The Tyranny of Trajectory

I had already spent a few months on the job market, when I received my first call to phone interview for a tenure-track faculty position. After applying to a few schools, I had become accustomed to the sound of crickets. Given that this was my first interview of any kind for a coveted faculty position, I could feel my heart rate almost instantaneously flare. Blocking from my mind the full implications of those thirty minutes, I developed a simple plan to research the university and talk with my advisers.

What I most wanted to know from my advisers was what kind of questions to expect. Their answers varied. “Be prepared to talk about your teaching philosophy,” said one. Another recommended finding other faculty members with whom I might be interested in collaborating. The one common denominator in their suggestions was that I should be able to explain my research “program,” “agenda,” or “trajectory.”

I sat down prior to the interview and typed out a teaching philosophy. I searched for faculty members who shared my interests and wrote their names down on a legal pad. Each time I confronted the question of my “trajectory,” I paused and, sensing no forthcoming inspiration, moved on to something else. 

What exactly was my trajectory? Looking at my CV, it would be difficult to discern. I suffer from what one might call academic ADD. Try as I might, I can’t seem to stay focused on a research topic for more than two years. As I became increasingly frustrated with crafting some magic bullet that could connect what a search committee might characterize as a meandering mind, I saw that the ramifications of trajectory ripple quite broadly.

One the one hand, I recognize why a department would be interested to learn what it is I hope to examine in the future. Offering a job to an assistant professor is rather like making an investment, and this notion of trajectory is one way to determine the returns. Yet how does one really evaluate trajectory? It seems partially predicated on sameness—how many pieces of scholarship are related. After all, I doubt that someone would look at CV with four journal articles about four different topics and conclude the scholar has a clear trajectory. If sameness is not, in fact, important then surely trajectory is evaluated through the extent to which a scholar shows some sense of direction. Setting aside the fact that neither means of evaluation are particularly scientific, criteria like sameness and sense of direction raise questions that merit scrutiny.

My objection to sameness is not that it is boring. Rather, sameness does not afford much possibility for a young scholar to decide his or her research is old news, ill-suited to the big questions de jour, hopelessly flawed, or perhaps even irrelevant. Radically re-routing is an important part of scholarship, but fear of appearing unfocused may force a young scholar to remain married to untenable projects. Worse yet, it may encourage job-seekers to mine the same data over and over to produce the highest quantity of papers or presentations. Although this tactic may ensure an applicant conveys trajectory, it may be a poor indicator of quality.

Sense of direction is problematic in situations where a researcher is inspired to pursue several directions—to explore the problems that keep them awake at night and embrace the inherent multiplicity of knowledge. Diving deep into a topic, developing expertise, and creating scholarship based upon that expertise over a long period of time has become the norm in academe. Of course, there is good reason for encouraging the pursuit of a single pathway, as expertise can inform teaching, generate grant money, bolster promotion, and produce breakthroughs.

However, the pursuit of a single pathway can also stifle innovation. This point was reinforced in a TED talk upon which I recently stumbled, featuring Liz Coleman of Bennington College. Speaking about the liberal arts, Coleman declared, “The expert has dethroned the educated generalist to become the sole model of intellectual accomplishment. Expertise has had its moments, but the price is enormous.” 

Indeed, it could be trajectory that has led academic work down a never ending tunnel of greater specialization. In order to demonstrate expertise, all of my publications should uncover the minutiae of an issue and analyze every angle of an argument. This hardly seems useful to the public and could render scholarship bereft of meaning for the young scholar.

In the end, I took the advice of a professor with over 20 years in the game. He told me to stay true to myself, as the search committee saw my record and were no doubt aware of my dabbling in many areas. I didn’t search for a magic bullet to connect my work, but rather talked about the evolution of my thinking and the publications that best reflected my diverse interests. This strategy paid off, and I was offered the position. This could, in part, be attributed to the type of institution, a teaching-oriented university, where the “educated generalist” is highly valued.

At least I hope this is the case. I will likely face questions about trajectory again when I come up for tenure. In my previous work in faculty affairs, I saw tenure candidates denied at a research university simply because their research program lacked trajectory. Of course, this is not the sole criterion in tenure decisions, but its influence should be reduced. As scholarship becomes increasingly collaborative and non-traditional, and as many academic seek ways to link their research to community needs, trajectory either needs to be redefined or erased in the assessment of scholarship.