They gave me a name tag that says ‘Honoree,’ so I guess I can consider myself officially promoted. My final academic promotion!
My title is a little odd — I’m Clinical Professor now. What does that mean? Well, typically in academia, on the tenure-track, you’d be Assistant Professor, then Associate Professor, and finally, just Professor (aka ‘full’ professor).
But my position is a different track — it was created in the med school (hence the ‘clinical’ part), and is meant for people who have other jobs (like doctors) who also teach. I was hired at a time when the Provost at UIC thought this would be a good option for creative writers at UIC too. I was hired as Clinical Assistant Professor, promoted to Clinical Associate Professor, and now I’m just Clinical Professor.
My understanding is that the idea of creative writers being on this track didn’t stick with the next provost, so there are only two clinical faculty in my department, which I think is kind of a shame — I actually do think it’s a pretty good position to have for a working writer.
We don’t get paid as well as the tenure-track folk, and we don’t have the protections of tenure (I have a renewable three-year contract), but we also don’t have the service responsibilities of the tenure-track — I sit in far fewer UIC meetings than they do, which in theory means more time for writing, although in my case, it’s been more time for library board and school board and running the SLF…
Regardless, it’s been a pretty great position for me over the last 17 (?) years, and now that I’ve run out of promotions they can give me, I guess I’m going to be Clinical Professor here until I retire. I have so far resisted the temptation to move over to the administrative side of things, even though y’all know that I do love running things.
We have a great, diverse student population at UIC, and overall, I’ve been really happy to be teaching at a state school. It’s important to me that we try to provide as fabulous a public education as the private schools do — otherwise, only the children of doctors get to be doctors. Now, if the state would just send a little more funding our way, I do have a list of things I’d change…
…but I suppose that’s a rant for another day.
Huge thanks to everyone who’s supported me in academia over the years — most recently, the folks who agreed to write recommendation letters for me (writing such letters is an unpaid and critically important bit of academic community service). It wasn’t easy, finding creative writing full professors with expertise in either South Asian lit. or SF/F! There’s one more of us now.
And an extra shout-out to my home department, English, and my affiliate department, Global Asian Studies. I have had the BEST colleagues, and tremendously supportive department chairs — it’s been an honor to work with you all.
Now, feel free to congratulate me. 🙂
