"Staying Connected" Increases Productivity For Scholars in Transition

Common Challenges for Developing Scholars

Abstract

 

Problem: The transition from a doctoral student to tenure track faculty can be overwhelming.  Expectations for high levels of productivity in teaching, scholarship, and service can create high levels of frustration and job dissatisfaction.  Clinical teaching assignments with lack of control, turnover in research leadership, trying to maintain clinical practice, transition in tenure requirements with an evolving national research university, and balancing a full workload against expectations to present and publish are institution-specific challenges faced by the authors.

Method:  An overview of professional development and scholarly mentoring programs to help with role transition and scholarly productivity will be described.  Standard models of faculty mentoring may not always be effective.

Results: While numerous models are available, many take 3-5 years to show productivity. The shared experiences of doctoral education and shared dissertation theoretical frameworks, in addition to continued mentoring from our dissertation chair as part of the group, allowed us to advance individual scholarly productivity more rapidly than other standard models.

Conclusion:  Connections and shared scholarship within a doctoral program can provide an excellent basis for continued scholarly collaboration.