Comments on: Demoralized Debby from DSU desires to return to academia

By: Deborah Judge

Deborah Judge — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:41:52 +0000

You might want to consider finding a particular ‘niche’. Hiring committees don’t want some platonic idea of the perfect academic, they want the best person for doing the particular job that they need someone to do. My college, for example, needed someone who loves and is good at teaching and mentoring smart students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and who likes to do collaborative and interdisciplinary research. They couldn’t care less about my ability to teach advanced courses to grad students or to manage very large courses, since we don’t have either, and they don’t much care which journals I publish in as long as I publish regularly. Your self-description reads, basically, adequate to good in teaching, research and service. Is there a particular kind of demographic that you love teaching? Is there a particular kind of research that you like doing? Are there places that value that kind of teaching and research in particular? You might need to do some research to find them, since departments usually don’t put the demographic that they serve or the research trends of their faculty in their job ads.

I also want to second the suggestion about public history. A lot of my friends who prefer research over teaching have found good homes in museums, and still publish and participate in academic conferences. One even did work for a hospital that needed a study of how the demographic it serves has changed. If you want to spend most of your time doing research and to know that it is valued, but you don’t care as much about having total control over your research agenda, public history might be something to consider.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:45:08 +0000

Thanks, Prof bw–very wise words. It’s interesting to hear about your experiences with recent job candidates who weren’t 30-year olds right out of grad school. I’m glad to hear your students are doing well (at least with getting interviews so far)–best of luck to them!

By: prof bw

prof bw — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:24:54 +0000

I had two former grad students in similar circumstances to Debbie, neither has a book, and both have been on several interviews this year so be heartened.

If you publish your book now, instead of just lining up a contract or putting out feelers, at least at my institution (poorly funded state school) you will be expected to publish a second book for tenure.

Also, the thing that gives us most pause, at least in the last two hiring cycles, was people who sounded broken (so avoid discussing how you feel about your past appointment even if someone brings up how ridiculous it was to put you in an admin position so soon), had an extensive (5-10 years) period without employment, or were hopping from short term appointment to short term appointment. Your best bet is to apply to a place with similar interests; as others have said, if you value research over teaching then you need to apply to R1s not small liberal arts places. Highlight your important current publications, get some others out there that show an expansion of your current research or new interests, and send in a packet of your teaching evals whether requested or not. Put in your cover letter that you focused more on admin and what you accomplished as a result. Also make sure you get a rec from the previous appointment, some times all it takes is seeing that you did have positive colleagues to turn the tide of the one bad phone call. And last, be kind to yourself no matter what happens with the application process. Whatever happens, you are not a bad person for making the choices you made and you are not a failure at your profession b/c you ended up unemployed and on the receiving end of some gatekeepers’ disdain. If your work is solid, no one can take that from you, and several people on hiring committees will recognize it.

Historiann’s suggestion of getting back in the conference circuit is also a good one. It will help curb your anxiety, make needed connections, get you back in the mode of writing and presenting, etc.

I wish you the best.

By: hysperia

hysperia — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:39:21 +0000

I don’t have any idea how to advise Debbie, but with respect to her self-description of being someone who teaches “okay to well”, I didn’t take that as a sign that she doesn’t care much about teaching. I would not have dared say that I taught any better than that for at least five years. University teachers don’t get taught to teach but learn on the job. There are a few extraordinarily talented people who take to it like fish in water. I think that I was somewhere in the middle, but not especially talented. I did get better. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that someone who doesn’t yet teach exceptionally well doesn’t care about teaching, especially if they are in a non-supportive environment. As well, even if Debbie was “distracted”? by her pregnancy, this ought to have been taken into account and the Department that I worked in would have done so – it’s so unfortunate that she didn’t have that benefit.

