tuannyriver

This is a follow-up to a post from five years ago, when I was promoted to associate professor with tenure. In September 2024, I applied for accelerated promotion to full professor and got it. My experience isn’t representative of American academia since it may be different at other institutions, especially R1 (which mine isn’t). That said, I hope to offer a few insights and pointers about an important marker in academia.

Having come to academia later than most, I felt compelled to fast-track the usual six-year schedule of tenure/promotion:

1. August 2013: I began teaching at Pepperdine as a visiting assistant professor.
2. August 2015: I began the tenure-track as an assistant professor.
3. August 2020: I was tenured and promoted to associate professor.
4. August 2025: I became full professor.

Between steps 3 and 4, I applied twice for a five-year professorship. I didn’t get it the first time but applied again the following year and got it. This professorship carries a research fund that has enabled my research at many archives towards my “big book” project.

Shortly before I entered the tenure track, I was offered the choices of a four-year, five-year, or the standard six-year track when applying for tenure. I chose five years. This decision was easy to make. But the next decision, whether to apply for early promotion to full, was a lot tougher to make. I went back-and-forth during Summer 2024, and only decided to go for it six weeks before the application deadline. How come?

The main reason was whether I had “enough” to make a run at accelerated promotion. As a colleague in the know once said it, you can submit an identical application in your fifth year or sixth year, but the Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee (RTP) would scrutinize your fifth-year application a lot harder just because it’s a year early. For this reason, it’s essential to gain a clear-eyed idea on whether you have more than enough to justify applying for early promotion. In my mind, I may think I have enough. But RTP members may not look at my record in the same way as I do, and at least some members may very well judge it insufficient.

Whether you’d decide to apply early, I have three recommendations.

First, evaluate carefully your accomplishments since tenure and measure it according to the best of your knowledge on expectations for accelerated promotion to full. At Seaver College, the undergraduate school of Pepperdine University, teaching expected to count for 50% of your accomplishments while scholarship and service for 25% each. Given the weight of teaching at my institution, a middle-of-the road record on teaching wouldn’t cut it. This is especially true because one-year early promotion expects you to be ranked among the top 10% in one of these three categories and the top 25% in each of the other categories. (For a two-year early promotion, the expectation is top 10% in all three categories.)

Obviously, I wouldn’t have applied if I didn’t think my record was enough. In particular, I believed that my record of service, especially service to the profession, was in the top 10%. My service to Pepperdine, I judged, wasn’t shabby, but it was the service to the profession that my application should highlight and explain the most. In addition, I saw that my tenure application didn’t do as good of a job in explaining the significance of my scholarship. I thought more carefully about how to explain it this time, and ended up characterizing it as “pioneering scholarship.” Lastly, the beginning of my tenure coincided with the pandemic, and I knew that the application would need to explain my achievement amidst the uniqueness of Zoom pedagogy.

My second recommendation is to meet with your department chair and the dean of your college/school. (At my institution, they would be my divisional dean and the dean of Seaver College.) It should also help to pick the brain of the current RTP chair (and/or the previous chair). Ask them about their experiences on early promotion, and describe to them, if in broad strokes, your accomplishments since the promotion to associate professor. Generally speaking, these deans and chairs are seasoned with these sorts of things. Having seen enough applications for promotion, they should be in a good position to provide helpful feedback. Weigh your record along with their feedback, and I think that you get a good sense about what to do.

This recommendation is similar to one of the suggestions from the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education linked above:

Seek advice in your department. Ask your chair and other senior colleagues privately if they think you are ready to make the move, which is a good way to discern if the department will support your goal. If their reaction is lukewarm, you’re unlikely to find stronger support from other reviewers at the college or university level. In sizing up your chances, be sure to gather feedback from not just close colleagues but those whom you suspect may oppose your promotion.

I’ve valued such reaction and feedback. In 2018, I briefly thought about applying for associate professor the year before tenure since I’d be qualified. But a short conversation with my division dean quickly shut down that thought, mainly because my publications weren’t sufficient at that point. On the other hand, the conversations with my (new) division dean, the college dean, and the RTP chair in 2024 convinced me that I should apply for early promotion.

In a similar fashion, after applying for the professorship the first time and not getting it, I asked the vice provost in charge for a meeting for a better understanding. The meeting was enormously helpful, and I applied again and got it. In retrospect, I should have met him before applying for the first time. Given what I learned from that meeting, I’d have waited for at least one year before applying. The point is to do enough homework before determining if there’s enough in the tank for an application.

My third recommendation is to seek external support for your application. External letters are a requirement at R1 and R2 universities (and possibly some other institutions), and the rules may vary from one institution to another. At Pepperdine, I’d guess that they are required at the Business School, the Law School, the School of Public Policy, and the Graduate School of Education and Psychology. But they haven’t been required at Seaver College. That said, Pepperdine recently earned the R2 designation and I wonder if external letters will be either required or highly recommended in the future.

While they weren’t required, it crossed my mind to seek some external support. In fact, one of my peer reviewers, a seasoned faculty and colleague, suggested to me to ask for a couple of letters of support. His recommendation was perfectly timed because I was thinking the same. I reached out to a number of academics at other institutions: mostly specialists in Vietnam studies and long-time faculty in Great Books programs. Four were affiliated to R1 universities, two at R2, and three at liberal arts institutions. All graciously agreed, and I ended up with five letters focusing on my scholarship and another five on service.

