Within the academy, much attention has been devoted to understanding and supporting the career development of early career faculty who are seeking tenure and promotion to the associate professor rank (Kelly et al., 2018; Moody, 2004; Smith, 2015). However, considerably less research aims to understand associate professors’ advancement to full professor, despite calls to address issues of inequitable promotion patterns, which tend to favor White cisgender men (Baker, 2020; Baker et al., 2019; Gardner & Blackstone, 2013; Kulp et al., 2019; Rabinowitz, 2021). This study focuses on associate professors’ perceptions of promotion clarity, or the degree to which they are clear about the processes and criteria for advancing to the full professor rank at four-year colleges and universities. We expand previous work on mid-career scholars’ promotion clarity by conceptualizing time in rank at the associate professor level through the model of associate professor lifespan. In addition, the study explores how the variables of gender and race/ethnicity interact with promotion clarity and time in rank with a focus on women and Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC) faculty. Included in this definition are faculty who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian or Asian American; Black or African American; Hispanic or Latinx; Multiracial; Middle Eastern; Southwest Asian or North African; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; and Other. We draw support from Baldwin and Blackburn’s (1981) notion of faculty career stages, Baldwin et al.’s (2017) reimagining of career stages, and Hagedorn’s (2000) theory of faculty satisfaction, which recognizes satisfaction as fluid and evolving throughout a faculty member’s career lifespan. The primary research questions are: 1) How does the relationship between satisfaction and promotion clarity vary across stages of the associate professor lifespan? 2) How do different demographic groups (i.e., gender and race/ethnicity) experience promotion clarity differently across the associate professor lifespan?

Literature Review

What do we know about mid-career faculty that is relevant to the present study? There has been a spate of recent research on mid-career faculty members (Baker, 2020; Baldwin et al., 2008; Kulp et al., 2019; Misra et al., 2011, 2012; O’Meara et al., 2017). These studies, and consequently many institutions, are now recognizing that mid-career faculty deserve attention, recognition, and support that was once only considered necessary for pre-tenure faculty (Austin, 2010; Rabinowitz, 2021; Williams, 2016). In particular, most of the research notes that mid-career faculty members face a number of pressures and stressors that affect their satisfaction with their work as well as their likelihood of being promoted to full professor (Baker et al., 2019; Kulp et al., 2019; Mathews, 2014). Despite having some privileges that other groups do not benefit from, the research suggests that these concerns are particularly acute for White cisgender women (Baker, 2020; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012). In addition, these concerns are also experienced by faculty from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (of all gender identities) (Babcock et al., 2017; Croom, 2017; Fox, 2015; Griffin et al., 2013). While White women and BIPOC faculty members have made inroads at the assistant professor level, they have not achieved parity at the more senior levels (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2020).

Among the concerns noted in the literature about all tenure track faculty at mid-career is that there is a general lack of clarity as to what it takes to be promoted to full professor (Baker, 2020; Gardner & Blackstone, 2013; Mathews, 2014; Rabinowitz, 2021). This is a key finding on which the present study builds. Another common concern raised in research literature is that mid-career faculty face particularly heavy service, advising, and teaching loads that affect their satisfaction and career trajectories (Babcock et al., 2017; Baldwin et al., 2008; Baldwin & Chang, 2006; Modern Language Association [MLA], 2009; O’Meara et al., 2017; Pastore, 2013; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012). Given these findings, these variables (perceptions of various aspects of the faculty workload) are taken into account in the present study.

The literature is also clear that mid-career is likely experienced differently for cisgender women than for cisgender men, owing in large part to gender-based norms related to work and family. For example, in Ward and Wolf-Wendel’s (2016) longitudinal study of tenure-track cisgender women with children, mid-career women demonstrated a hesitancy to pursue promotion, because they felt that they were not ready, they did not want to deal with the politics of promotion, they still felt the sting of the tenure process, or they had made other parts of their career (i.e., service or teaching) a priority over scholarship. The women also indicated that they made decisions about how to engage in their academic careers in light of their family needs. These findings paralleled the more quantitative results found by Mason et al. (2013). Given this prior research, gender is a variable that needs to be considered in a study on mid-career professors and their views about promotion. In addition, the research literature suggests that variables measuring work/life satisfaction as well as parental status are important variables to take into account in the present study (Berheide et al., 2020; Denson & Szelényi, 2020).

