Faculty Success – Developing a Research and Publication Agenda

Anyone associated with higher education will acknowledge that tenure track faculty have to perform a fantastic balancing act. Compared to an administrative or line role in an organization, higher education faculty have tremendous autonomy and freedom. However, they face competing demands of many different (and good) opportunities, and for them the stakes are always high. Help is here! This article introduces a powerful strategy for staying on track in the research strand of this competitive journey.

Building a Research Agenda.

Strangely enough, when entering their first tenure track position, often the only research faculty has pursued is their one dissertation. Yes, that is one project over the course of years, with one massive “publication”. Nonetheless, once on the tenure track, faculty have the demand looming over them to publish or perish- and they are solely responsible for their success or failure.

Research Topics.

The first step in taming this unruly situation is to consider the natural extensions or additions to your prior research. Or, if your research is not directly related to your department, the first step is to access a topic which bridges the two and will be respected by your colleagues,

I like to use a large piece of paper and start writing topics in various areas of the sheet. This activity becomes the process of throwing your research ideas down on paper and seeing if there is a logical concept map among your prospective endeavors. Alternatively, one might have a pattern in mind from the start. If so, begin the concept map as a base structure and see how more activities would be connected to this established core or set.

Publication Goals.

Many faculty think that each research project results in a single publication: but seasoned researchers realize there are, in fact, many publishing opportunities to be extracted from ……

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