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Reposted by Dr. Maria Holland

Amy Orsborn @neuroamyo.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

And...it's here. UW announced tenure clock extension options for junior faculty last week. Leadership frames this as part of their deep support to junior faculty. But how, exactly, is more time (& delayed promotion) are meaningful support in response to reduced & uncertain research resources?

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Wow, I really wasn't expecting this paper to become so relevant again, so soon - but I've been hearing conversations about extending tenure clocks AGAIN. What about a four-year clock extension? 🤔 I'm sure there could be no downsides . . . .

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 17/08/2024

That's great to hear! I did talk to a few colleagues who felt they were held to clear standards like that but unfortunately it was not the majority...but it does show it's possible!

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 16/08/2024

Thank you to all the colleagues who chatted with me privately about this over the past ~year. I'm happy to play a role in bringing this conversation into the public view! (6/6)

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 16/08/2024

We wanted to bring some light to these experiences and share some policy suggestions: (5/6)

There are ways to improve these policies so that they better benefit both individuals and institutions. Here, we offer extension-related policies that support the success of early-career faculty, based on the literature and our own experiences. These include giving candidates agency through the flexibility to opt out of extensions and clear standards for tenure that are independent of a timeline. In cases where candidates do choose extensions, we urge universities to make them more equitable by extending funding along with the timeline and by mitigating the long-term consequences on salary.

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 16/08/2024

My coauthors and I wrote based on the literature and our personal and shared experiences. This phenomenon is not discussed much publicly but in trusted spaces you hear the same stories over and over and over (4/6)

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 16/08/2024

And when faculty try to opt out of the extensions they're eligible for, they're viewed as going up "early" (3/6)

In many cases where faculty request or are granted tenure clock extensions and then wish to go back to their original clock, university policies often require adherence to the adjusted clock and label the original clock as “early.” This revised expectation can (and often does) occur, even at universities with nominally opt-out policies due to cultural norms around tenure and promotion. Thus, formal policies supporting opt-out options, while important, offer only a partial solution. Faculty should be able to opt out without being viewed as going up for early tenure, which is generally known to be held to a higher standard. Otherwise, having achieved similar productivity as someone lacking the circumstance that necessitated the extension, their case could nevertheless appear weaker in light of the “early” designation.

The tenure track illustrated as a race up a hill. The typical tenure track involves reaching the bar for tenure in 5 years, although it can be as much as 8–11 years. In the case of an extension, the intention is to allow an additional year to reach the same bar; this results in a slightly lower “slope” to account for the presence of challenges along the way. However, in reality, the bar for tenure often gets higher. Faculty have to climb a steeper slope for more time, while simultaneously having to navigate multiple obstacles.

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 16/08/2024

Extensions are becoming more and more common (e.g. COVID) and they're accumulating for some faculty (2/6)

AAUP’s original 1940 “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” (9) stated that the tenure clock should not exceed seven years, under the rationale that it was intended to be a fixed probationary period, not an indefinite sentence. This policy is interesting in light of the increasing number of faculty with multiple extensions. And this is not a hypothetical scenario; we know of one junior faculty member who accrued, during five years on the tenure track, an astonishing four years of clock extensions. These much longer clocks call for extra attention, to make sure that they help, rather than hinder, faculty.

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 16/08/2024

New paper I'm extremely proud of: "Extended time, elevated expectations: The unappreciated downsides of pausing the tenure clock". We argue that extensions should be treated as a safety net, not insurance policy (1/6) www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

pnas.org

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

A two-proof day. First Springer removed all the italics from in vivo/ex vivo/in silico, then OUP replaced all my spelled-out numbers with digits (e.g. "2 local peaks" and "8 species"). You see, academic publishing costs so much because of the aDdEd VaLuE 🙄

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 18/10/2023

I love Gradescope in general, but their data visualization is COMICALLY bad.

histogram showing that all 10 students scored between 0 and 95 points.

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Reposted by Dr. Maria Holland

Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 26/09/2023

Behind every seemingly sane early stage professor, there is a slack of other ESIs shitposting through it with her...you know who you are.

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Reposted by Dr. Maria Holland

tj mahr 🤘 @tjmahr.com · 22/08/2023

why would researchgate name itself after an academic scandal that hasn't happened quite yet

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 05/09/2023

When Hiroshi and I first talked, he described us as "climbing the same mountain from different sides". I'm very much looking forward to seeing what we find at the top!

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 05/09/2023

We submitted our proposal to NSF (and a similar version, in Japanese (!!) to an agency in Japan), but it was picked up for funding by NINDS. I'm very grateful for their support as well as the Japanese NICT. I'm also happy to talk about my experience with CRCNS!

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 05/09/2023

CRCNS (Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience) is a weird program that definitely had some administrative/logistic challenges - but it is so cool that a mechanism exists to fund international collaborations like this.

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 05/09/2023

Ever since I met one of Prof. Kawasaki's students at SfN in 2019, which I attended to find experimental collaborators, I knew that we could do cool things together. First, we published an awesome paper in PLOS Comp. Bio, and then I found the funding mechanism to let us keep working together!

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Dr. Maria Holland @mholla.bsky.social · 05/09/2023

Just awarded my first R01! With our collaborator Hiroshi Kawasaki, we're going to investigate the role of astrocytes in cortical folding via a combined computational and experimental approach!

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Reposted by Dr. Maria Holland

Gen Wojcik @genandgenes.bsky.social · 25/08/2023

A wise man once said “every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time”. (B. Gibbard, 2005) But these days w/little kids it’s more like “every plan is a tiny prayer to our immune systems” and let me tell you they are an uncaring lot.

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