Not Ready Yet: The Professor Application That Wasn't

I applied for my professorship at my university and didn't get it despite approval at school level. The feedback indicated I was "not ready yet" due to insufficient sustained activity, impact and income generation.

The rejection has forced me to reconsider my priorities and what drives my academic work. It caused me to think about how I stay grounded in my values when facing rejection or organisational change.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Professor Application Rejection
• 1:22 University Criteria and Career Impact
• 4:38 Navigating Change and Staying Grounded
• 8:00 Behind-the-Scenes Insights

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:07

hopefully you've listened to this week's episode where I talk about the start of the year and reflect on a setback I've had, uh, career-wise it's a bit difficult to say whether it is career-wise or professionally. Uh, this year I applied for my professorship at my university and didn't get it. It was approved at school level but not supported at university levels for a number of reasons. The language that came back to me was I was not yet ready. Not yet ready, um, and I've I've had a debrief. Um, I won't say any more than that about how I felt about that, but some of the things that came out was about sustained activity.

Alison Hardy: 0:54

One of the things in England at the moment is that universities are having financially challenging times, and so it's about the amount of income I have brought in over a sustained period of time. Now, if you work in the education sector and do any research or do any contract work, you'll know there's not a huge amount of money around. We're all fishing from a smaller and smaller pond, so it means being creative about generating income. So that's something I've got to think about doing if I want to reapply in two years because I'm locked out of the system for two years. So that's kind of quite, quite frustrating. So, as I said in Tuesday's episode, when you apply to be a professor, you you have to provide a lot of evidence. There were five criteria at my university and, in fact, nobody in the whole of my school at the university. We've got four schools at the university I think, um, maybe five anyway. The school I'm in, school of social sciences, is the biggest school in the university and there were no professorial appointments this year. So I kind of feel like I'm in good company being rejected at our university. We have a number of criteria to meet and you have to produce evidence, and one of the things is around impact. Another is around credibility.

Alison Hardy: 2:17

That's the external stuff. There's there's three that relate to to internal as well about my, my teaching, my academic management and my mentoring, none of which I really talk about so much on the podcast, unless it particularly relates to design and technology. So it's, it's left, I think, uh, it's left me in a challenging place because it took so much of my energy to think about what am I doing and why do I do it? Because you take your eye off your values ball to write these applications. Um, because you're working to somebody else's hoops to jump through rather than your own, your own drivers, which is fair enough. The university pay my salary, so I've got to show how I'm meeting the things that they want to have met and they want to focus on. So that's, you know. That's all generally unarguable. You know, whether we all agree with what universities are focusing on is another matter, but it's. It has made me have to stop and think about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. For me, when I applied for associate professor, the stakes weren't quite so high and I felt I was on the trajectory to professorship. I still think I am, but it's a little bit of a setback and it starts to make me think about, you know, realigning Whether that's going back to what drives me or whether I need to think more about how I'm going to allow the university's strategy to drive what I do, which might mean that I stop doing some of the things that I do. And one of the things I've had to consider stopping is the podcast.

Alison Hardy: 3:58

So the podcast has been run outside the university. I've been quite upfront. I started in 2019. I did two years of research to get to this point of starting it. I bought all the kits, um, I set up a business account to. It's not a business bank account, but it's what I call my business account, where any extra income I work, I earn, goes into there. It pays the podcast.

Alison Hardy: 4:18

The podcast could be self-funded through that rather than it drawing on my salary. And that's how I've managed it and thank you to people like you. I am able to continue to do it and I do my book royalties pay for it. Um, I have some patrons where I give them some different things and I give to subscribers. I know you don't get very much. Hopefully you're going to try and get. I'm going to try and get you some more and I've always put it on my applications.

Alison Hardy: 4:42

Um, but this time round, um, let's kind of come back and bit me on the bum a bit, because we're in a bit of an intellectual property conversation at the university about who owns the content of the podcast and who can exploit it to generate any income. So that's causing some tension. So the decision I've made at the moment is because, over time, what was happening happening is I was doing some recording during the day and some editing during the day, even though I was funding all of the support stuff that you need to have a podcast running. But I've decided that I'm not going to be using the podcast on any future applications because I don't want the agenda of the podcast to be driven by the university. I'm not saying it would be in conflict I doubt if it would be in conflict but at the moment when I do the podcast, for example, I'm recording this on a Friday afternoon when I'm actually on annual leave.

Alison Hardy: 5:43

I wouldn't want to do that if it was part of the university. I sometimes record things in the evening. I'm not sure I'd want to do that if it was part of the university. So that kind of goodwill that I could be offering I'm not sure I'd want to do, particularly as at the moment when you subscribe, that money goes into a pot and that pays for and is saved for replacing kit and it pays for podcasting, hosting and so on and the odd cup of coffee. And if I need to buy a dnt book, because universities don't buy academics books anymore, we get inspection copies but it can't be a book to hold. So I thought if I'm not going to see any, as it is small benefit, then why? Why would I want to do that through the university?

Alison Hardy: 6:28

So I've moved it out completely. I've removed it from my university signature. I've removed anything about promoting the podcast from within the university. It's always been very explicit on all of the websites that I have that it's not part of the university. So it's kind of quite challenging.

Alison Hardy: 6:44

So if you're listening and you're thinking, what's this relevance to me? I suppose I'm giving you an insight into how these things work. Um, and if you do generate content, check about who owns it. Um, the intellectual property policy at our place isn't that explicit. So there's lots of wriggle room. Um, and, yes, I have taken some legal advice because this, this is my baby and actually, as a result of me taking it out of the university, I've felt more energized to do things for it and thinking, okay, well, I won't put it on, as I said, any appraisals or anything like that to do with the university, I'll keep it outside, promote it outside and so on.

Alison Hardy: 7:28

But it does make you think about when you generate content, who owns it. So, if you work for an organisation, who owns your content? And where does that stop and where does that start? Okay, so thinking about that is really important. And if you're working in academia or you're working in a school and thinking about your applications and how do you come back from a rejection and how does that help you rethink about what you're doing and what drives you and what motivates you? I think is something else that's worth thinking about.

Alison Hardy: 7:57

So I just wanted to share some personal aspects of my academic career development. We've got changes going on at the universities. My academic career development. We've got changes going on at the universities. My line manager, my head of department he is leaving at the end of October. That's going to be a shock to my system. I've worked with him for 10 years. We've shared an office. How do you keep yourself grounded in your motivations and your values when things around you are changing? And that's kind of what I wanted to share and give you some of the behind the scenes thoughts about behind the scenes insights into what was causing some things possibly to change. They might not be visible to everybody, but as you're a subscriber, I thought I'd give you a little bit of an insight to some things that people don't necessarily know about.