LAUSR

The early years of a faculty position can be an invigorating but challenging experience, given the typical expectations for teaching and completion of scholarly work. Teaching and research are time-intensive activities. Service responsibilities to the institution, department, and perhaps the profession add to a faculty member’s responsibilities. Finally, everyone needs time for a personal life. Success in the early years of a faculty position often involves finding the right approach to allocating time and balancing the demands on one’s time. The writers of this article bring the perspective of an individual who will soon be standing for tenure at an undergraduate institution, an individual who recently got tenure at a doctoral-granting department, and an individual who has spent a 36-year career at an undergraduate institution and is nearing retirement. The three of us are employed at institutions in the United States, althoughwe suspect that much of the advice included herein is also applicable to new faculty members outside the US. Table 1 provides a number of questions, the answers to which will help a new faculty member navigate the early years of their position. Assuming the faculty member has secured a tenure-track position, one virtue of these early years is that your overall professional goal is obvious – get tenure. First steps to getting tenure