Use service to associations to climb the faculty ladder.

When Dr. Ronald J. Joekel got his first tenure-track position, a tenured professor advised him to think of himself as a hunter with three arrows in his quiver: teaching, research and service. Your career depends on them all, so you'd better shoot all three; but you only have three arrows, so you'd better aim them with care.

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Service, or outreach, carries different weight from school to school. At research universities it takes a back seat to scholarship, but it's part of the mission for a land grant school. Excellence in teaching earns a local reputation but rarely a national one, as service may.

In addition to being emeritus professor of educational administration at the University of Nebraska, Joekel is emeritus executive director of Phi Delta Kappa International, a professional association of educators. He spoke at the 2005 Women in Educational Leadership Conference in Nebraska about using service in professional associations to climb the faculty ladder.

Name recognition is the name of the game. Your department and college benefit if others have heard of you, since they're rated in part on their faculty's reputation. Writing significant books, presenting at major conferences and contributing regularly to prominent journals are good ways to get known, but they aren't the only ways.

Another is to become active in professional associations. "Right now the door is wide open for women," he told WIHE. Almost every major association has had women presidents.

People know who are the movers and shakers in their field. Yes, you have to be good at what you do, and yes, you're expected to make scholarly contributions and teach. If you don't want to waste the "service" arrow in your quiver, though, consider aiming at leadership in professional organizations.