Race/ethnicity is also an important variable that must be taken into account, and this study includes a focus on BIPOC faculty members. Prior studies that disaggregate data by race/ethnicity show significant disparities in achieving promotion across different faculty populations (Perna, 2001). For example, Perna (2001) looked at promotion to full professor using a large national database of faculty (National Study of Postsecondary Faculty) and found that promotion to full professor for White women and individuals from historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups was directly related to time spent on research as opposed to teaching, and that women and People of Color were more heavily engaged in teaching activities than their White male counterparts. These burdens and the structural racism that leads to them can interfere with the conditions that facilitate promotion, a finding that has been repeated in other studies (Babcock et al., 2017; Chambers & Freeman, 2020; Croom, 2017; Fox, 2015; Kulp et al., 2019; McDowell et al., 2001; Misra et al., 2011, 2012; Mitchell & Hesli, 2013; Porter, 2007).

Conceptual Framework

As noted, recent research on mid-career professors illuminates the complexities of this long and varied portion of the career and highlights some of the key variables that must be considered in any study of faculty at mid-career. In addition, understanding the experiences of associate professors calls for understanding the lifespan of the academic career. In 1981, Baldwin and Blackburn posited that faculty characteristics and experiences take place in five career stages (assistant professors first three years, assistant professors with more than three years, associate professors, full professors more than five years from retirement, and full professors within five years of retirement). These stages have been roughly translated in the field as early, mid, and late career and have provided a guide to many practitioners and researchers as they think about faculty work (Baldwin et al., 2005). While this model is useful to some extent, it also has limits because contemporary academic life poses different opportunities and new challenges as an academic career unfolds that might not be captured in such a linear, uniform model (Dever & Justice, 2021).

This study offers a new way of looking at the associate professor level by dividing what Baldwin and Blackburn (1981) called “mid-career” into three cohorts or stages of the associate career lifespan as suggested by Baldwin et al. (2017). This new model of faculty careers recognizes fundamental changes in the academic landscape and the faculty who inhabit it by offering a less linear and more inclusive model of the academic career that captures the overlapping realities and factors that influence career stages. For the purposes of this study, we clustered respondents into groups based on the total years they had served at the associate rank, then tested groups to detect statistically significant differences in promotion clarity. We labeled cohorts using terms drawn from developmental psychology (Erikson, 1959). Our final cohorts included “Early Years,” those who had been at the associate rank for zero to five years, comprising 48% of the full sample. Early Years represent the newest arrivals to the associate professor career. Those in rank at the associate professor level for 6–10 years were labeled “Middle Years,” (32% of the full sample) likening them to adolescence or the period of transition between early and late stages. Finally, we labeled those in rank for 11 to 20 years “Later Years,” (21% of the sample) because these were the most senior associate professors in our sample. We excluded associate faculty serving in rank more than 20 years because the size of the group was small, and their promotion clarity was highly variable. The small group size could be related to the fact that associate professors serving 20 + years in rank are closer to retirement and may be exiting their careers at higher rates.

The analytic design and interpretation of the data was conceptually guided by Hagedorn’s (2000) framework on faculty satisfaction. Building on Herzberg and colleagues’ (Herzberg et al. 1959) model of job satisfaction, Hagedorn (2000) conceptualized faculty satisfaction as fluid and evolving—a continuum influenced through a series of interactions between life events, constructs termed triggers and mediators. Hagedorn explained triggers as “a significant life event that may be either related or unrelated to the job” (p. 6), and mediators as a “variable or situation that influences (moderates) the relationships between other variables or situations producing an interaction effect” (p. 6). Through the lifespan of a faculty member’s career, changes in life circumstances, both professional and personal, affect one’s position on the satisfaction continuum. For example, mid-career faculty may feel compelled to assume higher levels of service or leadership than in early career. These changes in responsibilities (a mediator) may interact with a change in their mood or emotional state (a trigger), and in turn, alter their perceptions of satisfaction at that time. This study examines such triggers and mediators of satisfaction as predictors of promotion clarity for associate rank faculty at a range of four-year institutions.

