Teaching, research, and service: Expectations of assistant professors

In this article, we critically evaluate the expectations of assistant professors as perceived by junior and senior faculty (n=22) across seven disciplines at two universities. Our research shows that there are similarities and differences within Sociology departments, across disciplines, and across the teaching and research schools where we collected our data. In one respect, Sociology is no different than the other departments where we interviewed faculty members - ambiguity abounds in terms of expectations for junior faculty. Scholarship expectations for tenure and promotion to associate professor vary much more greatly across rank, discipline, and institution than do those for teaching or service. Based on our findings, we offer several suggestions for improving the transition to the role of Assistant Professor in Sociology. Our suggestions focus on change within graduate programs, hiring institutions, and Sociology as a discipline. While our results are consistent with prior research in many cases, we note that the generalizability of our findings is limited given the number of interviews conducted and the purposive sampling design utilized. However, we hope that our results will provide additional information that may help others as they prepare to begin their roles as assistant professors.