Conducting informational interviews with professionals in a position of interest can be a great way to gain a personal perspective on a particular job. For this workshop we followed the UCD Internship and Career Center model and got written feedback on a number of questions related to the teaching aspect of professors' jobs at a variety of institutions. These informational interviews, along with articles and handouts used in the workshop are available below:
ICC Informational Interviews
LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE RESOURCES
Liberal Arts College Faculty: Finding The Sweet Spot
LAC Teaching Load Survey
Liberal Arts College Informational Interview
1. What was your discipline in graduate school?
Population Biology – plant/insect interactions
2. What was the highest degree you completed? Ph.D.
3. Where and when did you complete your degree? UCD, 2006
4. Who is your current employer/academic institution?
Denison University, OH (small liberal arts college)
5. Employer location? Granville, OH
6. Academic Department/Program? Biology
7. Current Position Title: Asst. Prof.
8. When did you first start this position? Sept 2006
9. Is this a tenure-track position? Yes.
10. What is the balance of research, teaching and service at your institution?
Teaching is primary, probably 60-70%, research 20% or so, service 10%.
11. On average, how many classes do you teach per semester/ quarter?
It alternates, in my heavy load semester I teach 2 courses with 2 labs, in my light semester I teach 1 course and 1 lab.
12. How much departmental support do you receive as a teacher in your position?
A great deal, this is a teaching position so my colleagues are always visiting and giving me feedback. It is really the reason for the whole college.
13. What do you most like about your faculty position?
The department is very caring and supportive, I like everyone on the staff and we feel like a true team and I think we do a good job educating those students who come into our department.
14. What do you find most challenging about your position?
Finding enough time to do research; it is really hard to do at a small school, most of it has to be done in the summer, but it is hard to wait that long sometimes.
15. What advice would you give to a graduate student or postdoc seeking a similar position?
Get actual teaching experience – TAing by itself won’t do it anymore. If you can get a leave position for a year or semester that would be great – we want to see that people have full responsibility for a course – lecturing, giving and grading exams, doing the labs if possible.
16. Is there anything you wished you had done as a graduate student or postdoc to prepare for this position?
I wish I had actually done a research postdoc before getting this job, it would have given me some time to write and finish some things up that may never see the light of day now.
17. Is there any other advice you would like to share?
I would make sure that you really like teaching for this kind of job as really, truly, most of your time is either teaching, providing support for students, serving on committees that deal with teaching somehow, or preparing for teaching. Your research program should be do-able at a small school with limited time and funds – it can be done, but it has to take some planning and perhaps tough choices about what habitats/organisms you want to work on.
COMMUNITY COLLEGE RESOURCES
MLA Info on Community College Teaching Careers
Science Teaching Careers at Community Colleges
The Community College Job Search
Community College Informational Interview 1
1. What was your discipline in graduate school? Ecology
2. What was the highest degree you completed? PhD
3. Where and when did you complete your degree?
UC Davis Sept 2006
4. Who is your current employer/academic institution?
American River College, Los Rios Community College District
5. Employer location? Sacramento, CA
6. Academic Department/Program? Biology
7. Current Position Title: Assistant Professor of Biology
8. When did you first start this position? Fall 2008
9. Is this a tenure-track position? Yes
10. What is the balance of research, teaching and service at your institution?
At the community college the focus is entirely on teaching and service, with teaching the most heavily emphasized. There is virtually no institutional support for a research program.
11. On average, how many classes do you teach per semester/ quarter?
Three of four depending on whether there are labs or not.
12. How much departmental support do you receive as a teacher in your position?
There is great departmental support for teaching at the community college. But, there are not TAs or readers or much support in that sense. Essentially all the grading and scheduling and much of the prep work is done by the faculty member.
13. What do you most like about your faculty position?
I love the diversity of students you get to interact with in the community college. In a single classroom you will often have three generations of students together, from advanced high school students to grandparents returning to get a college degree. There is good support for new curriculum development as well. The other faculty members are talented and dedicated educators and very willing to help out new faculty.
