Spring 1996

Storming the Academic Job Market
Marva Barnett, Director, TRC and Deparment of French

As I meet and talk with graduate students throughout the College, it is obvious that wide recognition of the tight job market in many academic disciplines has prompted equally wide discouragement and pessimism about the future. The fact is: UVa graduate students are eminently employable, but you need to take as much control of the process as possible. In a buyer's market, you need to be selling yourself well and selling what the buyers are looking for.

One aspect of you as an assistant professor and one part only is your teaching expertise. In the past five years, quality of undergraduate teaching has become much more important to faculty and administrators in many colleges and universities as they respond to national interest in education at all levels. You can improve your chances of being hired, as well as your choice of options, by developing your profile as a teacher now, no matter where you are in your graduate study. Here are a few ideas, based on TRC services (for more information about any of them, contact the TRC at ab3f@virginia.edu / 982-2815 / http://www.virginia.edu/~trc/home.htm :

• Create a teaching portfolio, a narrative statement that details your teaching experience, approach, philosophy, and successes. Appendices give examples to support your assertions. The next annual TRC Teaching Portfolio Workshop runs May 15-23.
• Begin now to prepare for the Teaching Portfolio Workshop or to create individual documents about your teaching that will be informative to possible employers. Consider the following devices:
• Ask a friend, colleague, or TRC staff member to conduct a Teaching Analysis Poll with your students in the first four to eight weeks of the semester. You will get their majority opinion about what most helps them learn and what suggestions they have about problems. Your written analysis of and reaction to this data can show how you approach teaching, how important your students are to you, and how you solve problems. It's a telling document for chairs of departments who value excellent teaching. We can quickly train anyone to conduct a TAP.
• Consult with a TRC staff member about your videotaped teaching. The hardest part of having yourself videotaped in class is finding the courage and time to schedule it. Having a camera in class rarely intimidates students; you can erase the tape if you don't like what happened in class and do it again; the consultant is working only to help you improve your teaching. As with the TAP, you can describe the experience in job applications; you can also offer to send a copy of the tape as preliminary to an interview. This offer, alone, will make your letter of inquiry different from most of the hundreds it's judged against.
• Write your reflective statement about your teaching, or teaching philosophy statement. Samples are available for consultation at the TRC in Hotel D, from faculty and TAs who have won teaching awards and/or created teaching portfolios. You can give potential employers a view into your teaching by detailing in a page-length statement how you approach the teaching of your discipline and why you've chosen that approach. You will be better prepared for interview questions about your teaching. You can focus your statement in any of several ways, perhaps by asking yourself some of the following questions: How is my discipline most easily learned? What is my view of the role of students and teacher? How does critical thinking manifest itself in this discipline, and how do I motivate and show students how to tackle the discipline? How does my teaching relate to my research?
• Attend workshops on teaching, and add that fact to a curriculum vitae section many call "Professional Development" or "Development as a Teacher." Add a sentence to each entry that encapsulates what you learned from the workshop.
• Offer to lead a teaching workshop through your department or the TRC. Share the great ideas you've developed through your UVa teaching experience, and get a special letter of recommendation in the process. Make sure someone who could write for you attends the workshop and knows of your interest in teaching.

It's scary, but know as much as possible about what a job hunt entails and begin several months before lists appear. Here are but a few pieces of general advice, gleaned from years of following the job market peregrinations of graduate students, mostly in the humanities:

• You can never begin too early to work on your future marketability. Remember that faculty members are judged on their teaching, research, and service. Take advantage of interesting opportunities to augment and highlight your skills as a researcher and as an administrator and colleague.
  
• Take advantage of departmental offers to critique your curriculum vitae and letter of inquiry, as well as chances to undergo a mock interview. In fact, if your department does not yet offer such help, provoke it. Ask your advisor or any supportive faculty member to assess the effectiveness of your application. It is normally essential that you present yourself as positively and professionally as possible, and your faculty colleagues have succeeded in this way.
  
• Throw your net as widely as possible. You can always rule out positions on the basis of the first interview. If you never get the first interview, you'll never be sure what the job might have been like.
  
• Once on the market, consider short-term positions. You are always competing with people who have more experience; a one-semester or one-year position will give you that stepping stone next year.
  
• Tell your faculty supporters about the positions that most interest you. They may have information or hints for you about that institution or department or positive words to drop in the right ear.
  
• Research the positions for which you interview. Read the catalogue on microfiche at Clemons Library. Go prepared to express interest in or ask questions about faculty members' specializations as well as about departmental programs.

With serious preparation, you won't need so much of the good luck that we wish you!

NOTE: We are just beginning to collect articles to help those hunting for an academic job. If you're interested in applying to liberal arts colleges, stop by for a copy of one of our first:

Steven A. Leibo, "Using the Annual Meeting to Win a Position at a Small Undergraduate College: What Your Advisor Never Told You." Perspectives [journal of the American Historical Association], December 1995: 15passim.

Here are relevant TRC library books:

Boice, Robert. "Quick Starters: New Faculty Who Succeed." New Directions for Teaching and Learning 48 (Winter 1991): 11-121.

Davidson, Cliff I. and Susan A. Ambrose. The New Professor's Handbook: A Guide to Teaching and Research in Engineering and Science. Bolton, MA: Anker, 1994.

Deneef, A. Leigh, et al., eds. The Academic's Handbook. Durham, NC: Duke Press, 1988.

Edgerton, Russell, et al. The Teaching Portfolio: Capturing the Scholarship of Teaching. Washington, DC: AAHE, 1991.

Gibson, Gerald W. Good Start: A Guidebook for New Faculty in Liberal Arts Colleges. Bolton, MA: Anker, 1992.

Heiberger, Mary Morris and Julia Miller Vick. The Academic Job Search Handbook. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

Sawyer, R. McLaran, et al., eds. The Art and Politics ofCollege Teaching: A Practical Guide for the Beginning Professor. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.

Seldin, Peter. Successful Use of Teaching Portfolios. Bolton, MA: Anker, 1993.