This has been a very important year for me professionally. Since joining the Oklahoma State Faculty in 2006, I have had my eye on the tenure decision, which typically takes place after the first 6-7 years of employment. "Tenure" essentially means continual employment and is basically a vote of confidence by the University that they feel you are a wise investment and will represent them positively for the next 30+ years. In academia, the tenure decision looms over most new Ph.D. hires and pushes them towards excellence in research, teaching and outreach. Although data on tenure outcomes are rare, a recent paper suggests that recent success rates for a cohort of Division I schools tend to hover around 40-60%.
The video below is fairly representative of my work and what is expected of an academic. It is from a presentation I gave in 2008 to the Arkansas Broadband Advisory Council regarding a study I performed about the diffusion of broadband access. Being seen as an expert in a particular area is an integral part of receiving tenure.
I am very proud of my career as an academic - much more so, in fact, than anything I have accomplished in bodybuilding. I will be going up for tenure at the end of this year (2 years earlier than is typical) and will continue working feverishly to improve my academic record until then (and after, of course). Data on early promotion and tenure are even more scarce, but Table 3 of this paper indicates that this occurs in less than 10% of cases. In my opinion there is no better job than that of a professor - I go to work everyday thinking of what interesting thing I want to work on that day.
