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Post by newprof on Nov 14, 2012 12:10:17 GMT -5
I'm a new assistant professor and have begun mentoring graduate students in our MA program. I currently have a student who wants to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology. However, her main goal is to teach at a SLAC so she is less interested in vast amounts of research. While we've narrowed her applicant pool down to less research-intensive programs, does any one know of a Ph.D. program that puts a premium on teaching? Possibly including an area of emphasis in teaching or pedagogy? I'm in the woods on this as I got NO teacher-training of any kind in my Ph.D. program but I believe this is par-for-the-course at most places. Just wondering if anyone knew of an alternative model or had other suggestions.
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Post by on the market on Nov 14, 2012 13:22:57 GMT -5
IME: a great teaching record without solid pubs isn't enough to get a phone interview at any institution these days. She's going to have to run the research race to get to the teaching job.
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Post by Teaching Programs on Nov 14, 2012 17:30:37 GMT -5
Indiana and Georgia State allow one to specialize in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
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Post by agree on Nov 14, 2012 20:33:59 GMT -5
IME: a great teaching record without solid pubs isn't enough to get a phone interview at any institution these days. She's going to have to run the research race to get to the teaching job. I agree. I am currently a faculty member at a SLAC and it was always my ambition to land at a place like this one. I earned my Ph.D. from a top-ranked R1. While I was there, I made sure to connect with our campus' version of a center for teaching learning, taught as much as I feasibility could, worked as our departmental teaching mentor, and overall, did everything possible to demonstrate that I was serious about teaching. It was a lot of additional work and the additional work was not always viewed as a smart use of my time by some faculty in my program, but it landed me where I wanted to be. From the perspective of a search committee member at a SLAC: we care about research and teaching. Our recent job candidates have had degrees from Wisconsin, Yale, University of Washington, Indiana, and Berkeley. These candidates had strong teaching and research experience. Even at SLACs, one is expected to publish. There are a lot of resources on our campus to support effective teaching; there are very few resources, other than money, to support research. And there are few opportunities for research collaborations within the institution. So, one has to be able to drive his/her own research. In short, there is no easy way to a faculty position, even one at a SLAC. |
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Post by laughthroughit on Nov 16, 2012 22:00:36 GMT -5
Syracuse is a good place for this and they encourage graduate teaching assistantships in interdisciplinary programs that are related to scholarship. It is researchy, but not overly so (that is, faculty do not overbearingly push students to publish and funding is not contingent scholarship)... students are free to focus on scholarship or teaching or a mixture of both that suits their interests. Very few students stick to research only with the goal of R1 placement. While I was there, most students were aiming for SLAC positions and placement post-doc has been mostly in SLACs or R2 state schools. Though the number of candidates from the program who have gone on the market with publications is low (mainly because people were focusing on teaching over scholarship), I *think* every student in the past 10 years (except maybe one or two) has landed a full-time job (either TT or visiting) their first year on the market.
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Post by inbreak on Dec 27, 2012 11:34:47 GMT -5
NC State
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Post by r1 on Dec 27, 2012 13:47:37 GMT -5
Same rules apply as when considering any Ph.D. program--status trumps almost everything else. Probably not down to is the program ranked 3 or 4, but at least in tiers: top 10, top 20, top 30, etc.
At my SLAC we almost only look at candidates from the top schools. It's a buyer's market and if we can get someone with strong research training and productivity who's also interested and experienced in teaching, why would we look anywhere else? That may suck, but it's the reality.
Plus, plans have a way of changing. Your student may want to be a teacher now, but what happens if they fall in love with research during the dissertation? If they're at a teaching focused program, they might end up stuck.
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Post by careerchange on Dec 28, 2012 21:54:06 GMT -5
I have to "third and fourth" everyone else's advice. Jobs are tough to get, at SLAC's and everywhere else. Top tier SLAC faculty do a hell of a lot of research to both get hired and get tenure.
I think it makes more sense for her to think less about research vs SLAC and more about how competitive she needs her institution to be. A one year teaching fellowship or adjuncting tacked onto an R1 PhD program to signal an interest (and experience) in teaching will be more likely to get you a SLAC position than going to a lower ranked PhD granting program that gives you loads of teaching experience. (I'm not saying this is just or fair. Its just true.)
And frankly, if she's not really interested in research, maybe you should counsel her to rethink her career plans. Because if she doesn't get a coveted decently-tiered SLAC position, she should realize that teaching at less competitive teaching schools is pretty much like teaching high school. Which I'm not saying isn't rewarding in its own right...but I could have actually taught high school with a masters degree. And if she gets her PhD from a more open-minded (and less money-bagged) institution...she will most likely have *to pay* for at least part of that PhD. Does she really want to go into debt to teach high school level courses to adults? Maybe she does. But its something to think through.
Maybe I'm just sour as we approach the end of the first round of the academic job search season. So forgive me if I didn't answer your question in the way you wanted. But I've just finished a semester at a public teaching school, and I can tell you that you shouldn't need a 6-7 year research degree to do what I've been doing. Yet about 1/2 of the faculty in the soc department at this "less competitive" school have PhD's from top 10 departments. If she wants to jump into this kind of ridiculousness, she should do it with her eyes wide open. Conversely, I have a friend who teaches writing and composition at a community college. Because she knew she wanted to teach, she decided against spending 7 years doing lit crit to get her PhD in English and invested in a 1 year MFA program in writing. Obviously she wasn't going get a job at Amherst with this route. But neither are 99% of the folks getting PhD's in English.
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