Concrete Strategies for Economics Tenure-Track Faculty and Their Mentors

Mentoring tenure-track faculty is effective and increasingly utilized but there is demand for concrete mentoring strategies for navigating the ambiguities of the tenure track. The key driver of ambiguity—and therefore of candidate angst—is that some important aspects of the tenure decision cannot be determined until quite late in the tenure track. Two such aspects are the strength and number of external reviews the tenure committee may receive as evaluations of research effectiveness and the determination of teaching effectiveness. This paper proposes some ambiguity management strategies for implementation by candidates and their mentors as soon as the first year.