Methods

Data Source

We used data from the 2013 to 2018 iterations of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) Survey of Faculty Satisfaction. If an institution participated more than once in the survey between 2013 and 2018, we only took the institution’s most recent set of responses to ensure we did not include responses for the same individuals over multiple timepoints. We narrowed our sample to associate professors working at four-year US postsecondary institutions who held full-time, tenured positions as associate professor when they responded to the survey. We excluded associate professors who indicated they did not plan to go up for promotion to full professor due to imminent retirement or leaving their institutions, as well as associate professors who had changed institutions at any point in their careers. This created a final sample of associate professors who were relatively homogenous: they were hired into their institutions as assistant professors, were tenured and promoted to associate rank, and remained employed by their institutions when responding to the survey. This approach helped ensure that we only included unique respondents in our sample: respondents were associate professors who had been hired in as assistants and were still employed at their original institutions, and we only used their institution’s most recent wave of COACHE survey data. The final sample included 4,871 associate professors from 97 institutions, and their characteristics are representative of the larger US faculty population at the time of the survey (NCES, 2020).

Analytic Approach

This study focuses on associate professors’ perceptions of promotion clarity, or the degree to which they are clear about the processes and criteria for advancing to the full professor rank at their institutions. We used descriptive statistics to analyze associate professors’ satisfaction with aspects of their work-lives and their clarity about being promoted to full professor. We used a cohort approach to examine groups of associate professors based on the amount of time they had spent in the associate professor rank and how promotion clarity evolves across the associate professor lifespan. Next, we used Mann Whitney tests to detect differences in satisfaction and promotion clarity across career stages with a focus on women and men and BIPOC and White status.

Finally, we used linear regression modeling to understand the relationships between associate professors’ satisfaction with various aspects of their work and their promotion clarity while controlling for a variety of background variables. To assess the relationship between satisfaction and promotion clarity across the associate professor lifespan, we modeled separate regressions for cohorts at each stage of the career.

Dependent Variable

Building on work in a prior study (Kulp et al., 2019), we constructed the dependent variable as a continuous, composite variable called promotion clarity. It combines six items from the COACHE survey that ask respondents how clear they are on the departmental processes and criteria for promotion to full professor, as well as how clear they are that they will be promoted to full professor. Likert scale responses on all items used in the dependent variable ranged from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 = “strongly agree.” Promotion clarity had a high level of internal consistency with an overall Cronbach’s alpha of 0.92 (M = 3.30, SD = 1.10) and relatively strong inter-item correlations as indicated in Table 1.

Table 1 Inter-item correlations of survey questions related to promotion clarity (N = 4,871)

Independent Variables

Independent variables include gender (female = 1, male = 0), and BIPOC status, a dummy-coded categorical variable based on COACHE race/ethnicity categories. BIPOC faculty included American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian or Asian American; Black or African American; Hispanic or Latinx; Multiracial; Middle Eastern; Southwest Asian or North African; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; and Other. White faculty were the comparison group and included those identifying as White (non-Hispanic). Interaction variables representing BIPOC women and BIPOC men were also included in the analyses. Other independent variables include whether the faculty member was a non-US citizen or international faculty (yes = 1, no = 0), being married/partnered (yes = 1, no = 0), being a parent to child(ren) (yes = 1, no = 0), being a caregiver to an adult dependent (yes = 1, no = 0), and a dummy-coded categorical variable for institutional type (research institution, masters institution, or baccalaureate institution). Institutional type was based off basic Carnegie institutional classifications, and baccalaureate institution was the reference category. Finally, we constructed several scaled satisfaction variables using a simple averaging item reduction strategy, building a set of composite variables which were found to be related to promotion clarity in a prior study (Kulp et al., 2019). The composite variables were created by computing Z scores for each corresponding survey item (see Table 2), summing them, then dividing by the total number of items in each satisfaction variable. Internal consistency for the satisfaction variables ranged from alpha = 0.81 to 0.95. This approach was appropriate because the original survey variables in each satisfaction area were highly inter-correlated. Table 2 describes these satisfaction variables, their coding, and their reliability scores.

