Webber and González Canché Are SAIR Best Paper Winners

A paper co-authored by IHE faculty members Karen Webber and Manuel González Canché has been selected by the board of the Southern Association for Institutional Research (SAIR) as the Best Paper winner for 2016.

The paper, entitled “Is There a Gendered Path to Tenure?: Examining the Academic Trajectories of US Doctoral Recipients,” is automatically accepted for presentation at the 2017 Association for Institutional Research Forum to be held May 30-June 2 in Washington, D.C.  The co-authors will receive travel grants to assist with costs of traveling to the forum.

They will be formally recognized at the SAIR Special Interest Group Meeting at the 2017 AIR Forum and also at an awards breakfast held during the SAIR 2017 conference in Fort Worth, Texas in October.

The paper uses 2003 to 2013 data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to examine individual, institutional and early employment factors that contribute to career paths of recent doctorates who enter postsecondary academic appointments.

Their findings showed some noteworthy differences by gender, including lower salary and longer time to degree for women, but overall results indicate no comprehensive evidence of a gendered path to tenure during the first decade after degree completion. Scholarly publications and activities completed, such as research and a postdoctoral appointment in early years following degree completion, were the most important contributors for both men and women, they found.

The paper discusses implications for policy and planning.

Webber is an associate professor at IHE, who previously served as director of institutional research and interim associate provost for institutional effectiveness at UGA. Her primary research interests are the assessment of academic, cognitive and psychosocial growth of college students, with additional interests in gender studies and higher education data management.

González Canché is an assistant professor at IHE and the 2016 recipient of the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Promising Scholar/ Early Career Award. He joined the IHE faculty in 2012, immediately after graduating from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona with cognates in bio-statistics and economics.