Updating the Search Committee

For those of you on the market, you may wonder when you should email the search committee to tell them about some new accomplishment. What counts? The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a good rundown of the items that warrant an email. Don't waste their time, but don't be afraid to share updates that have a reasonable chance of boosting your profile and landing you an interview. And just because they are already at the interview stage and haven't contacted you doesn't mean it's too late; interviews bomb, job offers are declined, chosen candidates don't "fit" when they come to campus. If you have done something that could bump you up the list of alternates, let them know!

Expectations, meet reality.

A powerful essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education traces the evolution of the career expectations engendered by studying at an R1 institution, trained by faculty who themselves come from R1 and elite institutions, and the dangers of having no career development training in the meantime. Most doctoral students are exposed only to that research intensive setting and their primary models are faculty who have experienced only that research intensive setting.

"Virtually all graduate students receive their Ph.D.'s from a research university. They get their first classroom experience there, and their dissertations are mainly guided by professors whose research occupies a prominent place in their work lives. We should hardly be surprised that dissertation advisers become the first role models for graduate students....
But most academic jobs aren't at research universities, and those other jobs look jarringly different to graduate students than the positions held by their role models."

So the die is cast - that's the culturally appropriate career path. The reality is that there are far fewer of these R1 positions available then there are new PhDs to fill them. There are of course many other models of higher education careers. Many doctoral students envision a life as a teaching-focused professor at a liberal arts college, perhaps like the one they attended as an undergraduate. But we don't learn how to pursue that and other options (community colleges, private high schools, industry, NGOs, etc.) while we're still in graduate school, largely because our mentors are incapable or unwilling to teach us about them (how many advisors do you know have talked their students out of applying for certain jobs because "they could do better"? I've seen it done, and have seen students just accept this as "wisdom." It gives me a pretty big sad.) We start applying for jobs with a model in mind and create heirarchies of acceptable positions, and many of us are caught blinking when we're left with a list of crossed-off job applications and no job. I've been called out by blog readers before as being a pessimist for pointing out that it's tough to make the transition from lecturer to tenure-track, but that really is the general reality. Why are we not discussing this WHILE we're still in school, before we hit the market and find out how hard the market hits back?

"It amounts to this: Graduate school is professional school, but most Ph.D programs badly neglect graduate students' professional development. We spend years of their training ignoring that development, and then, only at the last moment when students are about to hit the job market, do we attend to their immediate professional needs. By neglecting their career goals, we allow their desires to coalesce from their immediate surroundings—the research university—and to harden over time. We teach graduate students to want the kinds of jobs that most of them won't ever get."

A potential solution is to develop professional development seminars as integrated requirements for a doctoral degree. They exist in some places:

"For example, the University of Michigan's "Introduction to Graduate Studies" requires that beginning graduate students in English and modern languages interview a senior professor in the department, thereby offering a look upward at a role model's career. But the course also requires an outward-looking "Alternative Careers Workshop."

Graduate students in a seminar offered by the geography department at the University of Minnesota are visited by a series of professors who discuss not only conferences, research, and publishing but also the choice of a career path, as well as gender and class issues that occur in some workplaces and family circumstances that affect students' progress to the degree and often past it."

These programs sound like a great idea and I would have jumped at the chance to take a seminar like this when I was a student just as new faculty I go to workshops on grant writing, teaching, tenure, and publishing tips whenever I can. However, I think graduate students need to empower themselves now, rather than wait for their departments or advisors to initiate this kind of change. You should research job prospects in your discipline, even if you are years from entering the market. Talk to senior students and postdocs and find out what they've experienced - how many jobs have they applied for? Do they know how many people applied for each job? Were they open to lots of different kinds of jobs or were only R1 slots "acceptable", and why? How and why did they rank positions in a certain way? You should interview your advisors to get their take on hiring trends over the years. If you have an active graduate association, you could organize a series of symposia with alums who have landed tenure-track and other teaching and administrative positions to find out how they did it. Contact local community colleges to find out if they have faculty in your research area and ask to visit them, or invite them to speak to the grad students in your department.*

As I've said on this blog and as I myself seem to learn over and over again, grad school does feel like it takes forever and the dissertation feels like the end-all, be-all, but you just might be at this academic thing the rest of your life. It is how you hope to earn your living. Preparing for a full career, not just doing research, is essential to your well-being.

*Full disclosure: I didn't do any of this, but I really wish I had. But now that I have a PhD and a job, I've earned the right to tell you to do as I say, not as I do. Hurray!