Table 2 Satisfaction variable construction and coding

One limitation of this study is its reliance on a binary construction of gender. While the COACHE survey does include “transgender” or “other” options in addition to “female” and “male” options in self-reporting one’s gender, due to small group size, our final sample included faculty members who either identified as “female” or “male.”

Sample Characteristics

Table 3 describes the characteristics of the sample, which was divided between women (49%) and men (52%) and was comprised of 77% White faculty. BIPOC faculty comprised around a quarter of the sample. Three-quarters of the sample was married or partnered, two-thirds had children, and one-tenth served as caregivers for dependent adults. Approximately 13% of the sample was international faculty, and the majority came from research institutions (71%), then masters institutions (20%), and finally baccalaureate institutions (9%). The median age of the associate professors in the sample was 47 years old.

Table 3 Full-time, Tenured Associate Professors working at four-year U.S. Higher Education Institutions (N = 4,871)

Cohort Formation

As noted, we divided our sample into cohorts relating to stages of the associate professor lifespan. Taking cues from Baldwin et al. (2017), our strategy for identifying cohorts first involved grouping respondents based on the total years they had served at the associate rank, then testing groups to detect statistically significant changes over time in promotion clarity. We also aimed to be as practical as possible and opted for logical but meaningful time intervals for the cohorts (e.g., five, ten, twenty or more years). As a result, “Early Years”, “Middle Years”, and “Later Years” cohorts represent different perceptions of promotion clarity and span relatable durations of years spent in rank. While the effect size was small (eta2 = 0.02), Early Years (zero to five years) had highest mean score on promotion clarity (M = 3.35, SD = 1.09), followed by Middle Years (six to 10 years, M = 3.31, SD = 1.10), and Later Years (11 to 20 years, M = 3.23, SD = 1.14). A Tukey post hoc test revealed the sense of promotion clarity in the Early Years group was significantly different compared to that of the Later Years group (M = 3.35 ± 0.12, p < 0.05) but that promotion clarity in the Middle Years and Later Years were comparable (p = 0.23).

There are limitations to our use of lifespan cohorts. One is that some Early Years individuals will inevitably go on to be promoted to full prior to reaching the Middle Years stage, and some Middle Years faculty will go on to be promoted prior to reaching the Later Years stage. Thus, the farther along faculty are in the lifespan, the less clear they might be about their likelihood of being promoted to full. This limitation is related to the nature of the COACHE data, because they are cross-sectional, not longitudinal. However, it is common to see “terminal associate professors” or for associate professors to serve for extended periods (Clark, 1987; Croom, 2017; Dow, 2014; Gardner & Blackstone, 2013; Kulp et al., 2019; Rabinowitz, 2021). We contend that the cohorts of this study fairly represent the careers of those who serve as associate professors. The cohorts frame the associate professor population in such a way as to enable snapshots of their satisfaction and promotion clarity to be taken at each stage and compared with other stages along the lifespan. Finally, while promotion clarity varied, the gender and BIPOC breakdowns of each cohort were relatively equal (see Table 4).

