ADEPT Development
Content: Career Accounts (used for web, AV, C&Q, NYC and SM components)
This is a case summary, or unofficial account, of candidate's career. This account is non-coded; annotated, or color-coded versions, are written with biases and procedural issues highlighted, and are used only in the "Cases & Questions" activity.
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Robert Sorel
Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering
ISSUES: soft vs. hard research, joint appointment, advanced assistant professor
Robert Sorel, PhD from Cornell in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering,
with a dissertation on computational methods for modeling ion
propulsion systems for deep space exploration, joined the faculty of a
prestigious research university as an advanced assistant professor
jointly appointed to AE/ME (primary appointment in AE), after working
four years in AE/ME at Princeton. Sorel moved to the new university for
personal and professional reasons. He desired to move his family closer
to extended family, and he wanted to collaborate more closely with the
AE/ME research center on propulsion systems.
Sorel’s research field is fairly new to the university, recently
attracting attention to the work of a number of highly regarded
researchers from respected programs of engineering and physics. After
being at the university for one year, he published a paper with two
colleagues and four graduate students in a top-tier journal. After two
years at his new university, Sorel and collaborators attract a great
deal of funding, some from NSF and some from the aerospace industry.
They published their results in three of the top journals in the field
on a consistent basis. Sorel published at a rate somewhat above that of
his peers in such journals, but he maintained a funding level twice the
average per capita funding in the AE department over the past four
years.
The youthful, exuberant Sorel and a collaborator shared an award for a
paper in his second year at the new university from a division of his
professional society. The focus on their work earns Sorel a number of
invitations to speak at international symposia, and sometimes other
team members.
The success of their modeling effort encouraged Sorel’s team to start
up a company consulting with aviation manufacturers. Although Sorel
requested a one-year leave of absence to develop the company, his chair
refused to grant it, citing the need for Sorel to establish himself at
this university. The team nevertheless manages to spin off a company,
which Sorel directs in his hours off campus.
Never assigned undergraduate courses, Sorel taught only graduate
students specializing in his field. He received excellent evaluations
from a relatively small number of students, who comment on how much
they enjoy the competitive but social atmosphere of his classes and
lab. He also advised a student receiving best student paper from
professional society.
Sorel served as a member of departmental speakers’ committee. Most
members of his unit regarded him as a difficult person to work with and
made every attempt to avoid collaborations in teaching and research. He
was not appointed to any other unit committees, nor has he been
appointed to higher-level committees outside the unit.
Letters of reference for Sorel provided at the time of promotion and
tenure were very positive, noting his quick start in a cutting-edge
field and the significance of his research. Two prominent potential
referees that Sorel did not know personally declined the opportunity to
send letters, citing time issues.
Discussion in the unit-level promotion and tenure committee centered on
the intrinsic value of Sorel’s work, questioning whether the computer
modeling he was personally credited with developing was as significant
as the “hand-picked” reviewers suggest and whether this kind of
research was “substantial” enough to earn tenure. One member also
raised the issue of Sorel’s difficult personality as a problem
affecting the scheduling of undergraduate courses and his lack of
service contributions. Another member cited discomfort with Sorel’s
manner of socializing with graduate students, hosting frequent social
events with them, dressing casually like them, and spending
considerably less times in social settings with faculty in the
department, attending receptions for prominent seminar speakers, and so
forth. This point was not picked up for further discussion. The
committee chair recollects information he had heard at lunch about
Sorel’s startup company and how it had been pursued against the wishes
of the department chair; the committee chair suggested that perhaps
Sorel needed to decide where he wanted to devote his interests and
energy – in academia or industry. As Sorel was not involved in
committee work or in undergraduate education, some committee members
see him as lacking interest in the basic mission of the university.
As a member of the committee, how would you respond to concerns that
Sorel’s research is perhaps too specialized and lacks novelty, that he
is very difficult to work with, and that some references apparently
were not interested enough for some reason to write on his behalf?
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