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I don't know what you mean by my "chair". The biggest worry for most professors I talk to in grant-funded fields (which is most of the natural sciences and eng

I don't know what you mean by my "chair". The biggest worry for most professors I talk to in grant-funded fields (which is most of the natural sciences and engineering) is not getting grant funding and having to lay off some or all members of our research group. In Canada, biomedical grant application success rates are around 14% so this is a pretty big worry. People who are pre-tenure or in organizational units where there is no tenure (which includes a lot of medical researchers) also have to worry about losing their job. In the U.S., very few professors can get paid their whole 12-month salary without getting some grant funding to pay for it. Some universities will commit 75% of the professor's salary as "hard money"—these are the ones with the bigger teaching loads. Others will provide only 5% of the salary and expect the professor to get the rest through grant funding. If you can't do it, expect to get a pay cut or lose your job. This is the prevailing model at elite medical research institutions like Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, or University of California, San Francisco.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> I don't know what you mean by my "chair". Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking at cross-purposes.
- michaelhoffman 6y ago
  > Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? No. > I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. Assistant professors generally do not have tenure, and at some institutions being an associate professor or full professor is no guarantee either. > But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking at cross-purposes. I know what you mean; you're just incorrect and spreading misinformation based on your limited experience.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I'm not making it up out of nowhere! > Meaning "office of a professor" (1816) is extended from the seat from which a professor lectures (mid-15c.). https://www.etymonline.com/word/chair https://www.etymonline.com/word/chair Seems to be in-use in the US? https://depts.washington.edu/givemed/prof-chair/creating-your-chair-or-professorship/ https://depts.washington.edu/givemed/prof-chair/creating-you... It even talks about how the endowment for the professorship or chair funds the professor.
    - michaelhoffman 6y ago
      Yes, it is true that there are SOME professors with chairs. Not that all professors have a chair. analog31 already explained this in response to your last comment.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        The professors I’ve worked with usually only get that title when they have a couple of decades of experience and are at the very top of their fields with international recognition and will of course be funded and tenured. It sounds like you’re using ‘professor’ to mean something far more junior which is why we aren’t understanding each other.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    I think this is a confusion between "professor" (i.e., anyone on the tenure track) and "Professor" (i.e., Full/University Professor).
- analog31 6y ago
  The terminology gets even stranger. ;-) A "chair" is a professorship that is funded by an endowment, that gets naming rights. So for instance, you might see someone like: "Bob Smith, Alice Q Hammond professor of situational metaphysics." What it means is that Alice Q Hammond gave a bunch of money to endow a "chaired" professorship, that Bob Smith occupies. There are "chairs" like this in professional orchestras too. The taxonomy of academic titles could fill a book.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  An "endowed chair" is the best type of full professorship, but it's an exception rather than the norm. There are elite institutions where most full professorships are endowed chairs, there are very wealthy institutions where that happens for lower titles, but in general most professorships are not as such. Furthermore, it's not something that's available right away (exceptions do happen for exceptional people, but they're exceptions). For a random example of a successful professor, look at the carreer ot Terrence Tao (https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html), James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA. He got his PhD in 1996, got full professorship at 2000, and was a non-tenured non-chaired Assistant Professor for the four years in between. Seriously, just look up a random professor from your local community college (not something like Stanford) and take a look at their CV - how many years it took for them until the full professor position.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> I don't know what you mean by my "chair". Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking at cross-purposes.

michaelhoffman 6y ago
> Becoming a professor is called getting your 'chair' isn't it? No. > I don't know any professors who don't also have tenure - that seems a contradiction in terms to me. Assistant professors generally do not have tenure, and at some institutions being an associate professor or full professor is no guarantee either. > But if you don't know what I mean we're probably talking about different things and possibly talking at cross-purposes. I know what you mean; you're just incorrect and spreading misinformation based on your limited experience.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I'm not making it up out of nowhere! > Meaning "office of a professor" (1816) is extended from the seat from which a professor lectures (mid-15c.). https://www.etymonline.com/word/chair https://www.etymonline.com/word/chair Seems to be in-use in the US? https://depts.washington.edu/givemed/prof-chair/creating-your-chair-or-professorship/ https://depts.washington.edu/givemed/prof-chair/creating-you... It even talks about how the endowment for the professorship or chair funds the professor.
  - michaelhoffman 6y ago
    Yes, it is true that there are SOME professors with chairs. Not that all professors have a chair. analog31 already explained this in response to your last comment.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      The professors I’ve worked with usually only get that title when they have a couple of decades of experience and are at the very top of their fields with international recognition and will of course be funded and tenured. It sounds like you’re using ‘professor’ to mean something far more junior which is why we aren’t understanding each other.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  I think this is a confusion between "professor" (i.e., anyone on the tenure track) and "Professor" (i.e., Full/University Professor).
analog31 6y ago
The terminology gets even stranger. ;-) A "chair" is a professorship that is funded by an endowment, that gets naming rights. So for instance, you might see someone like: "Bob Smith, Alice Q Hammond professor of situational metaphysics." What it means is that Alice Q Hammond gave a bunch of money to endow a "chaired" professorship, that Bob Smith occupies. There are "chairs" like this in professional orchestras too. The taxonomy of academic titles could fill a book.
PeterisP 6y ago
An "endowed chair" is the best type of full professorship, but it's an exception rather than the norm. There are elite institutions where most full professorships are endowed chairs, there are very wealthy institutions where that happens for lower titles, but in general most professorships are not as such. Furthermore, it's not something that's available right away (exceptions do happen for exceptional people, but they're exceptions). For a random example of a successful professor, look at the carreer ot Terrence Tao (https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/cv.html), James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA. He got his PhD in 1996, got full professorship at 2000, and was a non-tenured non-chaired Assistant Professor for the four years in between. Seriously, just look up a random professor from your local community college (not something like Stanford) and take a look at their CV - how many years it took for them until the full professor position.