(Temporarily moving to the front – comments open now!)
In our new thread soliciting questions on tips for faculty on the tenure-track, a reader writes:
Having been a postdoc for a long time, as a new TT faculty I'm finding it hard to find time for research whilst attending to my teaching responsibilities (which I take very seriously). Any tips on how to make time for writing with everything else going on during the semester so that it doesn't only become a 'summer hobby'?
This is a great question, and I'll do my best to provide some helpful tips–and I hope readers on the tenure-track chime in with some tips of their own. But before I make a few suggestions, I'd like to say a few things about the broader issue: namely, lack of time in tenure-track jobs for focusing on research during the academic year.
Unfortunately, many people who begin tenure-track jobs are in for something of a rude awakening. My experience is that unless you have a job with a very low teaching load at a research university–and sometimes even then–you simply won't have much time for research during academic terms. Seriously. I do probably 90% of my research during summer and winter breaks, and as this TimesHigherEd article points out, I'm not alone: a recent survey of Dutch academics found that, 'Those lucky enough to have become full professors – supposedly the light at the end of the tunnel for struggling junior scholars – spend just 17 per cent of their time on their own research.' Indeed, you can see how much time for research falls in the following figure:
In short, PhD students spend about 70% of their time on research, postdocs about 55%, and tenure-stream faculty only 20% or less. This is exactly the experience that I had. In my first job, a VAP/postdoc at UBC, I taught only 2 classes per semester, had teaching assistants to do grading, and spent the vast majority of my time on research. These days, during the semester, I may spend only a handful of hours a week on research. Why? There are many reasons, but the simple answer is that a lot more is expected of you in a tenure-track job than you expect. In addition to (normally) substantially higher teaching loads (often without TAs to help with grading), the big shock that grad students and postdocs have in store are all of the service commitments: serving on committees, supervising undergraduate or graduate research outside of the courses you formally teach, serving on faculty senates, etc.
Anyway, the above figures speak for themselves: tenure-track faculty tend to have vastly less time for research than grad students and postdocs. While I'll now suggest some strategies for freeing up some time during the semester, the above data–and my own experience–suggest that, by and large, tenure-track faculty need to learn to adjust their expectations. Chances are you won't ever have the time for research you had as a grad student or postdoc again. I know this sucks to hear (seriously, I do!). But unfortunately, for many of us it is the reality–and so the more salient question is probably how to make the best of it. So, all that being said, here are a few tips:
Tip 1 – course scheduling: I've found it to be very difficult to 'shift gears' and get research done on days that I'm scheduled to teach–and I've heard similar things from other junior colleagues on the tenure-track. So, one of the things that I found the most helpful when I first started was to try to schedule all of my teaching on the same days of the week, and importantly, on a two-day-a-week schedule (either M/F or T/Th). Although you may have some grading and course prep to do the other days of the week–and again, you may have various service commitments that eat into your time–at least a schedule like this will leave you with three weekdays per week to focus some time on research. In my experience, this one bit of scheduling advice was far and away the single most helpful thing I found to free up research time, and I had a junior colleague who reported the same thing to me after I gave her the tip.
Tip 2 – office hour scheduling: You may be tempted to schedule office hours on your 'off days' (i.e. when you're not teaching). Don't do it! Schedule your office hours on the days you teach, ideally just before or after your courses meet–as these will be the times that you'll probably be the least effective on research anyway.
Tip 3 – blocking out research time: Another thing that I found to be helpful is to set aside particular time-blocks for research on non-teaching days. Usually, you'll have a fair idea of when you need to attend to service commitments (committees, etc., usually have prescheduled meeting times). So, block out some time–say, 9-11am (or whatever) to focus on writing.
Tip 4 – mindfulness about service-commitments: Believe it or not, some college and university committees are far more time and labor intensive than others. Find out from your department chair or colleagues which ones are huge time commitments and avoid them like the plague. Also, you'll hear this from many people, though it's very hard to take to heart: learn how to say 'no'. You will be constantly asked to take on additional things: by fellow faculty, administrators, and students (including things like independent studies, etc.). And you will feel pressured to say 'yes.' But remember this: when you come up for tenure, the chances that your service record will be a deciding factor in whether you get tenure are roughly zero. To be clear, you need to do some service. If you do none, that may very well affect your candidacy for tenure. But, as long as you are doing at least a few things, the two parts of your dossier that will count the most are research and teaching. Remember that. Learn to say 'no.'
Anyway, these are just a few suggestions that I've found to work pretty well. What do you all think? For those of you on the tenure-track, how do you make time for research? Any tips?
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