Career Trajectory for the New Faculty Member: Planning for Success in Academia

Initiating a career in academia can be overwhelming for any new faculty member. The multi-faceted faculty role involving teaching, research, and service, becomes additionally complex for the nurse practitioner faculty member who must also maintain clinical competency. Fundamental to planning for academic success includes an understanding of the culture of the college/university and the academic unit. In addition, the faculty member must consider the potential consequences of each activity in terms of whether such activities will assist or hinder the pursuit of promotion/tenure. Special circumstances, such as involvement in administrative tasks or disproportionate service assignments, can negatively impact the attainment of promotion/tenure. The new faculty member must also consider ways to enhance the likelihood of attaining promotion/tenure, such as through receipt of postdoctoral fellowships and negotiated workload assignments to increase time devoted to establishment of a research agenda. This session will discuss the typical faculty role and how practice expectations might be incorporated into the academic workload. The typical promotion and tenure process will be reviewed, with an emphasis on understanding the culture of the institution. Emphasis will be placed on identifying activities which can prove helpful or detrimental to reaching a goal of tenure, with suggestions for minimizing distracters and maximizing contributors to the meeting of personal and professional goals.