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Changing research focus before tenure?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

What are the up and down-sides of radically changing the focus of one's research before tenure? I recently started an ass prof job. The main upside, in my mind, is I like the new area and feel more excited to learn about and contribute to it. The main downsides are 1) might be some time before I can publish in it and 2) when getting letters for tenure, there might be confusion about 'who I am' as a researched and where my expertise lies.

I'd be curious to hear from readers, but the OP's hot-take sounds about right to me. I've always been a fan of working on whatever interests one the most, as I think one is probably liable to do one's best work that way–but I do think there is some risk to a radical shift before tenure. In my case, I tried aiming for the best of both worlds: namely, continuing my existing research program while also extending beyond it.

What do readers think? Any helpful experiences to share?

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14 responses to “Changing research focus before tenure?”

  1. Another path

    Here is another strategy (I guess it is the one pursued). Continue working in the area you were trained, but extend it, as Marcus suggests. But, in addition, pick up some new projects (perhaps one at a time). I did this – in fact, the other projects were in a new field. But now I am an expert in two fields.
    I should add, though, that I was on the market for five years post-PhD. And I was quite productive (and placed some papers in an excellent specialty journal) – in fact, I was the most productive researcher at the college I was hire at from the day I was hired.

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  2. anon

    “I recently started an ass prof job.”
    I am skeptical that this person actually has a job as a Professor of Ass. Endowed chair?

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  3. Michel

    Entirely abandoning the area you were hired for sounds like a recipe for tenure denial. Your colleagues are not likely to appreciate what will look like a bait-and-switch so soon after your arrival on campus. Plus, it will take time to develop your publications and stature in the new area, and there’s really no guarantee you’ll manage it in time for your tenure review.
    So: take an all-of-the-above approach. Start cultivating this new area, while you continue to grow your profile and expertise in your old area. Make the transition gradually, not suddenly.

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  4. OP

    @anon
    It’s more of an exploratory position.

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  5. Bill V.

    I’m not sure what the standards are in proctology, but in philosophy your department hired you on the assumption you had a certain set of research and teaching areas. Before tenure, I wouldn’t suggest a major change. For one thing, re-tooling takes a lot of time–even switching from one topic to another within existing specialties takes a lot of time. So unless you have already hit the number of papers that will earn you tenure where you are, don’t mess around. Maybe a conference paper to test the waters. Maybe a reading group on the new topic with folks in your department. But for a few years, your main effort has to be getting tenure, not growing your research competencies in new areas.

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  6. newlytenured

    I think I have slightly different intuitions on this than most, but I am also very recently tenured so haven’t been in the position of writing tenure letters so take the following with a grain of salt, skepticism, etc.
    My thought is that it depends on a) how radical the difference is between the original area and the new one. (Is it, like, classical logic to feminist epistemology?) and also b) how much time you have on your clock/how established you already are. If you just became an assistant professor this year, right out of grad school, with one or two papers already published, then there isn’t much lost if you publish in totally new areas because you haven’t already established yourself and you have probably 5ish years (depending on institutional norms). If, however, you’ve been post-doc-ing and publishing for a while, or if you are a couple years into your job, then the risks seem much greater to me – both in being able to learn enough to publish in the right quantities and in missing out on the social capital of your good name as currently stands.
    One thing I think you cannot do, no matter what, is stop teaching in the area(s) you were hired to teach in, unless someone new is hired who can cover that. Department curriculum matters are complicated and your colleagues may resent you, as noted above, if you refuse to teach classes no one else is qualified to teach.
    That last point, to me, could go either way. You could make the teaching work for you in publishing (as some folks I know do), or you could use that as a means to discharge your departmental responsibilities and work three times as hard in your research time to publish in the new area.
    Only you know how likely you are to publish enough in what you’re presently expected to do versus what you really want to do. Doing both seems wisest (and so I agree with everyone above) but I also think forcing yourself to do stuff you don’t care about could be dangerous.

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  7. beating a dead horse, I’m sure

    “I’m Cosmo Kramer, the ass (prof) man!”

