Recently, a good friend asked me, “You already did a lot of academic service before tenure, how different is it really after tenure?” My answer is that there is a big difference between going to meetings and running them.
I am three years post-tenure and, as a mid-career academic at a public research university, the majority of my service responsibilities are things I am in charge of in some way and for which I need to keep other people on task. The pandemic has not changed this, but it has made me more cognizant of how I use my available working hours.
My mental space now is taken up with many more service- and teaching-related thoughts than research ones, and I don’t know many people in this mid-career stage for whom that is not true. The level of responsibility in each role I have now, moreover, has forced me to be much more strategic and particular about the service I agree to, compared to earlier in my career. There needs to be structural changes to better recognize and value this work, including not expecting people in precarious positions and with marginalized identities to do a disproportionate amount of service labor.
That said, mid-career academic service is an enormous opportunity. I even consider it an ethical responsibility. But it can be hard to balance your time spent on service with your other commitments. So here are my tips on how mid-career faculty can manage the unique service obligations of post-tenure life.
Your time is finite
Make a list of all the requests made of your time. Use this to keep track of the things you say yes to AND the things you say no to.
I started doing this after my third year on the tenure track, as service requests were ever increasing. It allowed me to look back and see that each yes was only possible because of a previous no.
At first, I challenged myself to only say yes to half the things asked of me, but as requests grew, the yes-to-no ratio grew unsustainably. Getting better at saying no can help you avoid this problem.
“Academic writing feels fun again” — IoF author Heath Fogg Davis
Take the stress out of publishing and see why so many interdisciplinary scholars trust Ideas on Fire to edit their books and journal articles.
Wait to respond
With very few exceptions, I take forty-eight hours before I agree to do anything, including research and speaking opportunities.
Giving yourself this time allows you to figure out why you might want to say yes or no to a specific activity. It also allows you to think about what else you have to do that might pose a conflict.
Other people work here too!
I once asked a senior administrator their advice on how to mid-career faculty can navigate service obligations post-tenure. For example, some professors end up with a dozen concurrent advisees while others only have one every few years. What’s the right balance? They said, “Do the math. There are X number of faculty and Y number of students. Divide Y by X, and that gives you a baseline expectation for how many students you should be advising.”
That administrator’s mathematical approach is not the answer—we can’t just evenly divide up students if it means faculty and students end up with bad advising fits. But that advice does introduce the concept of a baseline being built around the knowledge that other people can do service work too.
For mid-career service requests, as an exercise, consider asking yourself first: who else could do this? Now, the point of this isn’t actually to shove work onto someone else. Rather, it reveals something important about the true size of the service request. If you really are the only person for the job, that’s actually a bad sign because it means you may get “stuck” doing it forever as there is no obvious next person who can take up the torch. It also may signal that the organization, department, or program needs to invest time in mentoring people to take on those service roles. That mentorship may end up being an additional part of your responsibility should you take on that service commitment, even though it isn’t often assumed as such at the outset.
And of course, this question also allows you to realize roles you are not a good fit for and for which there is a better person.
There is no “right” amount of reviews
Just as department and university service requests increase after tenure, reviewing requests jump significantly.
I have often asked colleagues how many reviews the average academic does each year, in an attempt to decide how many makes sense for my situation. I have found that the numbers people give for their own yearly average vary widely. For instance, in just one thread of people in the same field, I saw numbers ranging from five to fifty journal reviews per year. And that’s not even counting paper reviews for conferences, book reviews for publishers, tenure reviews for departments, and application reviews for granting agencies!
I recommend establishing your own yearly or monthly review limit once you assess your actual available time and check it against departmental/field norms. Remembering that other people also work in your field can be helpful in turning “Gah, not another peer review request!” into “Who do I know who could review this and who doesn’t get asked often?”
Prioritize standing commitments
Post-tenure, the biggest change to many people’s academic service load is their number of standing commitments, or service responsibilities that require ongoing, regular labor. Depending on the role, standing commitments can require very different time investments.
For instance, I am an associate journal editor for the Journal of Communication, an editorial board member of several other journals, a series editor for an academic press, and conference chair for an annual conference this year. This is in addition to regularly reviewing submissions for several scholarly associations’ conferences, manuscripts for academic presses, and tenure and grant applications, as well as acting as an ad hoc reviewer for yet more journals. At this stage of my career, these and my other professional and personal standing commitments have me at (and sometimes beyond) capacity.
Prioritizing your standing commitments means saying yes only to additional things if know you truly have time for them.
Consider what brings you joy
Finally, when navigating academic service as a mid-career faculty member, consider what brings you joy. I don’t just mean this in a Marie Kondo decluttering sense. I also mean treating service as an opportunity rather than a burden, especially when you have a choice in your service commitments.
For instance, sometimes I really want to read an article a journal has assigned me. That anticipated joy spurs me to make time for it because I know the work is valuable and my pleasure is valuable too. When I am on a committee, I start by thinking of what about that system/structure/body has frustrated me in the past, what hasn’t worked, and how I can I use my labor to make things better in the future. That brings me joy.
It’s true that the work needs to get done somehow. Curricula need to be revised, reviews need to be written, conferences need to be organized, students need to be advised, and departments need to be managed. And not all of this will bring you joy or be something you’re good at. But knowing that, you can identify the service opportunities that do light you up and center them in your commitments as much as possible.
As a tenured, mid-career faculty member, you get a lot more service requests. But you also often have a lot more power to say no and yes to things. There are things I know I am not good at and I have learned to not agree to do them anymore, when I can help it. Although sometimes specific service is not optional, when you have a choice you can prioritize the activities where you get to keep good things going and help fix broken things you care about.
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