Julie Shayne blogs about having “senior” status without tenure in academia

Julie Shayne, faculty coordinator of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies wrote her third blog piece for Conditionally Accepted about what it means to be considered senior faculty while on the lecturer track. In it she argues that while senior in rank within IAS there are still stark material, cultural, and structural differences that subordinate even senior lecturers to junior faculty on the tenure track. In the piece, she was asked to offer recommendations that other universities might take up to rectify the inequities. She drew on some existing best practices in IAS as well as ongoing conversations about changes many of us would like to see implemented: salary parity, parallel ranks, lecturers in leadership positions, new norms, redistribution of office space, and bury the condescending professional narrative that presumes the lecturer track is a back-up plan. This is Shayne’s sixth academic blog post. Previously she wrote about the joy of mentoring undergraduate students on research, the freedom to do activist scholarship once switching to the lecturer track, leaving the tenure track in order to prioritize quality of life over traditional career advancement, emotional labor in academe, and the biggest threat to women today.