Jumping from the Adjunct Track to Tenure Track - can it be done?

Given that many anthropology ABD's and newly-minted PhD's will be hired as adjuncts and visiting assistant professors (some even at their PhD institution) but have a tenure track position set as their primary goal, it seems worth exploring whether/how this transition occurs. This recent thread in the Chronicle of Higher Ed forum is a good place to start since it is largely first-person. A great variety of experiences and opinions abound, but there seems to be general agreement that those adjuncts hoping or assuming that at some point they will be offered a tenure-track position in their current department (or hell, even just an interview!) may be hoping in vain:

"I fear that a lot of adjuncts think that there is some sort of implicit understanding that they are on the track to get on the tenure track at the institution where they are teaching. Fairly or not, the opposite is more often the case."

"Community colleges, I understand, are more flexible. We're simply not. At our R-1, there is a handbook clause forbidding "inbreeding," i. e., hiring (tenure track) our own graduates. We can't do it. Further, since we're a research uni, we can't hire on the tenure track anyone who won't get tenure--i. e., anyone who hasn't published. We hire with nationwide ads, and we sometimes hire on the TT people who already have published books (yes, the humanities job market is horrendous)."

"By the way, we shouldn't just blame adjuncts about this. All too often, they get vague suggestions and hints that there is the possibility they'd get hired to TT jobs. Sometimes "promises," which are subsequently broken. So deans, chairs, and TT faculty share some of the blame. I actually had a higher level admin say something like, "Wouldn't it be nice to hire some of our own doctoral grads?" I disappointed that admin when I suggested it would be scandalous. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if said admin had dropped a few vague hints to a past grad or two."

What is considered one of the biggest obstacles (barring not yet finishing the PhD) is that the job requirements for adjuncting are quite different from those for TT faculty. The service and research requirements, even at teaching-focused colleges, are significantly greater for TT faculty than for adjuncts. And departments hire folks for TT jobs because they've decided the odds for tenure are high enough to take the risk. They make that determination on the basis of a number of things, including research productivity, grants, and publications, areas that are tough - though absolutely not impossible - to beef up as an adjunct. And even if you are able to do this as an adjunct, it may not make it easier for you to lobby for a pay increase as long as you remain an adjunct. I think this sums that calculus up well:

"While it makes sense for adjuncts to continue research and publishing in order to remain competitive for tenure-track positions, it is important to remember that research is not part of the expectations or responsibilities of an adjunct, and as such they will not be paid for such activities while they remain adjuncts...
In the same way, simply being overqualified for your current job is not an adequate reason to advocate for more pay, it simply provides you with the opportunity to move into a job with a higher rate of pay for which you are qualified.
In other words, it doesn't matter one bit to your university if you do research and are capable of performing service while an adjunct if that is not part of the job description, since the university is not asking you to do this as a condition for your continued employment."

Several posters on the thread have made that transition from adjunct to TT in their current department, so it's not something that NEVER happens, but it seems reasonable to temper expectations by focusing on productivity outside the classroom as much as is humanly possible to beef up the CV as though you were only applying to external positions. Perhaps if you can demonstrate to your current institution that in addition to being the stellar instructor you've been as an adjunct, you have published, organized symposia, published, achieved external funding, acted as mentor for a PhD candidate elsewhere, um, published - all the things they look for as hallmarks of tenureability - you can be that person who makes the transition. The reality is that for most R1 and liberal arts programs (even the ones who seem happy with your adjuncting self), those criteria will matter more than simply having great teaching evaluations and an impressive roster of classes you can teach.*


*I do not intend to trivialize excellence in teaching - we all know how much work and passion and time go into that. This is about what is valued by the programs looking to add to their tenure track rosters.

New Doctoral Program Rankings To Be Released Today

A sequal to the 1982 and 1995 rankings, the new National Research Council rankings of doctoral programs takes into account "faculty publications, grants, citations, graduate students' time to degree, GRE scores, and reputation of programs." The Chronicle of Higher Education launches an interactive site today in conjunction with the study, so stay tuned....

How to write less badly

I like the premise of this article: as researchers we're not expected to be great writers, just not terrible writers. Aim high, people!

From the article: "Fortunately, the standards of writing in most disciplines are so low that you don't need to write well. What I have tried to produce below are 10 tips on scholarly nonfiction writing that might help people write less badly."

