Long T. Bui

Associate Professor of Global and International Studies

Here are some of the things I wish I’d known sooner on the path to tenure: Finding and Picking Letter Writers. How do I find potential external letters, especially when half of them are supposed to be from the UC system? It turns out that I knew many people, but I thought about that list for a long time, figuring out who is “best" for me. As an interdisciplinary scholar, do I repeat myself and get writers who are similar? Or do they all have to be different, speaking to various distinct areas of my interests? I was lucky enough that different scholars that could speak to concrete areas (feminism, media, etc.). But that thought process can be complex, when it seems so simple at the same time.

How to disentangle overlapping Teaching/Service/Diversity work. How do I distinguish between service and teaching and diversity, since they can all bleed together? How are teaching evaluations counted toward tenure? Evaluations are based on numerical scores, but do they override heavy one-on-one mentoring? Do mentorship and advising thesis go under teaching or service? It is all very confusing, but I learned that the best thing is to just put things under one category to keep it clean. There is lots of overlap, but since I do a lot of heavy mentorship, service, and DEI work, I just try to categorize each activity under one categories to not confuse myself (or reviewers). It also helps them (especially the Dean and CAP, who are less familiar with your activities than department colleagues) realize what you are doing in discrete ways.