Demystifying the Academic Tenure Pathway for Early Career Scientists

Early Career Scientists (ECS), including undergraduates through pre-tenured faculty, often lack knowledge about the tenure pathway in academia. This lack of knowledge about the process of obtaining a tenure job carries through all stages of ECSs in different ways. Undergraduate students, particularly first-generation students, do not have opportunities to learn about this process in any curricula unless they have a mentor helping them and educating them at each step of the way. Topics that are important at this stage include internships and cultivating a resume that speaks to your interests, types of academic jobs, research opportunities, and the graduate application process. Graduate students are not given opportunities to practice communication skills, which are pivotal at this stage as students begin to start networking for post-doctoral positions or teaching positions. Post-doctoral candidates lack opportunities for gaining interview skills. Finally, once the tenure-track position has been obtained, assistant professors are expected to know how to create a dossier and how they are evaluated for tenure. They may also attempt to maintain work-life balance. This award supports a workshop that will address the issues facing ECS as they navigate pathways towards academic careers. The workshop will be run during the 2025 Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. The organizers expect that workshop participants will gain knowledge about each stage of the academic career process from undergraduate through pre-tenured faculty, and they will benefit from professional development during the conference when they may be able to put the knowledge gained to immediate use. The PI proposes a workshop that will have an important outcome of engaging early career ocean scientists in discussions of how to navigate academic careers. The effort will support ECS, particularly those who are from underrepresented groups or who are first-generation students. In addition, Dr. Schiebel will mentor two undergraduate students from Suffolk University who will be taking part in the workshop, presenting their research at the ASLO meeting, and attending their first scientific conference. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.