A couple of my favorites:
"5. Everyone's unwritten work is brilliant. And the more unwritten it is, the more brilliant it is. We have all met those glib, intimidating graduate students or faculty members. They are at their most dangerous holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, in some bar or at an office party. They have all the answers. They can tell you just what they will write about, and how great it will be. Years pass, and they still have the same pat, 200-word answer to "What are you working on?" It never changes, because they are not actually working on anything, except that one little act."

"7. Write, then squeeze the other things in. Put your writing ahead of your other work. I happen to be a "morning person," so I write early in the day. Then I spend the rest of my day teaching, having meetings, or doing paperwork. You may be a "night person" or something in between. Just make sure you get in the habit of reserving your most productive time for writing. Don't do it as an afterthought or tell yourself you will write when you get a big block of time. Squeeze the other things in; the writing comes first."

Now, all I have to do is follow some of this advice....

Keeping track of the job search

Great post in today's Chronicle of Higher Ed, listing some means of keeping on top of the 2011-2012 job postings: rss feeds, Twitter, listservs, etc. Also some great tips in the comments sections on keeping track of your personal job search - deadlines, letters sent, using Interfolio - all kinds of goodies to help you this job season.

From student/postdoc to professor

Many of us are in our first year as "the professor" - it can be a rude awakening. The career advice gurus of the Chronicle of Higher Education have spoken with several professors to get their take on how to navigate that first year. Here is the piece of advice that resonates most strongly for me:
"Joining a department means getting to know a lot of new people and how they get along (or not). The junior faculty member who chose to remain anonymous received some good advice on that: "The chair of my grad program told me that the best idea was to conduct an ethnography the moment you get into a department. You have to know who the players are and what the issues are. ... At the end of the day, oftentimes the decisions in committee meetings are not personal—they are historically based, and so you have to learn not to take them personally." That advice helped him keep a sense of perspective during faculty meetings."

Learning the local culture, history, politics isn't always easy because the system you're entering may be pretty closed, but keeping in mind that historical, non-personal perspective will really help preserve your sanity and override the paranoia that comes with the territory.

I would add that you need to remind yourself that YOU BELONG THERE. Remember how grueling the job search was - you're there because the department thought you were the best fit and they are excited to have you. You will absolutely feel that you're in over your head, and there will be times when you're not quite sure what you should be doing throughout the day, but you do belong there. And in time, you'll actually believe it!
Best of luck to all our first-year BANDIT profs!

An open letter to the 2010-11 tenure track cohort

A pithy CHE post from back in May designed for folks getting ready for their first year on the tenure track. Heading into year two, I still found much of this advice incredibly useful.

Check in at the 2010-11 cohort forum at CHE to make friends.

Sending out an SOS...

Liz Stillwaggon Swan, PhD 2008, recounts her job search saga, using The Police song Message in a Bottle as a heuristic device:

"Perhaps the only glimmer of hope offered by the song comes in the last verse, which recounts the castaway's discovery one morning, upon waking and finding "a hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore." That discovery affords him the comforting realization that "I'm not alone at being alone"; he's just one of the "hundred billion castaways, looking for a home."

If those of us on the academic market cannot be assured that someone will find our message and secure our rescue, we can at least take comfort in the fact that we're not alone. Here's to hoping that this year, more of us will find an academic home after the long search from that lonely island."

I love this woman. (Plus, her research sounds super cool: "My research incorporates philosophy and natural science; specifically, I'm interested in the biological origins of the mammalian mind.")

In the Classroom

I love the CHE Forum - so many helpful threads, so much drama. LOVE! Considering school starts for many of us next week (people on a quarter system often have my sympathy but not at this particular moment), wander into the threads over In the Classroom, where you can seek useful advice on whether/how to use multiple choice tests, commiserate about student evaluations, or just complain about the randomly annoying things your students do. (Students who might be reading this post: Don't take this personally. Generally, we really like you. It's just that our jobs are tough, and sometimes we need to blow off some steam, especially when you send us poorly-written or staggeringly self-entitled emails.)

Thoughts on the syllabus

A discussion over at the CHE on syllabus prep and content. I teach a basic medical science course that is part of a fixed curriculum in a professional school so our syllabus is little more than a schedule. All the info on issues of conduct and academic dishonesty is handled at the college level. When I was teaching anthropology courses the syllabus was far more complex because of the readings, lab activities, writing exercises, etc. in addition to outlining course, departmental, college, and university policies. So, there's a lot of variation out there in the anatomy of the syllabus, and I hope some of the comments in the CHE piece might be of use to you.

