An assistant professor of history will be considered for promotion and the awarding of tenure next year. Consequently, she has been focusing on strengthening her professional portfolio. She has a doctoral student who has been working with her for several years. The assistant professor recently returned from a professional meeting where she met an individual who shares her research interests. This person is a tenured faculty member at another institution who has been working in the same area as the assistant professor for a number of years. In fact, this faculty member had established a consortium of investigators, each from a different institution, and she asked the assistant professor to join in this collaborative study. The assistant professor felt that being a participant in this collaborative study would benefit her professionally, especially for her promotion and tenure review, and readily agreed to join. In follow-up correspondence, she asked for details about the arrangements for this group, and was told that it is a loose arrangement without any formal agreements. The assistant professor sensed that the faculty member who invited her to join in the collaborative study has a leadership role in this consortium but other aspects of this collaborative arrangement remained unclear.
During the academic year the doctoral student indicated that he would like to attend a national meeting and present some of his research findings. This would also give him an opportunity to meet with prospective employers, since he hoped to complete his graduate studies soon. The assistant professor knew he had sufficient material for this presentation but worried about what the other consortium members might think about this. Although most of the doctoral student’s studies were carried out before the assistant professor was asked to join the group, the subject matter was very similar. In the meantime the assistant professor was developing her portfolio for her upcoming promotion and tenure review. In describing her involvement in the consortium she felt that her case would be strengthened if she described herself as the initiator of this consortium effort. After all, she argued, it is a very informal arrangement and she could have easily been the person responsible for establishing it. Sometime later the assistant professor received a curt message from her contact in the consortium asking why she had agreed to have her graduate student present material without seeking authorization from the consortium. Her contact indicated that the group may consider asking her to "resign" from the collaboration. She begins to see her professional life in serious jeopardy.