Table 4 Breakdown of cohorts by gender and race/ethnicity (n = 4,871)

Results

Differences in Satisfaction across for Women, Men, BIPOC, and White Faculty

We used Mann Whitney tests to detect differences in associate professors’ satisfaction and promotion clarity across cohorts and considering gender and BIPOC status. Mann Whitney tests were the best fit for our data because promotion clarity is constructed as an interval variable, and the group sizes of women, men, and BIPOC at different types of institutions were unequal (Agresti, 2007). Table 5 describes the results. Overall, women were significantly less satisfied than men with their service load and work/life balance across the associate professor lifespan. In Early Years, BIPOC faculty were less satisfied with their department chairs than White faculty. In Middle Years, women were less satisfied with service load, the recognition received for their work, and work/life balance than men. In Later Years, satisfaction differences between women and men persisted, while differences between BIPOC and White faculty disappeared. Notably, however, the mean satisfaction scores for BIPOC faculty were always lower than White faculty, no matter the stage.

Table 5 Mann Whitney comparisons for satisfaction by gender and race/ethnicity across cohorts (N = 4,871)

Focusing on promotion clarity across cohorts (see Table 6), Mann Whitney tests indicated women have less promotion clarity than men at every stage. Middle Years represents the point at which women and men’s promotion clarity are the most different in terms of mean scores (z = -3.295, p < 0.001). The differences in promotion clarity across gender groups and career stages were more consistent and clearer than the differences in promotion clarity across BIPOC and White associate professors.

Table 6 Mann Whitney comparisons for promotion clarity by gender and race/ethnicity across cohorts (N = 4,871)

Figure 1 adds nuance to these findings by visually demonstrating small but persistent gaps across the associate professor lifespan in promotion clarity. Figure 2 shows that women have slightly, but consistently lower promotion clarity mean scores than men at all stages of the lifespan. Figure 2 highlights the small but persistent gap in promotion clarity mean scores for BIPOC women compared with all other groups, with promotion clarity dipping lower in the Middle Years stage for BIPOC women. These differences are subtle but statistically significant, as shown in Table 6.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Gaps in Promotion Clarity for Women and Men across the Associate Professor Lifespan (n = 4781)

Fig. 2
figure 2

Gaps in Promotion Clarity for BIPOC Women and All Other Groups across the Associate Professor Lifespan (n = 4781)

Relationships of Promotion Clarity and Satisfaction across the Lifespan

We used linear regression modeling to understand the relationships between associate professors’ satisfaction with various aspects of their work and their promotion clarity while controlling for a variety of background variables. We modeled separate regressions for cohorts at each stage of the career, and to enable model comparisons, we standardized the independent and dependent variables for use in the regression equations (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). This approach allowed us to compare the weight of predictors within each model and across models to get a better sense of the influence of satisfaction on associate professors’ promotion clarity across the lifespan of the career. Every regression model explained a significant amount of the variance in associate professors’ promotion clarity, with r-squared values ranging from 0.29 to 0.37, p < 0.001 (see Table 7). Because we used standardized beta coefficients, the coefficient values are interpreted in terms of changes in standard deviations, not units (Agresti, 2007). While using standardized variables is more challenging to interpret than unstandardized variables in the regression equation because they are held to a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1, the use of standardized variables helps improve the comparability of coefficients from model to model (Agresti, 2007). Standardized variables also indicate the sense of relative importance each variable has to promotion clarity in the regression equation (Agresti, 2007).

Table 7 Linear regression coefficients predicting Associate Professors’ promotion clarity by cohorts

Early Years (0–5 Years in Rank)

Satisfaction with service load, department chair, recognition, department collegiality, work/life balance, and being at a research or masters institution all positively predicted Early Years’ promotion clarity. Satisfaction with department chair has the strongest relative relationship with promotion clarity in the Early Years model. Notably, satisfaction with service load was a predictor of promotion clarity even at this earliest stage of the associate career. While faculty are protected from taking on extra service obligations at the pre-tenure stage, most associate professors take on considerably more service once they are promoted to associate professor (El-Alayli et al., 2018; Guarino & Borden, 2017; Misra et al., 2011; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2016).

