Last week I went to a workshop called “Take the Final Step” which was designed to help and encourage female science & engineering professors to apply for promotion to professor. For people who don’t know what this means, at most North American universities there are 3 ranks of professor. Assistant professors are the newbies, who don’t have tenure. Associate professor is the rank that usually goes along with getting tenure. Then “professor” (or “full professor”) is the highest rank.

It’s pretty obvious why assistant professors want to become associate professors: in  general, it’s an “up-or-out” situation: you either get promoted or you are looking for another job. But “why would anyone want to be a full professor?” is a question often discussed around the dinner table at my house. At some universities, the promotion comes with a pay raise. At many, being a full professor is a prerequisite for holding higher academic positions or committee memberships. At most places it’s some kind of recognition that one is known and respected in one’s field.

In lots of science and engineering fields there are very few women full professors. Our department has just one, and lots of physics departments don’t have any. Even in astronomy, which has a much higher percentage of women compared to physics, I saw a recent data point [can’t find the reference] saying that the fraction of full professors who are women is only about 11%. Part of this is a time lag (roughly 15 years from PhD to full prof) combined with lower participation by women in the past, but that’s not the whole story. In general, women tend to spend longer as associate professors than men. They’re less likely to request promotion and more likely to be told they’re not ready. The Council of Canadian Academies recently did a report on this topic which covers all of academia, not just science and engineering.

The workshop was geared to answering practical questions: what are the criteria for promotion? [“Excellence”, apparently. Universities aspire to be like Lake Wobegon, where all the students and all the faculty are above average.] How to acquire an international research reputation? [Go to the right conferences, among other things.] How to manage a lab’s worth of techs, post docs and students? [Pick the right people to start; set clear expectations.] How to balance research with teaching and service? [Might as well focus on research; sad to say, not many people get promoted on the basis of teaching.] How to navigate academic politics? [with your eyes open.] How to balance the rest of your life with a job that can be all-consuming? [No one had a good idea for this one, sadly.].

I thought about it and realized that I was taught by exactly two female profs over my entire undergrad and graduate career. Not exactly a ton of role models. So it was inspiring to see the many speakers at this workshop who were female (full) professors. A few of them brought their “promotion dossiers” for us to look at, and they were impressive.
But the professors themselves made strong claims that they weren’t superhuman, which I think is also important to know.

The take-home message from the workshop was that promotion to full professor is certainly not impossible, but it doesn’t just happen — it takes thought and planning. But it should be within our grasp, and we owe it to those who will come after us to at least try.

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