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Sharing personal good news!


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Last week, I got the official news that I received tenure as a full professor at my academic institution. It has been such a journey filled with what I hope to be good achievements as well as lots of stress. The university I am at has a different tenure system compared to many other schools, so the tenure process is long and demanding, but I am there... As I reflect back on the 8-9 years as an academician, and another 9 years prior as a graduate student/postdoc, it feels really good at this moment. Building models and following forums like ARC has surely kept me sane (or so I think)! A big thank you to all of you.

From what I hear and foresee, life does not change much after tenure, so I hope to be back with another build soon as part of my therapy :) I am working on a WP T-38 with Caracal decals, so I hope to start a WIP sometime soon!

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Thank you all so very much. I appreciate your messages.

RKic (and others who might be interested); the process is long and nebulous at times. They deliberately won't tell you the success criteria, but it is generally a mix of a significant amount of scientific publications, their impact, funding you bring in, PhD, M.S., and undergraduate students you mentor and graduate, teaching and service to your academic community, and awards. Depending on the circumstances, the whole thing can be stressful (you almost always feel that you are being watched by other faculty) but you just have to plow through. At the end, you need to be true to yourself; choose your research activities based on what you think is important, not based on what others tell you. This is probably hard when you first start but it's something you will have to figure out. Otherwise, tenure track can easily turn into the worst years of your life. If you are married, make sure your spouse understands what it takes. The work, thinking, and worrying never seems to end :)

If you are looking to get hired as a tenure track faculty, a solid record of publications and a potential for success is what most departments look for. Strong recommendation letters from influential people are instrumental in differentiating your application from hundreds of others. I think the standards/expectations change based on the discipline but in my field (engineering/computer science/robotics) peer reviewed archival publications in high impact journals is probably the most important thing any hiring committee is looking for.

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