Comments on “Standing Still”

Since the report "Standing Still" identifies my home institution as one that has created a special program for associate professors, I devote my response primarily to explaining how the program came into being and what its aims are. In fall 2006, in my second year as senior associate dean for the fine arts and humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, I started wondering why we in the college office invested heavily in start-up packages for probationary faculty mem bers, yet, after granting tenure to a colleague who had proved herself or himself professionally, we did virtually nothing in a formal or targeted way to encourage and support new associate professors. Why promise funding, research leave, mentoring, and other perks to faculty members we might not even promote and then offer essentially nothing to support those we had deemed worthy of promotion? Mulling over these questions led me to think about a start-up program for newly appointed associate professors. I didn't attempt to gather data on the length of time it takes associate professors in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences to progress to full professor. I didn't think about whether women or men had been more or less adversely affected during their tenure at the associate professor rank.