner and I pursued a few years ago. When Kitty Endres was editor of the Commission on the Status of Women’s newsletter, she put out an issue on grievances that women educators had with their institutions.

She asked Linda and me to do an article on our promotion experiences. So, Linda and I emailed each other on the subject, and our back-and-forth conversation became the newsletter article.

Thinking back technologically, that was generations ago with regard to computers, the Internet and email, and technology has progressed light-years since then. But, unfortunately, problems for women, particularly feminists, persist in the halls of higher education.

In rereading that 2002 article—which I can make available to you at the end of this panel—I decided I wanted to revisit a specific remark I made.

During that discussion, Linda asked whether I had found a hero, someone who stepped into the madness and applied logic in a tongue that the institution would understand.

I said “No, I hadn’t,” which was true. No one person swooped in and righted the situation, but, thinking back, there were a number of people who performed acts of personal bravery, solely for my benefit.

Some of these people I consciously relied on: Kitty Endres was my mentor throughout the process, and Maurine Beasley assessed my research—as she has for so many of us.

These were senior women from whom I actively sought advice, and they allowed me to rely on them.

I also think of other people who gave me good advice: the woman who was the first head of women’s studies at my university told me that going up “early” could provide the necessary documentation to make the “on-schedule” bid successful, my husband, a former Teamsters union steward, grounded me with, “It’s only a promotion. If you’re denied, you’re not going to lose your job.”

There are three others whose roles I’d like to discuss today because they appeared unbidden during the promotion process or they were there when I had to reach out in unanticipated directions in the mid-process turmoil.

With the first whiff of controversy, the senior faculty member who was heading my committee excused himself. Another colleague, who had recently returned to our faculty after having served in upper administration, took over the duties as head of my promotion committee. He’s someone I admire as an educator and a professional, and I respect his judgment—I’ve seen him not support candidates whose research record he didn’t feel was substantive. He argued for my teaching and research and service in a manner that set the record up for success, even though the administration didn’t demonstrate a willingness to accept his reading of it. For example, my colleague argued that encyclopedia entries about women and media expanded under-researched areas of scholarship and made research-based findings available to new and wider audiences. My dean dismissed such chapters, actually calling them “morsels.” My colleague’s reading established a strong counter-argument to such arrogance—on the record.

I did go up “early,” and when I was denied promotion that first time, I took my case forward to the college appeals committee. The woman who headed that committee did me a tremendous service. She had her group do a thorough review of the process and my credentials. The committee circulated its findings, which did not directly contradict the dean’s denial, since we didn’t have a union contract on which to base such blatant opposition. Instead, the committee provided a detailed memorandum of the steps I needed to accomplish in order to be successful in a future bid for promotion to professor. I used this “to do” list as my template, completing it over the next two years, not realizing that adherence to this written agreement would provide perhaps the most effective argument for my eventual success.

When my second bid took an unanticipated hairpin turn into the gutter, I sought informal legal advice from a professor at another university. Distinguishing content from process, he made me aware that the state is hesitant to get involved in university affairs, unless there’s a provable procedural violation. So, I became a careful observer of the process, and my correspondence with the administration demonstrated my watchfulness over procedure as well as my willingness to go forward outside the university system, if necessary. I didn’t write the provost that I would sue, but, with the guidance from this off-campus colleague as well as my mentor, I kept a close eye on the procedure and demonstrated persistence in following the process through. I did not withdraw my bid, as the dean encouraged me to do at every juncture.

These dogged practices seemed to put the provost on notice: I just might go outside, in other words, sue the university, and the administration just might not have dotted all its “i’s.”

After all, I had done everything I was asked to do in the documentation from my “early” bid.

In the end, the possibility of my going outside the university turned out to be a chance that the provost didn’t want to take.

Winding down from the ordeal, I took my off-campus colleague out for a meal, and, for dessert, I was able to provide him with what he termed the “most bizarre” memo he’d ever seen: The final, brief memorandum from the provost stated that while he heartily agreed with the dean that I certainly did not deserve promotion to professor, he was going to grant it anyway. Did I happen to mention that this particular year, for no discernable reason, the salary bump for those achieving promotion to professor was three times what it normally is?

At the risk of wrapping this discussion in an adversarial frame, I wanted to show that, with help, obstacles can be overcome in the bid for promotion to professor. Yes, it’s essential that you seek advice, solicit mentoring, and get your ducks in order. But during the process, when you may be receiving mixed messages from a variety of sources, be open to the fact that you may very well encounter “heroes”—those who have experience and knowledge and who are brave enough to take your on your cause.

These people may be feminists; they may not. How do you recognize them? They demonstrate a respect for you and your work through their willingness to make visible a path through the maze of the institution. During the promotion process you have to trust someone – or in my case a number of someones -- because after a point, it’s out of your hands. It’s hard to ask you to trust someone you didn’t anticipate having to rely on, particularly if the process has turned hostile. But being ready to take advantage of what these “heroes” offer you may be the key to your success in achieving promotion to professor.