Promotion and Tenure

Community and Socialization in Academe

By William G. Tierney & Estela Mara Bensimon

Subjects: Higher Education
Series: SUNY series, Frontiers in Education
Paperback : 9780791429785, 176 pages, July 1996
Hardcover : 9780791429778, 176 pages, July 1996

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

1. Community and Culture in Academe

2. Tenure as Totem and Socialization in the Academic Community

3. The Tenure and Promotion Years

4. (En)Gender(ing) Socialization

5. Socialization and Cultural Taxation: Race and Ethnicity in the Academy

6. Rethinking Promotion and Tenure

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

Index

Articulates salient problems of tenure-track faculty, especially women and faculty of color. Offers a new paradigm to delineate ways in which the academic community can help socialize younger faculty, and honor differences more readily.

Description

Research on the organizational culture in higher education affirms that congruent cultures are better than fragmented ones, and that managing culture is an oxymoron. Such analyses often lead to the assumptions that unity of purpose is essential and leadership is impossible. This book reframes rather than suppresses these notions, and by respecting the differences, builds a commonality between them.

Using data on faculty socialization in academe, the authors consider how the work of cultural leadership becomes interpretation and facilitation rather than management. Through a series of interviews using experimental forms of ethnographic presentation, Tierney and Bensimon articulate salient problems of tenure-track faculty, especially women and faculty of color, and address the issue of individuals voluntarily leaving the tenure-track. They offer a new paradigm to delineate ways in which the academic community can help socialize younger faculty, and honor differences more readily.

William G. Tierney is Professor and Director of the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at the University of Southern California. Estela Mara Bensimon is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern California.

Reviews

"I think that this is one of the most interesting books on higher education that I have read in quite a while. It is also a good antidote to some of the negative books on higher education in recent years. " — Philip G. Altbach, Boston College

"The topic is of great importance. The tenure process and the notions of academic freedom are being questioned by people within and outside the academic community. This study makes a significant contribution to an important field of study by offering insight into real life situations of pre-tenure faculty while also considering issues of diversity in the pre-tenure faculty ranks. " — Caroline S. Turner, University of Minnesota