University Tenure, circa 1979 . . . or so

What field?

I'm very familiar with the process circa now-ish, less so 1979, but I don't think it's changed significantly in the field I'm familiar with. I do know that the process is different in other fields, though.

ALSO, what U?

The woman is an English teacher. The university is fictional although it is loosely based* on Cornell because of a story told to me by a friend about her friend who was a faculty wife.

I'm writing a story. I've typed 7 pages and have more handwritten pages. I hope it doesn't turn into a novel but remains a short story or novella.

I know where the characters are going, I just need some details for an authentic feel.

I planned for this woman to go to MLA in 1979. Fortunately, MLA was held in San Francisco that year. Nice setting. Works well for my purposes.

* Very loosely! I just wish Cornell were in Albany rather than Ithaca! The geography is difficult.

You can make up anything you wish. Id make the committee full of staid Victorian types who cant abide free form writing. Besides meeting the U requiremenst your vic will have to put up with kissing so much wrinkled ass.

That's not the field I'm familiar with. Except through fiction! Since a lot of fiction writers have gone through it, there are a lot of fictional depictions of it.

The impression I have from that is that the usual "publish or perish" is trickier in this field because merely publishing is not enough. Someone may be published but still be seen as an untalented hack by other faculty members, if what has been published is merely not their taste for example.

So there are plenty of opportunities for backstabbing and intrigue.

I was thinking of more concrete stuff. Is there really a seven year trial period or is it shorter under some contracts?

If it involves the professor fighting a dragon on top of a mountain that magically appears where the New York state capital building once was in order to obtain tenure, then I'd read that story or even a book!

It's not a specific amount of time usually. And I don't believe it's called a trial period.

Just, you are hired as an assistant professor (in the field I'm familiar with). This is a position without tenure. It is understood that you are going for tenure, but that it won't happen immediately. ("Tenure-track position.")

Then you are an associate professor -- this is progress but still not tenure.

Tenure is when you're a full professor.

All of these stages are recommend by other faculty and voted upon by the faculty as the first step in a process that goes through the dean and ends somewhere slightly higher up (again in my experience). The faculty votes are most important. It's rare that higher-ups question it, though it happens.

The recommendations can happen at any time. They're goosed along by things like a) getting an offer at another institution (they're trying to keep you) or b) superlative work.

I think there is an outer limit by which you should either have tenure or know you're not going to get it and make decisions accordingly (the person I'm familiar with got tenure very early so I'm less familiar with the other side of it).

You might also be thinking of a post-doc position -- that has a built-in time limit of usually three or four years. The other positions don't have time limits, you just are one until you are not. We know people who have been associate professors (without ever getting tenure, but sticking around) for 30+ years.

Tenure is not the aim of the story. The story has its roots in two or three themes, one of which was inspired by a story in Salon that men marry when they are ready and not necessarily when they are in love. That inspired recollections of long-term relationships that were ended -- largely by the women. The men in question usually went on to marry the next girl. Originally, I thought of a woman who was perpetually, "one girl too soon." But, as the story is developing, another element is emerging which is her own mother's failure as a mother and, perhaps, a lifetime of secrets that the mother hid from her daughter. In the course of the heroine's progress through graduate school and into her career, she meets several women whose exercise of responsibility is questionable.

The plot demands the woman reach a level of security.