Middle Years (6–10 Years in Rank)

Satisfaction with the recognition one receives and satisfaction with department chair have the strongest relative relationships with promotion clarity in the Middle Years model. Notably, while the effect is small, BIPOC women had significantly lower promotion clarity than other groups in the Middle Years stage. This could be related to the unrewarded extra time BIPOC women spend in teaching and service combined with the timing of being in rank longer: if it takes a few years for additional service loads to bear down on associate professors, and if BIPOC women are double-taxed in terms of service, then that burden could affect promotion clarity most markedly at this stage of the associate professor lifespan (Croom, 2017; Guarino & Borden, 2017; Misra et al., 2011, 2012). For all Middle Years faculty, satisfaction with department chair, recognition, department collegiality, and work/life balance positively influenced promotion clarity. Institutional type was not related to promotion clarity for faculty in the Middle Years group.

Later Years (11–20 years in Rank)

Satisfaction with the recognition one receives and satisfaction with department chair remain the strongest relative relationships with promotion clarity in the Later Years model. Notably, the intersection of gender and race were not found to be significant predictors of promotion clarity at this stage of the associate professor lifespan. Being an international faculty positively predicted promotion clarity at this stage, as did being satisfied with one’s service load, department chair, recognition, department collegiality, and work/life balance. By this time in the lifespan, Later Years have presumably spent at least 18 years at their institutions (seven years for tenure to associate professor and at least 11 years at the associate rank), so it is unsurprising that institutional type seems to have little bearing on one’s promotion clarity.

Limitations

One limitation of this study is our use of a lifespan approach to data that are cross-sectional in nature. The lifespan we constructed covers two decades, and it is likely that some of the associate professors in our sample went on to be successfully promoted to full after they responded to the survey. Our data would not reflect those outcomes, in part because to preserve the confidentiality of participants, COACHE anonymizes information about respondents even when an institution has administered the survey multiple times. A second limitation is the years we used for cohort stages were designed to be practical and to represent understandable intervals of time in the associate professor lifespan, not precise time points at which shifts in promotion clarity occurred. That is to say, associate professors’ promotion clarity at year eight and year eleven might not be fundamentally different, but the way we constructed cohorts might suggest this to be the case. Despite these limitations, the recent attention the mid-career has received in the research literature and at institutions necessitates considering innovative approaches to data collection and analysis that help address the persistent problem of a lack of parity for women and BIPOC faculty at the full professor rank. We recommend future studies explore longitudinal, cohort, or case–control designs to assess the applicability of the lifespan stages we have identified to associate professors’ promotion clarity across the mid-career.

A third limitation is our use of secondary data analysis via the COACHE survey, which uses established questions, collects self-reported data, and requires institutions to pay fees for participation. Thus, the nonrandom nature of the data affects the generalizability of our findings to all academic institutions; however, the large sample size, multiple-year survey window, and the representation of the sample across different types of institutions suggests the findings can be broadly considered. As noted, many group differences and regression coefficients predicting promotion clarity have relatively small effects, and thus present a nuanced set of subtle differences, which may be influenced by the power generated by the large sample we use in this study.

Additionally, as noted, our sample required a cisgender construction of gender, and although we value the experiences of non-binary faculty, small group sizes prevented us from including them in the analyses. We recognize there are limitations inherent in grouping respondents of various racial and ethnic categories into a singular BIPOC group, but we were limited by small sample sizes in specific racial/ethnic categories. Future studies should carefully consider the perspectives of non-binary faculty members and should consider ways to reflect the specific racial and ethnic groups to which faculty members belong.

Finally, this study is limited in its reliance on faculty satisfaction data to understand whether people have clarity about being promoted to full. We know from other research that associate professors tend to be less satisfied than other ranks, and what we term promotion clarity could be confounded by a more collective and natural dip in mid-career satisfaction (Mathews, 2014). Also, faculty satisfaction and promotion clarity can be shaped by academic field (O’Meara et al., 2017), and variables related to academic disciplines were not available in the COACHE data. We recommend future studies explore other ways to measure promotion clarity and incorporate academic discipline into their analyses. We also recommend future studies explore differences in promotion clarity and satisfaction for the various racial and ethnic groups that comprised the BIPOC group used in this study.