14. What do you find most challenging about your position?
The teaching load can be quite overwhelming at first depending on how many preps you have. In the worst case scenario, you could be expected to teach three (or more) new classes all in your first semester. There are also a significant proportion of the students that lack basic skills in math, reading, writing and studying, and can make teaching challenging. In addition, because the community college has a fairly wide open door for student enrollment, there are occasional behavioral issues that students bring to the classroom that can be challenging to resolve.
15. What advice would you give to a graduate student or postdoc seeking a similar position?
Take advantage of any and all opportunities for teaching during graduate school. Teach a freshman seminar, lead a 290, apply to work as an adjunct at all of the local community college districts and CSUs. When applying for positions, the hiring committees want to see more than TA positions on your CV.
16. Is there anything you wished you had done as a graduate student or postdoc to prepare for this position?
Not really, other than probably begin teaching earlier during graduate school. There are great opportunities to teach during graduate school, night classes and weekend classes etc, that I would suggest students interested in pursuing this path try to get hired to teach.
17. Is there any other advice you would like to share?
Before you have interviews for adjunct or full time positions at the community college or for teaching internship programs, talk to folks that are currently faculty to get a sense of what the interview process is like, because it is idiosyncratic. I would be happy to share my experiences with the interview process with any folks that have upcoming interviews.
Community College Informational Interview 2
1. What was your discipline in graduate school? Animal Behavior Graduate Group
2. What was the highest degree you completed? PhD
3. Where and when did you complete your degree? UC Davis, 2003
4. Who is your current employer/academic institution?
Sacramento City College, Los Rios Community College District
5. Employer location? Sacramento, CA
6. Academic Department/Program? Biology
7. Current Position Title: Professor of Biology
8. When did you first start this position? August 2005
9. Is this a tenure-track position?
Yes, earned tenure in 2008 (a 4 year process that began in 2004 for me)
10. What is the balance of research, teaching and service at your institution?
100% teaching, but service to the department and college is expected.
11. On average, how many classes do you teach per semester/ quarter?
1-2 different preparations. Most semesters I teach 2 sections of a 5 unit animal biology course (each section has 3 hours lecture and 6 hours of lab per week).
12. How much departmental support do you receive as a teacher in your position?
Our department is full of incredibly supportive faculty and administrators. We are very supportive of our teachers who wish to implement new courses, and I believe that we work well with each other to meet each other’s needs as instructors, to compromise where necessary, etc.
13. What do you most like about your faculty position?
I truly love my position, so I can’t narrow it down to just one thing. I appreciate having colleagues who are excellent and rigorous teachers; I feel fortunate to get to teach, nearly exclusively thus far, the courses that I wish to teach; I enjoy having interesting, diverse, and generally well-prepared students.
14. What do you find most challenging about your position?
Funding always is tight, and we can’t always get the teaching technology or materials that we want, or not in a timely manner.
15. What advice would you give to a graduate student or postdoc seeking a similar position?
If you are interested in a teaching career (as opposed to research) in higher education, please consider the community colleges. We have many very high quality students, many of whom transfer to UCs (and from our research, in upper division classes often outperform their fellow UC-grown students), and you have the benefit of being in a supportive and close-knit community of colleagues while working for an institution in which your teaching skills and dedication to teaching are truly valued.
16. Is there anything you wished you had done as a graduate student or postdoc to prepare for this position?
No.
17. Is there any other advice you would like to share?
Get as much teaching experience as possible while in graduate school. TAships are important, but whenever possible gain experience as the teacher of record. Teaching summer school is a good way to get this initial experience. Community colleges also look to hire tenure-track professors who already have experience teaching at community colleges (and therefore have a better understanding of community college students). If you are interested in this career path, try to get a foot in the door as part-time faculty.
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