Staying Engaged and Achieving Promotion: The Role of Collegial Support and Career Reflection and Assessment for Mid-Career Faculty

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled “Staying Engaged and Achieving Promotion: The Role of Collegial Support and Career Reflection and Assessment for Mid-Career Faculty” provides a review of the literature on the challenges faced by mid-career faculty and how these challenges can impact their decisions to continue in academia. The topic of the manuscript is highly relevant and addresses an issue that holds significant implication for universities worldwide. The manuscript is well-written and the authors’ intent is clearly communicated. However, there were a few issues raised in this review that the authors might consider addressing.

1.      In the overview section and throughout the manuscript the authors make several claims about the differences in level of service and student advising between pre-tenure and mid-career faculty. I would advise against such strong claims as these expectations tend to vary by discipline and institution. For example, in my experience as a pre-tenured faculty in engineering at research intensive institution, pre-tenured faculty are required to carry a larger research group, graduate a certain number of students by the time they are up for promotion and this might be largely different from someone in another discipline at a teaching focused institution. Making sure the authors contextualize their arguments in light of institution types and disciplines is critical.  

2.      In sections 2 and 3, the authors make references to the challenges faced by women in academia and how these challenges may affect their decisions to stay or leave the profession. These are all important points, however the broad umbrella of women in academia can be problematic because different racial/ethnic groups may have different experiences. I think the authors should be careful in explaining that the experience of Black women, for example, may be vastly different from that of White or Asian women. The same can be said for which disciplines they are in. In one discipline women faculty may be overrepresented, while significantly underrepresented in others. This is critical to the argument and as such having some discussion about this very important delineation is necessary. The same could also be said for minority men.

3.      The manuscript could benefit from a discussion of key takeaways, limitations, implications and a so-what section. It was unclear what overall argument the authors were making because the manuscript ended quite abruptly.

Overall, I think this topic holds significant implications for higher education institutions in their goal of retaining mid-career faculty. The issues raised in this review, if addressed, would support and improve the argument put forth by the authors.

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The main aim of this article is to briefly identify the challenges encountered by mid-career faculty and to examine the literature regarding the role that mentorship and professional development could play in helping MCF achieve promotion. This is a valuable scientific and practical idea that will find a wide readership and speak to their hearts, giving them strength and hope.

Therefore, already in Chapter 1. Overview of the Problem, I would suggest briefly describing, or at least mentioning, the value and benefits of the results of the research for society, taking into account both the long and short term, and whether the results can be used to make concrete decisions that have a positive impact on the social, economic or cultural development of society and to ensure sustainable development.

The article is well-written, and coherent, and presents the issue with great clarity and depth. I have a few minor comments.

  I miss the description of the type of literature review presented in the article, its methodological approach; I miss the description of the data collection process, the methods of data analysis, and the methodological source. I would also suggest thinking about the flowchart of the scholar article selection process.

Figure 1 is a little bit stretched in width, I would suggest correcting this.

On p.6 it says that you "have chosen to focus on only one of the building blocks that uphold the MCF development process - collegial support and one of the essential elements to support the MCF development process - career reflection and assessment." However, the reasons for this decision are not mentioned, and readers may benefit from a brief explanation here.

I would suggest you review the references listed:  1; 11; 14; 15, 19, 20-21; 27; 38.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the feedback. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing the concerns raised from my previous review. I appreciate the changes made on the manuscript but I still find it a bit concerning that while references were made to how different institutions/disciplines can impact women faculty's experience there was no acknowledgement of the potential impacts of race and ethnicity as well. Intersection studies document this are quite well. I fully understand that this might be outside of the scope of this paper, which is fine, no one manuscript can address every issue. However, I do find the broad umbrella of women faculty without even an acknowledgement of the variation of experiences of Black or Latine women etc. problematic. Especially when so many studies have shown that minority women do more service and hence full burn out more than their white counterparts. 

Author Response

Thank you for the feedback. 

We have added a paragraph (lines 178 to 194) to include reference to the challenges of BIPOC women faculty. We added 3 additional references. All changes are highlighted.