Discussion

The methods in this study tell a rich descriptive story and identify five findings that contribute to the research on associate professors and the faculty career. One, promotion clarity is dynamic and varies meaningfully across the associate professor lifespan. This finding corresponds with critiques that traditional representations of the associate rank are too linear, and it supports the notion that the associate professor experience contains factors that influence stages in the mid-career (Baldwin et al., 2017; Dever & Justice, 2021). The practical implications of this finding suggest associate professors’ perspectives, including their perceptions of promotion clarity, transform and change across stages of the lifespan.

Two, women were less satisfied than men with service and work/life balance at all stages of the lifespan. This finding corresponds with literature suggesting gender imbalances in service and work/life persist across faculty careers (e.g., Misra et al., 2011, 2012; O’Meara, et al., 2017). Drawing on Hagedorn’s (2000) concepts of triggers and mediators, since the process of advancement to full professor tends to favor White men, gender (and stressors related to gender) may act as a constant, contextual mediator in the background of cisgender women’s experiences. Amidst this low hum of gender-related stress, daily triggers can amplify or subdue women’s satisfaction with their careers. Common triggers might include personal or family issues (births, deaths, dependent care, illness, divorce) or issues related to the gendered organization of faculty life (inequitable and unrewarded time spent on teaching and service, perceived chilly climate) (Hagedorn, 2000; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2016). Across the lifespan, the interaction of these triggers with gender as a mediator can shape a woman’s outlook on whether her path to full professor is clear and unimpeded, or is congested and full of obstacles.

Three, women have less promotion clarity than men at every stage of the lifespan, and BIPOC women have less promotion clarity in the Early Years and Middle Years stages (Table 6). The Middle Years stage represents the point at which women and men’s promotion clarity are the most distinctly different in terms of mean scores (z = -3.295, p < 0.001). Since prior studies suggest women engage in less research than men (Misra et al., 2012; O’Meara et al., 2008), it may be that women feel the disadvantage of time spent in unrewarded teaching and service most keenly between years six and 10 of the associate professor lifespan, impacting perceptions of their likelihood of being promoted to full professor. Practical implications of this finding suggest interventions aimed at improving promotion clarity for women are important for women associate professors at every stage of the lifespan, but are critical between years six and 10.

Similarly, interventions aimed at improving promotion clarity for BIPOC faculty members may be especially important during the first 10 years of the associate professor lifespan. A range of triggers related to structural racism could negatively affect BIPOC faculty members as they map out a pathway to full in their first decade as associate professors. For instance, if BIPOC faculty members are expected to be the go-to sponsor of student organizations, to mentor students of color, or to serve on diversity committees, these extra burdens can act as triggers interacting with the mediator of race/ethnicity (Niemann, 2011). Overt racism, snubs, subtle racist messaging, and other microaggressions may inhibit BIPOC faculty members’ ability to network with peers, or they may cause BIPOC faculty to question whether they belong in the academy at all (Croom, 2017; Solorzano, 2018). Triggers such as these can create feelings of stress, exhaustion, and being undervalued that negatively influence faculty members’ satisfaction over time and dampen their outlook on becoming full professor.

Four, during the Middle Years, the intersection of being a woman and BIPOC is related to significantly lower promotion clarity. While the effect of being a woman and BIPOC was subtle on promotion clarity, it is worth noting that in the Middle Years regression, BIPOC women had lower promotion clarity than other groups including White women. Notably, neither gender nor race was a significant predictor of promotion clarity at the Early Years or Later Years stages, suggesting that the Middle Years may be a critical period for BIPOC women in particular.