In addition to nine letters from other institutions, one was from a staff at Pepperdine. In fact, she wrote it two years before, testifying to a multi-year kind of service that I gave alongside her and several other staff and faculty. While RTP members understood well service at the university, I wanted to highlight this particular service because it was somewhat atypical. This staff’s letter contributed to that highlight.

I clearly went overboard with ten letters. But I guess I didn’t want to leave anything to chances, ha!

It was during the week of finals that I received a letter from the RTP chair, who informed me that the committee had recommended my accelerated promotion. A similar letter from the college dean came a few days later. Happy news, obviously. I was extra happy because RTP’s ratings of my teaching, scholarship, and service were higher than my tenure application.

• Scholarship. My tenure application earned the rating of “good to very good,” which was similar to B+. Five years later, this application received the rating of “very good,” which is like A-minus and, therefore, a step higher from before.
  
• Teaching. The rating of my tenure application had been “very good”; it was now higher at “very good to outstanding.” It was like a raise from A- to a straight A.
  
• Service. I’d expected this rating to be the highest of three categories, and it turned out to be true. It was “very good to outstanding” for my tenure application. Now it was “outstanding”: i.e., from A to a rare A+.

Happy, yes, but I was also confirmed by these ratings that “you can’t know for sure what or how committee members would evaluate your application.” When I filled out the application, I thought that the rating for scholarship would be higher than that for teaching. But it turned out to be the opposite. One reason, I think, is that I was a consistently productive scholar but I haven’t published a monograph. Another reason is that the pandemic created a most unusual situation for teachers. Since I tended to rise to the occasion, I adapted well to Zoom and the like. In my application, I wrote that it was probably the peak of my teaching, and I gave as much evidence as I could to support the statement.

Another appreciation to all the people involved in my application: RTP reviewers, designated peer reviewers (and any non-designated ones), letter writers, and deans (division and college). There’s always a lot of labor on this work, and it was no exception in this case.

Lastly, my application included the following long note on the second page of my application. I have no idea if it made any difference with the people involved. But it reads like a preface to my application, and I found writing it to be a very good exercise in helping me organize my application.

My journey would go on regardless of accelerated promotion. That said, earning it has saved me time from applying again this year. Most of all, it helped to keep me motivated during Spring 2025, which was among the toughest semesters I’ve had because of the devastating Palisades and Eaton wildfires in January 2025. It was an entirely different experience, one that I may revisit at some point in the future.

A NOTE ON APPLYING FOR ACCELERATED PROMOTION

I am applying for accelerated promotion to full professor, one year earlier than the usual progression on the placement schedule. According to Seaver College’s Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Handbook, VIII.C (p. 18):

To receive an accelerated promotion after the fifth year (effectively a one-year advance), a faculty member must display a consistent pattern of support for generally accepted Christian values and the mission of Pepperdine University as described in the Mission Statement, and must be in the top 10 percent of Seaver faculty in one of the three areas of teaching, scholarly activity, or service, and in the top 25 percent in each of the other two areas.

That accelerated promotion requires excellence is a given requirement. But I admit to some puzzlement at “top 10 percent” and “top 25 percent” because no criteria are named on how to determine each one. Will the top 10% and top 25% be determined by comparing an application to all Seaver faculty in the last five years? The last ten years? Moreover, how can RTP, whose membership changes each year, access sufficient data from earlier years for everyone so they can be on the same page and make an informed decision?

Moreover, it does not help prospective applicants, peer reviewers, or members of the RTP Committee that there have been (to my knowledge) few applications for accelerated promotion to full professor. I trust in the collective judgment of the RTP Committee, and I certainly do not want to put more burden upon their already heavy tasks. Nonetheless, I wish to call attention to this structural problem in evaluating a “top percentage” that may lead to arbitrariness or, at least, an appearance of arbitrariness.

All the same, I wouldn’t be applying for accelerated promotion without having reasons to believe that my teaching, scholarship, and service have been consistently strong since tenure. Since my employment as a visiting faculty at Pepperdine, I have always striven to be an all-around faculty, and to aim for excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Pressed to choose one category in the top 10%, I’d pick either scholarship or service. And while Seaver College is full of terrific teachers, I believe that my teaching in the last few years, especially during Zoom instruction, has been consistently strong to merit the top 25%. Through this FDF and supporting files, I seek to convey the strength of my records in the hope of demonstrating my excellence.

There is one area that could be supported with clear evidence: a comparison between my achievements during the tenure track (2015–2020) and since earning tenure (2020–2025). Below, I list in bold activities and accomplishments since tenure, a period of five years. I invite evaluators to compare them to the achievements during my tenure track, which was also five years. I hope that the comparison would demonstrate that (a) my achievements were considerable during the tenure track, and (b) I have achieved a good deal more, especially in scholarship and service to the profession, since becoming a tenured faculty. That some achievements took place during the pandemic, is perhaps an additional factor to consider in evaluating whether a category belongs to the top 10% or top 25%.