Applying to a small college?

A nice piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed on tailoring your job letters for small liberal arts colleges. The tips here are applicable beyond the home department of the essay's author, and some of them are common sense regardless of the target college, e.g. no typos! However, there are some useful tidbits for customizing your sales pitch to the unique mission and requirements of the small/selective liberal arts college (SLAC).

Goodbye to Those Overpaid Professors in Their Cushy Jobs

Look, I don't post these kinds of articles to depress you. I think the issue of tensions among members of the academy regarding teaching loads and the public perception of the tenured life is fascinating, and will only grow more fraught as the economic downturn continues and as the business model of higher education becomes more focused on the bottom line. The article reports that some academics are growing more vocal in their disdain for colleagues who eschew taking on additional courses or administrative duties when the overall economic picture on most campuses is bleaker by the semester:

"Last September some professors at the University of California decided that not working on days they were supposed to teach might actually help the university win more support from the Legislature. The professors called for a walkout of classes—to demonstrate how budget decisions were affecting students—even though the president's office had prohibited them from taking furloughs on teaching days.
James Hamilton, a tenured professor of economics on the San Diego campus, called out his fellow professors on his blog. "If some of my colleagues perceive that they now have better opportunities than teaching at the University of California, I'd encourage them to resign so that they can take advantage of those opportunities," he wrote. "If not, they need to stop whining and do their jobs. And perhaps even be thankful that, unlike many other Americans, they still have one.""


Public perception is the another target of the article:
"The professoriate may be policing its own perceived slackers, and there may not be as much grumbling from legislators as there once was about professors out mowing their lawns on Friday mornings. But what about professors' pay—does it qualify as cushy?
For those people lucky enough to land full-time jobs at universities, the pay can be good, although, of course, it's all relative. For example, a mathematician at a college or university makes an average salary of $72,320 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (An annual survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources provides a more detailed breakdown: A full professor in mathematics and statistics at a four-year institution makes $84,32; an associate professor, $66,012; an assistant professor, $55,765; a new assistant professor, $55,186; and an instructor, $42,782.) That compares with an average salary of $67,430 for an accountant or auditor, according to BLS figures, and $75,22 for a statistician.
The average annual salary for English instructors at a college or university, meanwhile, is $65,570, according to the bureau. That's about $10,000 per year more than high-school teachers make ($55,150), but high-school teachers probably started earning real wages at least six years earlier, and have a better shot at tenure."


I think the article obscures some issues, particularly those regarding faculty unionization and work-life balance, but I find this to be a really compelling piece. What's your take?

Government Vastly Undercounts Student Loan Defaults

Default rates on student loans are higher than recent federal government estimates, according to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"According to unpublished data obtained by The Chronicle, one in every five government loans that entered repayment in 1995 has gone into default. The default rate is higher for loans made to students from two-year colleges, and higher still, reaching 40 percent, for those who attended for-profit institutions."

"By any measure, for-profit colleges account for a disproportionate share of student-loan defaults. Two years into repayment, 11.9 percent of borrowers who attended for-profit colleges have defaulted on their federal loans, compared with 6.2 percent of those who attended public colleges and 4.1 percent who attended private colleges, according to provisional data that the Education Department released in February. Three years out, for-profit colleges' default rate has nearly doubled, to 21.2 percent of borrowers, and the gap between the sectors has widened."

Becoming a Successful Principal Investigator

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education has a great piece on developing yourself into a successful (i.e. funded) researcher. The author, David Stone, makes important distinctions between establishing yourself as a scholar (e.g. contributing to the literature), a researcher (e.g. having the appropriate skills and contacts to get the work done), and a grantwriter (e.g. compiling the literature review, recruiting the research team, understanding the granting body's regulations and culture).

"Grant writing is the end of a process, not the beginning. Long before you make the decision to write a grant proposal for your research, you should be taking concrete steps to raise your profile in the eyes of reviewers.

What does that mean? Most basically, it means preparing yourself as a scholar, a researcher, and a grant writer in ways that will strengthen the ideas behind your proposal, demonstrate that you have the wherewithal to carry out your project, and enhance your ability to communicate what reviewers are looking for."

