On becoming tenured: Acquiring academic tenure at a research university

This study is an attempt to depict and understand the experiences of junior faculty at a major research university with the academic tenuring system and explore its impact upon their personal and professional lives. The focus is exclusively on the perceptions of junior faculty across diverse academic disciplines who are currently on the tenure-track or have recently been awarded or denied tenure.; During the course of three in-depth phenomenological interviews, eighteen junior faculty explore, recreate, and reflect upon episodes of their recent and distant past, identifying discrete and meaningful experiences that facilitate the way they comprehend and make sense of their present situation. Participants reveal an array of status distinctions among faculty in the local work unit, as certain individuals and/or groups are perceived as having differential access to resources and opportunities compared to others. Participants experience varying degrees of confusion and uncertainty in the tenure process, particularly regarding information about how they will be judged, as they are told one set of indices in one arena and listen to or witness the application of a different set of indices in another. Participants identify ways that promotion and tenure pressures impact upon their work lives and priorities, as time becomes partitioned and activities denigrated or elevated in importance to compensate for perceptions of what will and will not be rewarded.; In this study, women perceive the tenure process as influencing their lives in ways different than men. Acquiring tenure is one of a legacy of ongoing "tests" by which females are placed in the position of having to prove something--not only to others but to themselves. Females describe being caught, between the desire for autonomy and the need for inclusion and peer support. They struggle to gain control and a sense of perspective in the midst of perceived disorder.; For current and future faculty, data from this study have the potential to add to their understanding of the academic career, patterns of work and life in academic departments, and how experiences of academic life are shaped by individuals' perceptions, and the distinctive experience of women faculty.