Julie Shayne organizes panel on the lecturer track/tenure track hierarchy

IAS faculty member, and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) coordinator, Julie Shayne, was asked to organize a panel discussion about the lecturer track/tenure track hierarchy at this year’s Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) conference in Denver, Colorado. Her session was called “Upsetting the Tenure/Non-Tenure Track Hierarchy: An Interactive Conversation” and it was based on a blog post she wrote for Conditionally Accepted in fall 2018, titled “Senior on the Lecturer Track?” The session was a conversation about the academic hierarchy that positions tenure-track faculty above non-tenure line faculty with respect to prestige, power, and material gain. Panelists were interested in and represented both contingent and competitively–hired, contracted, full time non-tenure line faculty. They discussed national trends, issues of inequity, and ways to flip the narrative and conditions that frame non–tenure track jobs as “plan B.” Shayne’s presentation focused on challenging the narrative that tenure track jobs are everyone’s first choice and creating the conditions for senior lecturers to serve in leadership positions.