Assistant Professor → Associate Professor in Japanese University

I got promoted as Associate Professor on April 1. Alhamdulillah!

 

Of course it was hard work, blood, sweat and tears, no shortcut!

Working in a Japanese university is extremely hard. We need to do all the work - literally all - from sweeping and cleaning the lab, making coffee when guests are coming, preparing for a bunch of classes, teaching, evaluating, marking the score, taking care of students, being the person in charge for department, faculty, and university level of something (for example, managing department's SNS, department's marketing, making pamphlet, and so on and so on - the list can go on), being active in academic life outside campus, and lastly, research. Yes, research! Research is the last thing that you can do in the university that I work. 

Let's talk about this later, now not thou.

To get promoted to be Associate Professor in this university, here are the requirements:

1. PhD holder (Currently, job applications for lecturers are only for PhDs, but lecturers from the old days sometimes still have no PhD)
2. Must have experience guiding the thesis of 4th year students (The criteria for each department is different, in my department, more than 20 students) 
3. Write an essay about the targets to be achieved in the new position and career design as a lecturer
4. In the last 5 years must publish at least 3 international journals or 4 local journals as first author
5. Points from teaching experience (criteria for each department are different extremely difficult to explain, so skip! But as a hint there are criteria for the number of classes, the number of students, class evaluation by students)
6. Points from academics (number of journals published, impact factor, number of proceedings, number of presentations at conferences, number of academic awards, number of patents, number of books). Point weight is different for first author and non-first author
7. Points from non-academics (helping association as for example secretary, being chairperson at conference, being an adviser in a student club, being an adviser in company)
8. Points from research grants (where have you gotten research grants, how many are principal investigators, how many are research members)
9. Points from being in charge of department activities (being in charge of any role in department, faculty and university activities) 
10. Print all the documents (at least 4 copy), explain and evaluated by your supervisor (lab boss), department chair, dean and for university. Then after passing through, the documents will be checked again and again by campus' Human Resources Committee (mostly Professors) to be recommended to the university boss (Rector and Chairman of the Board of Directors of a school foundation)

In Japan, you don't have to get approval from the Ministry of Education and Culture or the Japanese Higher Education (I heard in several countries you must get approval from the ministry...). All of this is regulated within the university/foundation, so it is the university/foundation that determines whether you become a professor. The university only have to report to the Ministry of Education and Culture and attach all the documents.