The following professional impact statements offer important context about my work and the changing constraints under which I operated, namely: (1) institutional expectations, (2) a shortened probationary period, (3) impacts related to COVID-19, (4) challenges posed by interdisciplinary, transgenre, digital, multimodal, and open access (OA) work for tenure and promotion processes, and (5) impacts related to Sri Lanka. I have provided this documentation to help reviewers account for differential impacts and mitigating inequities in their assessment of my career trajectory.
Pace University is a private, research-active, four-year university, with undergraduate and graduate programs, majority undergraduate enrollment, multiple campuses, and a Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement designation. I was hired in the Department of English, Writing, and Cultural Studies on the Pace University – Pleasantville (PLV) campus as a Lecturer in 2018. I was promoted to Clinical Assistant Professor, a non-tenure-track (NTT) position, in 2022, and then to Assistant Professor, a tenure-track (TT) line, in 2023. I am contractually expected to present my work at a national or regional conference within my discipline at least once a year and publish my work in peer-reviewed journals or other venues in a timely manner. I am not expected to have either a scholarly or creative book published or accepted by a nationally recognized press between the time of hire and the end of my probationary period. The standard distribution of responsibilities for NTT full-time faculty at Pace is 80% Teaching and 20% Service. The allocation of my responsibilities as Assistant Professor is 40% Teaching, 20% Service, and 40% Creative and Scholarly Activity. Since PLV's English, Writing, and Cultural Studies Department is staffed by only eight full-time faculty, five of whom are also in administrative roles — as Senior Associate Dean; Chair; Associate Chair; and department- and campus-wide Program Directors — my service responsibilities have always exceeded my contractual obligations, reducing my time for creative and scholarly activity. Accordingly, please allow for flexibility in my trajectory while assessing the quality and impact of my work.
Earlier-than-normal cases may require special care to ensure equitable treatment. The probationary period for untenured faculty at Pace University is ordinarily seven years (with tenure review occurring in the sixth year). However, candidates may seek earlier-than-normal consideration, with the caveat that their record of work must be comparable to that of candidates who serve the full probationary period. When I was promoted to a TT faculty position in 2023, I elected to apply three years of full-time teaching as NTT faculty at Pace toward my probationary period. Though I was research-active in my NTT roles, I was not required to be. Please interpret any unevenness in my creative and scholarly output prior to 2023 in this context.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which altered publication and career timelines for many, has exacerbated the inequitable working conditions typically experienced by disabled women of color in academia. I am a woman of color with multiple autoimmune conditions that increase my susceptibility to COVID-19 and risk of disease severity and poor long-term outcomes, and I live and work in New York City, initially the worst-affected area in the U.S. I have been directly impacted by the need to provide additional instructional and emotional support to sick, strained, and traumatized students, invisible labor that is not usually valued in TAP procedures. Pandemic-related disruptions to my health care complicated my ability to teach in-person, conduct research, deliver conference presentations, and write. Cancellations of conferences and changes in publication timelines resulted in gaps in my scholarly record. Since most conferences now mandate in-person attendance without taking precautions to mitigate the spread of infectious disease, I remain limited in where I can safely present my work. Accordingly, please consider how institutional, professional, and personal changes caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have impacted my timeline of creative and scholarly activity.
Digital composition, creative-critical genres, and OA publishing are not new but continue to pose issues for TAP processes, which often lack assessment heuristics for such work. My creative and scholarly activity is largely interdisciplinary, transgenre, digital, and/or multimodal, and I frequently publish in OA journals. I am situated in fields that value such texts, locating them in collaborative, complex networks of production and reception and evaluating them in terms of both content and design: medium; structure; genre; use of hyperlinks, multimedia, and/or other interactive elements; aesthetic evocation; overall accessibility; and other conveyors of meaning. OA publications meet TAP criteria for peer-reviewed, rigorous scholarship and high impact factor. They also advance core values of the Department of English, Writing, and Cultural Studies and Pace University, such as social justice and radical knowledge equity. Moreover, Pace University and the Department of English, Writing, and Cultural Studies take an inclusive view of scholarship, recognizing that knowledge may be acquired and advanced through embodied experience and praxis as well as traditional notions of research, teaching, service, and community engagement. Please evaluate the quality and impact of my work where it falls into these categories with this context in mind.
As an Eelam Tamil American, I was affected by the 2019 Easter bombings in my parents’ home province of Batticaloa in Sri Lanka. I also observe Tamil genocide memorialization days every year, limiting my availability for internal and external service activities and professional events (like commencement or conferences) whose timelines conflict with these observances.