"Cases & Questions" Development
Content — Annotated (Color-Coded) Career Account
This is a case summary, or unofficial accounts, of candidate's career. This account is annotated, or color-coded; non-coded accounts are written without biases and procedural issues highlighted, and are used in all ADEPT activities. Consistent formatting was done using a template.
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Helen Clemens (annotated)
Mathematics
ISSUES: international reputation and spousal concerns
Helen Clemens, Ph.D. in Mathematics from New York University, joined a
prestigious research university as an assistant professor of
mathematics, specializing in differential equations related to
self-organizational phenomena and chaos. She was hired the same year
and in the same department as her husband Joseph Smith, an
up-and-coming star in set theory and fractals who was hired after
working three years as an assistant professor at Yale University.
Clemens quickly established a reputation as an excellent teacher of
mathematics majors. Her upper-division course in her specialty field
became one of the department’s most popular courses for majors. She
also became known as an accessible graduate advisor who took great care
in mentoring her students’ professional development.
Clemens was invited to give many international
presentations in her area and to become a member of a significant
number of conference program committees (gender bias report; service bias; best practices).
She was also a frequent speaker at meetings of physicists interested in
application of her mathematical tools to physical systems. Some
of her university colleagues in other research areas suggested that her
frequent invitations to participate in workshops and panel discussions
reflected diversity needs rather than acknowledging her intellectual
acumen (gender bias). Others claimed she rode on the coattails of her husband, her sometimes collaborator.
While Clemens’ international experiences were prestigious, they often
required her to travel to Europe for meetings. She was consequently
less accessible to colleagues than most peers. Most of her time on
campus was spent teaching courses, advising students, or serving on
institute-level committees.
By the time of her third year critical review, she published only five
articles, albeit in important journals. Her husband collaborated on two
of these; on one, Clemens was first author, and on the other he was
first author. Their achievements were the subject of an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education
about successful couples in the sciences. Clemens and Smith were also
profiled in national newspaper articles focusing on emerging
connections between biology and mathematics. Smith had established
strong interactions with the biology department in applying concepts of
fractals to complex hierarchical cell structures. The committee
considering her third year critical review recommended warning her to
accelerate publication. Her chair advises Clemens to "concentrate more on publishing and less on publicizing" (gender bias; PTAC survey on conference versus journal articles; best practices).
In her next two years, Clemens worked hard to publish in significant
refereed journals, producing four papers (one in tandem with her
husband) and three articles in conference proceedings. In addition, she
was listed as co-PI on one of his grants.
In coming up for promotion and tenure, Clemens was considered an
excellent teacher by undergraduates and graduate students and an
excellent mentor of women students. Her publication record was a bit
below average, but her citation rate was higher than average, and she
was well known in Europe, for example. Letters from reviewers, two of
them prominent European mathematicians, characterized her individual
work as "very good," "substantial," and "first-rate." Articles written
collaboratively with her husband were cited as "highly influential" and
"amazing." There were no negative reviews.
Questions arise in the unit-level promotion and
tenure committee regarding whether Clemens' record of individual
productivity meets the minimum standard (clarity of standards; best practices) and whether
her productivity and the impact of her work depend on her husband. One
member wonders if Smith (already tenured and promoted) will leave if
Clemens does not get tenure (gender bias; best practices). As a member of the committee, how would you respond to these concerns?
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