Born into an academic family, became a prof myself (12 years), married a prof who’s a department chair.
No. If he was denied tenure, he’d still be teaching to finish out the year. Could be LWOP - Leave without Pay. That happens in a variety of situations, including illness. Usually the tenure clock is set at 6 years. Early tenure decisions do happen but would require very special circumstances.
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No. If the department wants him gone, he’s gone. A department would not vote tenure on a member, then turn around and relieve him of his duties.
He may be a jerk but he knows that his education only gets him to the starting gate. After that, it’s a combination of his teaching, scholarship, and service to the institution and profession. Any professor knows this.
This just doesn’t ring true. He would not have been approached that way by the department chair.
Two years is not fatal by any stretch of the imagination. At decision time, it’s quality that counts. By and large, academia is a meritocracy. There are exceptions but not many.
Oh, and the sabbatical rule is almost always 7 years. I agree that this is not a post-doc because the guy is too experienced for that. There are fellowships that would fit the description of the situation.
Another possibility is that he has delayed a “junior faculty sabbatical”. Some schools have a three-year review as sort of a mid-way to tenure. If the three-year review goes well, you get a one semester sabbatical from teaching. The idea is to help you get your research up to par for tenure. Since nothing is written in stone in academia, I suppose he could have delayed this semester off until year 5.
I knew a new professor (fresh out of post-doc) who scored a sabbatical just after one year. So it may almost always be 7 years, but departments and universities can have their own rules.
I don’t know. Department chairs vary just like everyone else. I can definitely envision a chair going to a new faculty member who’s developing a negative reputation and telling him to tighten his shit up (all in a professional, constructive criticism kind of a way, of course).
I’ve actually heard the opposite. If a professor is a bad instructor, they will be given seminar courses–particularly those at the graduate level–where the emphasis isn’t on instruction, just facilitation. The stellar instructors are put on the front lines with the undergraduates. But this rule probably applies after a faculty member has gotten tenure.
It may be that he’s worked out some deal with his department. Maybe he’s working on something really heavy and–with the permission of the department–has given a post-doc or a graduate student his teaching duties for the semester. Maybe in exchange he’ll have to teach a summer course. About his listing as dissertation advisor…non-tenured professors have graduate students just like everyone else. In fact, their success at procuring and keeping graduate students is an important part of their tenure evaluation. So him being listed in the course offerings simply means he has graduate student(s) for the time being. This doesn’t indicate much of anything about his future with the department. I know two profs with multiple grad students that didn’t get tenure…and I know another with only one graduate student who “passed” with flying colors.
Another possibility: I’ve known several professors who have requested a double load of classes one semester, and none at all the next, to focus on research for that semester. Usually, as long as there aren’t many faculty all requesting the same semester off of classes, the department head doesn’t have any problems accomodating such an arrangement. If this fellow has been previously taking a larger-than-normal class load, that might also explain why he hasn’t published in a while.
I think that there are far too many possibilities for us to guess what’s going on without knowing the exact situation. We could suggest possibilities forever without hitting on what’s really happened to this professor. Why don’t you just find someone at the department and ask them what has happened to this professor? I don’t think that they would be embarrassed if you asked questions like “Is Dr. X still teaching in your department? Does he have tenure now? Is he on sabbatical or on some sort of fellowship at the moment? I’ve noticed that he’s not teaching course Y anymore but is just supervising dissertations and theses. Is that something permanent or just a temporary thing?”
Also, you could try to find a departmental webpage about this professor. Google on the phrases “[Professor X]”, “[Department D]”, and “[University U]”. (I mean, of course, to substitute his first and last names for [Professor X], the name of the department for [Department D], and the name of the university for [University U].) Most professors have their own webpages now. Such webpages will often tell you most of what you want to know in this case.
Anyway, does anyone else think that the bastard is on his way out?
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Probably not. Courses tend to rotate around faculty members, especially undergraduate courses. In a primarily research environment most faculty do not teach every semester, or every time a particular course is offered.
If the Bastard was teaching at that type of a school, frankly, being a poor teacher will have nothing to do with tenure, unless he sexualy harrassed a student.
If the Bastard hasn’t published, or royally pissed off an administrator or very senior faculty member, then tenure might be in jepoardy.
You may have to hope for a bad case of the clap or premature balding to get him instead.
First off, I LOVE your username. Let me guess what you do for a living? Hmmmm…tough one there.
Sexual harrassment? Define that. There were some things that could have been construed as that but I am just not the type of girl who is going to run around and say that all the time. We both had stuff on each other and that didn’t help out at all.
I will give him one thing: He is a great teacher. I mean he really tries, can communicate well, seems to enjoy it and relates things to real life. He is dynamic in that respect. He is just a jackass.
I am not going to let it bother me. I am also going to tell some of my friends to lay off about it. Thanks for all the help, guys and girls. Love ya!!!
