Mid-Career Transition: Advice on Moving from Associate to Full Professor

By Joy Gaston Gayles, PhD

It’s not uncommon for mid-career professors to feel conflicted about going for a promotion to full professor. Once tenure is earned, it’s easy to fall into a routine and say yes to everything you are asked to do, like engaging in too many service activities that could get in the way of the activities that lead to promotion to full professor. This is especially true if you don’t have a clear idea about your post-tenure pathway, which helps you determine what role you want to play on your campus after earning tenure and focuses your activities on the goals you want to achieve. 

There is also the uncertainty of not knowing how to move toward full professorship, which can be discouraging. Every time you move from one step on the academic ladder to the next, you’ll discover a new set of rules (written and unwritten), new challenges to navigate, and new skills needed for success. If you don’t have the scholarly or professional networks and mentors to support you, it’s easy to get lost along the way. 

Making the decision to go up for promotion to full professor is an option, not a requirement. There are many scholars who make a conscious decision to remain associate professors. They are happy in the post-tenure path they have chosen, such as jumping into administrative roles, becoming a master teacher, or investing in off-campus projects. 

But, if you are an associate professor ready to reimagine your professional self and go for promotion to full professor, here are four pieces of advice to help guide you on your path. 

Determine Why You Want To Be a Full Professor 

Answering this question leads to a level of clarity, which will help you focus on the activities that will lead to your goal – and say no to the requests that don’t. Finding this answer also changes your energy. You will be motivated to do the work, much the same way you were motivated to write your dissertation on a topic that you were passionate about. You could want more leadership opportunities, be the first _______ in your department to earn professorship, or build your own research team. Understanding your “why” will fuel you during the process of going up for promotion to full professor. 

Develop in an Empowering Mindset 

The reality is that the academy has a way of making people question, overly critique, and doubt not only their research arguments but also themselves. Harshly critiquing yourself can lead to developing mental frames and stories that do not serve you well. For example,  limiting beliefs might surface, which are stories we tell ourselves that limit our behavior. These could include: 

• My work isn’t ready to show anyone/it’s not good enough. 

• My record is not strong enough to withstand multiple rounds of voting. 

• I may be rejected/embarrassed/humiliated. 

• Nobody is going to take me seriously. 

• I’m afraid of ____________. 

• I’ll go for a promotion in ___ years. 

These limiting beliefs essentially suggest that you don’t feel confident, prepared, or ready for promotion. The good news is that they are just stories we tell ourselves, so they can be replaced by more affirming, helpful, and productive ways of thinking. 

Getting your mind right involves shifting your mental frames so that you take a more empowered stance and approach to the work that you do (rather than working from a place of fear, doubt, and disempowerment). 

Think about the beliefs that are holding you back from taking the next step in your career. Once you have identified them, it’s time to let them go. You have tenure, you are established in your field, and you have a reputation and relationships on your campus. It’s time for you to stand in that hard-won position and exercise agency in determining what happens to your career moving forward. 

While it’s not easy to release yourself from these beliefs, it is one of the most important things you can do to make the move to the next chapter of your professional career. From this point on, you create the vision for what success looks like, set your own agenda, choose your path, and take action to move forward on that path. 

Seek Substantial Feedback 

Another primary reason to get your mind right is that you need to be prepared for the process to become a full professor, which requires you to be vulnerable. Part of the process involves asking for feedback. Getting your mind right before having those conversations will put you in a place to actually hear and act on that feedback.

At most institutions, the feedback that you receive at the end of each academic year from your department chair is just not enough to tell you if you are ready to go up for full professor. You will have to muster the courage to do things like share your vita with senior colleagues and ask them directly if they think you are ready to go up for promotion to full professor. Ask them if you are missing anything. Then take their collective advice. If they think you are missing refereed articles – then spend time on that task. Their feedback can provide the roadmap to help you achieve your goal. 

To prepare you for this step, make sure you also open the lines of communication with your department chair. Tell them about what you are working on each semester so that when the time comes to seek the promotion, they have a good idea about your research and scholarship. 

Identify Your Zone of Genius and Promote Yourself

By the time you go up for full professor, you should be super clear about who you are as a scholar, and you should be able to articulate that to others. However, the reality is that you may feel reasonably clear about your contributions as a scholar, and simply are not comfortable promoting yourself or your scholarship. 

You are responsible for your own destiny though. It is vitally important to tell others about the work that you do and drive your narrative instead of working with people who have no clue about what you do, or worse, have an inaccurate understanding of what you do. 

As you prepare yourself to move from associate to full professor, effective self-promotion is a skill worth developing. For your statements during the promotion process, you will be required to articulate who you are as a scholar, the unique contributions you've made to the field, and the broader impacts of your research and scholarship. In essence, you are giving external reviewers clues to pick up on as they evaluate your materials. Learning how to accentuate your unique skills and strengths to others is necessary. 

We all have areas of genius – gifts and talents that give vitality to the work that we do. However, we often suppress our gifts when we should be illuminating, highlighting, and leaning into them more to fuel the work that we are passionate about doing every day. It’s not only okay to promote your work but encouraged as you progress to full professorship. I struggled with promoting my work too. I didn't want to sound like I was bragging or boasting. Over time I’ve figured out how to share my work in ways that feel good for me and align with my values. I am confident that you can too.

Seeking more career support?

The article above from distinguished colleague Joy Gaston Gayles is just one example of the type of insights and resources provided by the NCFDD. The NCFDD is an independent organization that empowers faculty for lasting success through coaching, programs, and on demand support. The NCFDD provides programs for individual faculty members and also provides memberships for institutions.  See if your institution is a member.

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