In last Friday’s post I showed Covey’s quadrants and labels and how academic activities typically fit into the scheme. Quadrant III can be controversial, however, because not all service work is unimportant. Here’s why.
“Service” is the category that matters least in tenure and promotion cases. As long as one is a “good citizen,” that usually is sufficient. In fact, some department chairs discourage junior faculty from getting into too much service and try to protect them from it. When one is up for tenure, this is probably a good strategy.
However, institutional tenure is one thing, and “real tenure” is quite another. A few month ago, Gene C. Fant wrote a column in the Chronicle called “Real Tenure is Portable.” He considers real tenure to be different from institutional tenure. The latter only guarantees you a job as long as your institution is financially sound (and in this day and age, that’s no sure thing). Real tenure, he explains, is what makes you attractive to other institutions. According to Fant, real tenure is based either on research or on administrative skill.
Research as the path to upperward academic mobility is well known, but the job security provided by administrative skill is not as well understood. Or, maybe it is understood but undervalued. This leads us to the link with Quadrant III. Service activities after tenure can really be deceptive: they take up a lot of time, but they don’t really produce anything. Nevertheless, judiciously selecting service activities, having a coherent plan and executing around that plan can lead to more experience, more responsibility, and ultimately better job security.
Well chosen service actitivities can be Quadrant II activities–they are done not in order for quick returns, but for long-term gains.