    Reply
  8. ASSociate Professor

    I would strongly suggest that, if you haven’t already, you talk to your senior colleagues about two different kinds of expectations. First, do they expect you to stick to what you were hired working on? (Figure out a way to ask this that isn’t like that, though!) Second, what kind of weight do external letters have in your tenure process, in particular at different stages? (At some R1s they make little difference at any stage unless they are really bad; at many, like my own, it is not uncommon for tenure denials to happen even with unanimous departmental support if they are deemed even slightly problematic, though this also interacts with one’s publication record, etc.; I haven’t taught at a non-R1 but my sense is that at some such places the letters are basically just pro forma; I’ve also heard of R2s where candidates get to select all of their letter writers, whereas at most R1s that I know of the process is either completely or mostly out of the candidate’s hands.) Also, don’t trust your senior colleagues about this (sorry, but they may just sweet talk you and then screw you over later); is there a record of tenure denial in your department? At your university? If it is extraordinarily uncommon for people to get denied tenure, then you might be safe doing whatever you want. If it isn’t, and if external letters matter a lot, or if you sense any issues at the department level… I’d tread carefully.

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  9. Anonymous

    I agree with Michele. You were hired in a particular area and shouldn’t really be changing it right after getting hired. Maybe down the road you can expand but I would put this off a while.

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  10. Sass Man

    OP here:
    This has been informative! I must say that the idea that my home department might be upset for me switching my research focus never crossed my mind. I thought it might hurt in terms of tenure letters, but I never even considered my colleagues thinking that, if I started doing research in an area that wasn’t the same as my dissertation, I would give them grounds for offense.
    I can also see that, if I was hired to teach something, I need to keep teaching it. Sure, but those classes are prepped and can be taught just the same, even without my research aligning.
    Is the reason the department might want me to keep doing the same research so that it, as a department, will get some articles attributed to it in that specialty? So that, in Leiter reports and the sort, it will be seen as having some breadth or depth? I’m genuinely curious about what expectations my colleagues might have about the topics of my research, while of course accepting that they want a certain quantity and quality of it.

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  11. One Hit Wonder

    Based on my experience, I suggest you publish at most one article in the new area before tenure. A single one won’t hurt you, and may even help, displaying your intellectual range and curiosity (I would look at it favorably as a promotion reviewer). But two articles in the new subfield is enough to make it a specialty, and then you may get senior specialists in that subfield reviewing you for tenure, which you don’t want.

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  12. grymes

    @OP Well, many people think that teaching and research are improved when aligned. But, practically speaking:
    1) Take a second look at your contract. (Mine specifies that I will be evaluated based on research in my AOSs. As a result, the official messages that went out requesting that people write me tenure letters specified that the letter writers should evaluate my contributions to those areas. If your contract says something similar, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t pivot, but it might mean that it would be prudent to get your contract officially revised before pivoting.)
    2) As somebody said above, ask your chair what they think! And members of the departmental (and ideally college-level) P&T committee! Every bureaucracy is its own special hell, so they’ll know relevant stuff that we can’t know.

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  13. Michel

    Sass man: to be clear, the problem wouldn’t be branching out. It would be abandoning your area entirely.
    As I see it, if we hired a philosopher of science, that’s how we wanted to balance the department. If we wanted another meta-ethicist, that’s what we would have hired. There’s no shortage of people who are already experts in any given AOS. And there’s no shortage of meta-ethicist who can teach philosophy of science, either. If we’re a department that cares about research, then we were looking to have that kind of research represented in our outputs. It’s okay for that not to be your exclusive output, and it’s okay for your output to change over time. But a 100% change the year you were hired looks like you were just using us to get a job, and spent time hiding that fact from us (e.g. in your research statement). And yes, if your contract specifies you were hired as a philosopher of science, then your exclusively meta-ethical publications will be a problem at tenure time.
    So: pursue your interest by taking the time to build your capacity in the new AOS, and use your existing expertise as your safety net, allowing you to ensure you’re regularly cranking out pubs in AOS1. Every pub in AOS1 buys you credit for pursuing AOS2.

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  14. One Swing Wonder

    Yes! I can only agree that, 1) my contract and 2) my colleagues/chair are the most important to consult.
    I can say that my contract does not specify my teaching or research responsibilities, but if it did, I better pay attention to that!
    I can also say that my colleagues are very supportive of my research agenda.
    But I didn’t tell YOU that! That was why my primary concern was with letters for tenure. But even those, in terms of their importance, could just depend on my department as well. While there’s no fixed rule on it, I would say that it’s in the vicinity of “the letters just better not be bad.”
    Thanks again cocoon,
    recently started ass prof

    Reply

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