Author: Joy Gaston Gayles, PhD
I have been a full professor for a year now. Recently, I was asked to reflect on my experience, given that less than 2% of full professors are African American women. As the first African American in my program area and department to reach this milestone, and one of less than 20 full professors of color on my campus (out of about 1200 faculty), I realized that I had to be thoughtful and intentional about how I made the move from associate to full professor.
I entered my current institution as an associate professor, without tenure, after spending five years on the tenure-track at a previous institution. I went up for tenure a couple of years later with no problems. After earning tenure, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next to move successfully from associate to full professor. However, I knew that it was something I wanted to do. I also knew that doing “more of the same” would not get me to full professor. Figuring out how to develop an international reputation as a scholar was very muddy to me, and I didn’t know who to ask for clarity. I found that most formal conversations (e.g., university, college, and department panels, department meeting discussions) with those who were already full professors were not empowering. I often left those conversations with more doubt than I had previously. Not knowing how to move toward full professor discouraged me and made me less confident about whether or not I should do it, and when. Each year, whenever someone would ask me, “when are you going up for promotion to full professor?” my response would be, “Oh, I think I’ll go up in a couple of years.”
Over time, I realized that my social location as the only African American female on the tenure-track in my program area and one of the few in my department and university meant that I did not have access to informal and formal networks to advance my career in ways that I saw happening for my White colleagues. I was fortunate to be a part of a group on my campus that sporadically brought African American women together at the end of each semester for a few years. The discussions that happened during those meetings and within that kind of community were great, but I needed and wanted more. When I finally decided to go up for promotion, I was mad, frustrated, and angered by the many inequities, microaggressions, and unethical behaviors that I witnessed in the academy. I also realized that I allowed these climate issues to derail me for a while. Thanks to NCFDD and a few supportive senior colleagues of color both within and outside of my institution, I was able to write my way out (yes, that’s a Hamilton reference)! 🙂
I am excited about the opportunity to facilitate a NCFDD guest expert webinar on this topic later this month. During the webinar, I’ll share more of my journey, some of the biggest mistakes that mid-career faculty make, as well as the strategies I used to get myself ready to go up for promotion to full professor. Below, I offer a few pieces of advice as you consider this move for yourself in the near or distant future.
Get your mind right
Whenever I would say “Oh, I’ll go up in two years,” what I was essentially saying is that I did not feel ready to go up for promotion. Part of not feeling prepared meant that I lacked confidence in myself. Mentally, I was not sure if my record was strong enough to withstand multiple rounds of voting. It is important to note that these judgments about my portfolio came from myself — not from colleagues and mentors. The reality is that the academy has a way of making us question, critique, and doubt not only research arguments, but also ourselves. Harshly critiquing ourselves can lead to developing mental frames and stories that do not serve us well. Getting your mind right involves shifting your mental frames such that you take a more empowered stance and approach to the work that you do (rather than feeling defeated, disempowered and victimized). We have a saying at NCFDD — if a story you’re telling yourself (to keep you safe and avoid feeling vulnerable) doesn’t serve you well — get a new story. For me, getting my mind right was a necessary precursor to deciding to put my dossier forward for promotion.
Seek Substantial Feedback
One of the major reasons why getting your mind right is an essential first step is because of the things that you have to do to prepare yourself for the process. It’s not that these tasks are hard to do — but most of what I did required me to be vulnerable and that in and of itself is hard. At most institutions like mine, the feedback that you receive at the end of each academic year from your department chair is not quite enough. I was not able to glean from the feedback whether or not I was ready to go up for full professor. I had to muster up the courage to do something I never thought I’d do — share my vita with senior colleagues and ask them directly “do you think I’m ready to go up for promotion to full?” I’ll be the first to admit that this was so scary, so I had to have my mind right to do it.
To my surprise, all of my program colleagues (except one) assured me that I was ready. I did not expect that response at all — it was a pleasant surprise. As a precursor to asking my colleagues directly, I positioned myself to be in regular communication with my department chair about what I was working on each semester. About a year or so before I submitted my dossier, I shared my vita and asked the same question to my department chair — “do you think I’m ready to go up for full professor?” Getting my mind right before having this conversation was important because I needed to be in a place to actually hear the feedback, not take it personally, or hear the feedback as an attack on the work that I’d done. During our conversation, he actually told me that I needed to increase the number of refereed articles on my vita if I wanted to feel super confident on the front end of the process. Because I was mentally prepared to hear the feedback, I went back to the lab (my office and strategic plan) and reprioritized my writing goals. I renegotiated deadlines for book chapters that I committed to and submitted the five or so refereed articles that were lingering. By the time I shared my vita with my colleagues and asked the big question, I had indeed increased the number of refereed articles on my vita.
Find your genius and promote yourself
The last piece of advice that I’ll offer is related to but different from what I’ve shared so far. In general, by the time you go up for full professor, you should be super clear about who you are as a scholar, and you should be able to articulate that to others. The reality is that I was reasonably clear about my contributions as a scholar; however, I was not comfortable promoting myself nor my scholarship. To be honest, I don’t know that I’ll ever be completely comfortable with promoting myself. I have found ways to do it because I understand the importance of informing others about the work you do. It’s so much better for you to drive that narrative than for others, rather than others have no clue about what you do, or worse, have an inaccurate understanding of what you do. As you prepare yourself to move from associate to full, this is a skill worth developing. For your statements, you will be required to articulate who you are as a scholar, the unique contributions you’ve made to the field, and the broader impacts of your research and scholarship. In essence, you are giving external reviewers clues to pick up on as they evaluate your materials. Learning how to accentuate what have always been quirks to you as unique skills and strengths to others is the name of the game. The reality is we all have areas of genius — individual contributions that give vitality to the work that we do. However, we often suppress our gifts and/or write them off as quirks, when we should be illuminating, highlighting, and leaning into them more to fuel the work that we are passionate about doing day in and day out.
Making the decision to go up for promotion to full professor is an option, not a requirement. I know many scholars who made a conscious decision not to go up for promotion to full professor. Given that the decision is optional, I’ll leave you with a final thought/question. Why do you want to go up for full professor? Once I answered this question for myself, it added a level of clarity and in many ways motivated me to do the work that I needed to do to achieve this goal. You probably received similar advice when selecting your dissertation topic for the same reason. Choose a topic that you’re passionate about. I give this advice to my advisees because writing a dissertation is not easy. Selecting a research topic you’re passionate about fuels you when the going gets tough in the same way that understanding your “why” will fuel you during the process of going up for promotion to full professor.