You've been rejected. What now? (Hint: Ice cream isn't the solution)

Just came across this really thoughtful piece on coping with job rejection by David Perlmutter, whose columns I generally enjoy. He contextualizes the timelessly awful feeling of being rejected for a job within this particularly bad era of the academic job search, making the suggestions he offers all the more realistic for our generation of scholars. He doesn't shy away from the possible strategy of leaving academe altogether. There is also some cringeworthy humor, as he describes the well-meaning but often clueless "support" offered by our non-academic loved ones:

"At least fellow academics understand the realities of a job hunt in higher education, so they tend not to overplay their confidence in you. Outsiders may be less sensitive, even though they mean well. A doctoral student recounted a dreadful campus visit from which he returned home certain of not getting the job only to find, to his horror, that his nonacademic parents and relatives had arranged a big party featuring posters with inspiring slogans like "We believe in you, Tony!" When the predictably thin letter arrived months later, informing him that he had not been chosen, his embarrassment was amplified."

The Higher Profile of Educational Debt

While it's long been a subject of anguished conversations in the grad student lounge, the topic of mounting educational debt and the toll it takes on young adults' earning power hasn't captured the public's attention. Until recently, that is. The New York Times published a story a couple of weeks ago about an NYU grad who has $100,000 in a combination of student loan and private loan debt, all for a BACHELOR's degree in religious and women's studies. Yikes. While this young woman and her family bear a large burden of WTF, the fact that NYU financial aid counselors, who were aware of the debt load, encouraged her to take out a loan through Citibank borders on the criminal. Today's Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that NYU has "discontinued the practice of callling prospective students and their parents to discuss the debt they could incur by attending." Why? Because they claim it didn't make a difference in people's decision making. This might be true, but considering the program lasted a single year, I would say the jury is still out.

Obviously, New York University isn't alone in having these problems. I am up to my eyeballs in debt (if I were this tall) and I attended a public university. As a graduate student, I didn't have financial support from my family, but was fortunate enough to not have any debt from my undergraduate degree. It didn't occur to me to seek financial counseling - taking out loans was just part of the program. I had a few tuition-remitting gigs in my department and then shifted into teaching anatomy. Because the anatomy program had its own graduate students, they did not offer tuition remission to "outsiders", even though anthropologists filled most of the teaching slots. To qualify to teach, I had to carry 6 credit hours. To be able to afford those 6 credit hours, I had to take out loans. I never sat down and did the math until it was too late. As an independent adult, I bear a ton of responsibility for that, but it is troubling that the system has so few off-ramps, and that so few advisors are aware of the student loan hamster wheel. Talking about finances is considered too personal, and debt is so shameful, that we avoid the conversation altogether, but for people entering such an uncertain job market, these enormous debt loads can be a real handicap and we need to start talking about it with our prospective students. In the short term, it may mean that programs only accept students to whom they can offer full financial packages, but in the long term it will require an overhaul of the financial aid system.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is teaming with graduate students at Columbia University's Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism to investigate abuses in the student debt industry. You can share your story, and read about other people's struggle with student loan debt.

Five things to do with your evaluations...

How I wish that were the title of a borderline profane YouTube video, but alas, it is merely advice from the Chronicle of Higher Education. If we take evaluations seriously, how do we incorporate the actionable suggestions into our next round of teaching? The main suggestion I gleaned from my evaluations is that I need to teach this class a few more times, which the Lord and my college's administration willing, I will. Ta-daahh!

Adjunct association organizing for unemployment benefits

Many of us are working as adjuncts, a position that can leave us open to a great deal of employment insecurity. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the New Faculty Majority, an adjunct faculty advocacy group that is encouraging "more out-of-work adjuncts to file for unemployment insurance between academic terms and during summer breaks. The organization's goal, ultimately, is to change a federal law that some colleges routinely invoke to keep adjuncts from receiving unemployment benefits during those interims."

Check out the comments to read (mostly) thought-provoking discussion on the current state of adjuncting.

Preparing for tenure reviews

With the school year wrapping up, folks on the tenure track are getting their reviews - 1st year, 2nd year, mid-tenure. I haven't been through it yet (it's set for June or July) but I have been keeping a "tenure journal" wherein I document everything I've done since I started at my school. Pubs, abstracts submitted for conferences, grants and $ amounts applied for (even if I don't get them it shows I tried and if I write down all the details now I won't have to scramble later), nice emails from students, etc. From that I've abstracted a year-in-review document that I can give my chair once he starts the process. It all helps me feel like I have a little bit of control over a process that is largely external.

Another thing that I've found to be helpful is to check the Chronicle of Higher Ed fora for firsthand experiences and advice:

Advice/reassurance needed for tt prof after second year review

Things not to do pre-tenure

Criticism of teaching in annual review

3rd yr review