Stay on Neutral Ground Posted on February 28, 2006 Velma McBride Murry (bio) suggests finding ways to avoid being caught in departmental politics.

It is a political war during those pre-tenured years, but also find a way not to become caught up in the politics. The way to do that is to stay on neutral ground and hopefully have a senior person, even if it's just one, whom he or she can talk with and confide in, and if you don't have someone that's on the faculty, find someone off-campus or in another department that can guide you along the way because it is inevitable that junior faculty will be stretched very thin on committees and also on other students' committees where you're doing a lot of the work.

It's great to be a wonderful community departmental citizen, but not at the expense of losing your own career because guess what. At the end of those reviews, you're either going to stay or leave, and that doesn't happen just because people like you, but it's because of the work you do.

Another colleague of mine says, 'Spend your time doing things that people cannot take away from you.' That was an important lesson for me, because what people can't take away from you are things you deliver. It's the articles. It's the grants. It's the impact on people's lives.

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