Yesterday, I had my first RTP review as junior faculty. I found the process fascinating—both as someone who joined academia from the corporate world and as a person who finds institutional bureaucracy and community norms intriguing. I would have especially loved a window into the process as a law student.
RTP stands for Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion. Different schools handle it differently. The gist is this: a cohort of senior, tenured academics gets together and decides the fate of their junior colleagues. Reappointment means just that—the professor is trying to stick around for another year. Tenure means, well, tenure—the job protection everyone keeps explaining is more complicated than you think. Promotion means moving from a junior title to a less junior title, like Assistant to Associate Professor. Whether tenure comes with the promotion depends on the school. There are rules. We will get to the rules.
I’d say it’s like any standard annual performance review, but it’s actually more like Survivor. You have to do your job, sure. But you must also have an impeccable social game. Otherwise, you’ll be politely asked to leave the island.
I feel conflicted about RTP. On the one hand, our process makes sense. You can tell the folks who oversee it have thought carefully about what us juniors need to one day step into their highly coveted shoes. I’ve heard that’s not necessarily the case at other schools. You know that saying about how you should never abolish a rule unless you understand why it exists? RTP seems like one of those things that feels like bullshit institutional hazing until you imagine the alternative: thinking you’ve done everything you needed to do for six-plus years, only for your cherished colleagues to pull the rug out from under you when you finally go up for tenure.
It turns out that clear review standards are actually part of a functioning institution. Annoying.
On the other hand, RTP in practice seems incompatible with the goals—and vibes—of academia. Here I am, two years after quitting my lucrative job in big tech because I wanted more freedom to use my voice, fretting about writing this post because this is not the kind of writing the senior council approves of. Apparently, talking about the banality of RTP is not a good use of my time.
Freedom is, in fact, not free. Even in academia.
The RTP requirements outline a few standard metrics: teaching, writing, and service to the university.
Teaching is straightforward. You have to teach good classes, but not great classes. Great classes take too much time away from acceptable writing. Each fall, appointed senior faculty members audit your classes and provide feedback on your teaching. This is very good. Feedback is a gift, and I received remarkably gracious gifts from my faculty reviewers this year. I applied their suggestions in the classes immediately following my reviews. My wiser colleagues were right. My teaching is better for it.
Service means service to the university. Sitting on faculty committees about student affairs, curriculum, and admissions are your classic service requirements. This is also good and important. Somebody has to keep the school functioning.
Writing is where things get strange.
All law professors know they have to write articles. Law review articles are generally 40–60-page pieces examining current or developing legal and policy matters. It’s more complicated than that, and you can pretty much write about anything, kinda, if you have tenure.
For the rest of us, there’s acceptable writing and unacceptable writing.
You have to be careful about what counts as acceptable writing, especially if it’s not a standard-form law review article. Some RTP rules say other kinds of academic writing count, but some senior faculty might disagree with the rule. If you write something nonstandard and convince the senior folks that it’s important and therefore acceptable, you might have a shot.
But you might also not.
It’s my understanding that it’s best to stick to the boring stuff, which is the exact opposite of what I’ve done with my academic career so far.
Law review articles are the vegetables of legal writing. You’re probably not writing on “sexy” topics. You’re probably not making much of an impact yet, unless you write something really, really good. That’s hard to do when you’re a new professor trying to figure out how to teach good—but not great—classes while managing the everyday fires that come with teaching inquisitive and rambunctious twenty-somethings. Double that if you’re a woman. You now play the role of teacher and mom.
If you had a public-facing career before entering academia, like me, you’re also balancing the speaking, writing, and other opportunities that followed you to your new gig. Much of that writing is unacceptable writing. Of course, you switched to academia to have more freedom to enjoy these opportunities and speak your mind freely. But now you must explain why they count toward RTP, no matter how cool, impactful, or noteworthy they are. They are not law review articles. They are unacceptable.
But I digress.
Now, dear reader, if you are like me and still relatively new to your academic journey, I implore you to start documenting your teaching, writing, and service now. At the beginning of each academic year, you will be required to write to your committee about everything you did the previous year to meet the RTP requirements. You will wonder why you need to spend so much unacceptable writing time crafting this document, but you must. Your school needs an accounting of your worth to justify its own.
You will need to dust off your lawyer hat and your statutory analysis skills. Each thing you write must match a criterion in the RTP rulebook. After all, you are fighting for your life. You must cite the sacred governing text.
Remember, though: this is unacceptable writing. You must account for it in your yearly unacceptable writing budget.
By far the most riveting part of RTP is the hearing. I have no idea how other schools do theirs, but mine involves a real-life panopticon. The hearing is when the senior faculty get together, read that document you wrote, and decide if you wrote it right. When you enter the hearing room, there will be a chair in the center. That is where you go. Surrounding you, from above, are your senior colleagues.
They are not your colleagues right now, though. They sit in high chairs. You are not equal.
You sit in your chair, which is lower than their chairs. Your chair teaches you that if you do enough of these hearings right, one day you will get to sit in a higher chair.
If you did what you were supposed to do, the hearing will go great. Your colleagues will sing your praises. It will feel great. Academia has a way of making you feel like you’re not doing enough all the time. You are never doing enough acceptable writing, for example. But for this brief moment, your colleagues will recognize you and validate your efforts. Take those wins. You earned them.
Some will give you constructive feedback, too. That’s good. Remember, feedback is a gift.
But beware. There will be colleagues who disagree about what it means to do RTP right. They wanted a different rule or standard when the rules and standards were being written, but their rule or standard didn’t make it into the final rules or standards. You are not required to meet their rules or standards. I think. They will still hold you to their rules or standards. Write them down for the next RTP.
During the hearing, you will smile and say thank you and respond to constructive critiques from the high chairs. You will ask them to consider your unacceptable writing acceptable. Some will. Some won’t. The ones who don’t will explain that they didn’t get any exceptions when they were in your chair. So, you don’t get them either.
You will promise them more acceptable writing next year, which might mean teaching okay classes instead of good ones.
At the end of the hearing, you will be asked to leave. The council must deliberate.
If white smoke emerges, you survived.
If not, you didn’t, which is okay. Now you have time for unacceptable writing.
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