Prior research suggests that BIPOC women may experience specialized resistance when considering going up to full professor (Chambers & Freeman, 2020; Croom, 2017; Graham & McGarry, 2019). As Croom (2017) suggests, if women of color are seen as “interlopers in the senior ranks of academe,” being made to feel like outsiders could be related to the low promotion clarity BIPOC women experience in the Middle Years stage (p. 573). Hagedorn likens these triggers to “midlife crisis questions” where faculty may ask themselves: Is my work meaningful? Have I made a difference? Am I a success? (Hagedorn, 2000, p. 8). Questions of equity and justice may also act as triggers, such as if a BIPOC woman perceives her salary levels to be disproportionate to her colleagues, or if she comes to a realization of injustice related to others being unfairly promoted, hired, or nominated for awards (Hagedorn, 1996, 1998, 2000). These kinds of triggers induce strong reactions in the lived experiences of BIPOC women that can shift their levels of satisfaction and make their pathways to full professorship seem murky and problematic.

Finally, considering all associate professors regardless of gender or race, a major finding from this study is that career satisfaction is directly related to associate professors’ promotion clarity at each stage in the associate professor lifespan. This corresponds with existing literature connecting satisfaction with promotion to full (e.g., Fox, 2015; Gardner & Blackstone, 2013; Kulp et al., 2019), but extends it in new ways by examining these relationships across the course of the associate professor lifespan. Our findings suggest that a conceptual framework linking a more nuanced model of faculty careers as suggested by Baldwin et al. (2017) with Hagedorn’s (2000) framework on the fluid nature of faculty satisfaction is a useful lens through which to view associate professors’ satisfaction and promotion clarity. Understanding the relationship between promotion clarity and satisfaction has important implications for researchers studying the mid-career, and for administrators seeking to promote environments conducive to faculty success.

Implications and Future Research

This research has several notable implications for practice and policy. First this study demonstrates that promotion clarity is dynamic and consistently linked to satisfaction. From this perspective, administrators seeking to increase faculty satisfaction may consider examining promotion clarity among their institution faculty as increasing promotion clarity may be one feasible, yet often overlooked, way to increase faculty satisfaction. It is recommended that existing campus climate or other faculty satisfaction surveys include measures of promotion clarity to better understand faculty perspectives and promote their success. Further findings from this study indicate that it may be particularly important for administrators to design interventions aimed at increasing promotion clarity for associate professors in the Middle Years group. These may take the form of mentoring programs specifically for mid-career faculty or discussion groups with topics including promotion clarity and/or increasing faculty satisfaction. These mentoring programs must be tailored to meet the needs of women and People of Color and should not be a “one size fits all” approach.

Further, this study lends insight into the promotion and advancement of BIPOC women. Findings from this study indicate that BIPOC women may be particularly vulnerable to lack of promotion clarity. This reality has important implications for educational stakeholders and policy makers, as creating environments that are welcoming to and supportive of BIPOC faculty is stated to be central to many institutions’ missions, visions, and values. The reality is, however, that institutions may claim to want equity but many do not achieve this goal due to structural racism. Indeed, from a critical perspective, one might argue that since the current system benefits White cisgender men who are the group most likely to hold leadership positions at predominantly white four-year institutions, it is important to hire more women and BIPOC faculty members in leadership positions to bring about these changes.

The importance of increasing opportunities for BIPOC faculty may be especially true for areas where BIPOC women are historically underrepresented, such as STEM disciplines. Advancement of BIPOC women faculty is one contributing factor to the perception of a welcoming climate and may be critical to the success of an institution in recruiting BIPOC women.

Finally, this research should be considered by faculty seeking external funding to support initiatives related to faculty recruitment, advancement, or retention. The problem of mid-career faculty advancement is one shared by many institutions, thus this research could lend insight into conceptualization of future transformational grant proposals and could also help to shape institutional policies aimed at promoting equitable opportunities for promotion and advancement through faculty ranks.

Conclusion

This research suggests that viewing the associate professor rank as an associate professor lifespan lends critical insight into the problem of advancement of mid-career faculty to full professor ranks. Furthermore, this research makes important contributions towards understanding how to promote equitable promotion patterns in institutions of higher education. More specifically, promotion clarity is seen to differ across the associate professor rank and among faculty of different genders and races. This study also confirms the positive relationship between promotion clarity and faculty satisfaction observed in previous research. Results from this research are important to higher education administrators and stakeholders seeking to create equitable campus environments that are conducive to faculty success.