By: Dame Eleanor Hull

Dame Eleanor Hull — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:35:03 +0000

I’m with the people who say a book could be helpful; in my department, someone with a book (or a contract) could be hired at assistant level. It might be a short track (3 years) or the person might have the option of going up for tenure early. And the administrative experience would be a plus. I also agree that Debby needs a better teaching narrative for interviews; but I took this to be an off-the-record request for advice, not a sample job letter.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:23:15 +0000

Squadratomagico–fair enough. But we weren’t asked to decide whether or not Debby deserved tenure at DSU. She asked if writing a book would be a good strategy for getting back in the game. I am very sympathetic to Debby, because I once had a job where I was bullied and told that I was the problem. That didn’t mean that I was completely unsuited for any academic job, just that I was unsuited for a job in that department. Furthermore, as Dr. Crazy suggests, different departments have different standards for tenure. Debby’s department may not have valued her research at all, whereas at other places she’d be considered a star, and at yet still others she’d be in deep trouble, as perhaps at your institution. So, there may be a place for Debby, but not at every institution. (But how many of us can honestly say that we could succeed at any kind of institution? I think there becomes a point beyond which we’ve conditioned ourselves to adapt to our circumstances that it makes it difficult to make a change.)

Dr. Crazy is correct to note the different orientations of the schools we all teach at, and to suggest that that conditions our responses.

By: squadratomagico

squadratomagico — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:14:38 +0000

I’d like to make an observation that may offend some people, but I really do feel compelled to say it: Sometimes departmental decisions are made on the merits of the case. Of course, sometimes such decisions are completely ridiculous as well: as Susan noted, it doesn’t take longer than five minutes to see that there are lots of insane and inhumane things going on in the academic world. But I feel that it displays a lack of critical inquiry to assume, with the incomplete information we have presented here, that this necessarily is one of those cases.

Trying to sort out what Debby’s review file looked like suggests something like this: At the time of her review her publication record included one important, peer-reviewed journal article, plus one article in an edited collection; these two serious research pieces were supplemented by some others “tossed off in crummy journals.” Debby was a passable, but not exciting (or excited) teacher. She tells us nothing about her administrative duties, so we don’t know if her program prospered, stayed stable, or declined under her directorship. I assume if there were major progress on that front, she would have mentioned it, so let’s assume that the program at least stayed stable. She did not have collegial relationships with others in her department.

In my department, this would be an extremely serious position to be in at fourth year review.

By: Dr. Crazy

Dr. Crazy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:33:58 +0000

Coming to this late, but I think that if what Debby wants is a private LAC that is not elite or even just selective and aiming at elite, she probably needs to reverse the ways in which she describes her attitude to research/writing and the ways in which she describes her teaching. The fact is, at a school that puts teaching first (like mine), somebody who described their teaching in the way that she did in this letter would very likely not make it to the interview stage, whereas a person who talked about their love of teaching and their abilities as a teacher but who liked to do research in a lukewarm sort of way would be just fine. I take Myth’s point about shouting about one’s teaching from the rooftops, but if you wax poetic about how you love research and then call yourself only an ok teacher, I know my institution wouldn’t see that as modesty: they’d see it as bad fit.

It sounds like Debby had an awful time at DSU, and that’s got to be awful to get through. And PPD combined with such an awful work environment and then to be let go – I can’t even imagine. But I think it’s important, if Debby is attempting to get a gig at a teaching-intensive place, to note that Historiann, Gayprof, and Tenured Radical are all at the kind of institutions where research is central to what they do, and these are the people who are saying, “Oh sure, we’d totally be into somebody with interesting research! All is not lost!” In contrast, I think a lot of the more negative comments have come from people at institutions where research is not central, perhaps ones like the ones Debby believes she has a chance at being hired into.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:06:55 +0000

Bing, that’s great advice. Beyond the basic need for good mental health at minimum, it takes time to get over a bad job. I think in some ways, it’s like a divorce: it may take at least as many years that you were in the bad job/bad relationship to recover. I know that I was still very angry for a long time, and I still have moments of rage when I think back on certain incidents. (And I wasn’t fired–I resigned for a better job, and I was still angry about the way I was treated at my old job.)

And, Indyanna–very insightful, as usual! (I really like the notion of “global brand manager of lecture development.”

By: Bing McGhandi

Bing McGhandi — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:00:21 +0000

Network like a maniac! Your scholarship puts you in good stead for that. I wonder if you think that postpartum depression affected your chances at reappointment? I have immense sympathy for you. Depression makes just about everything more difficult. Notwithstanding that, you should be optimistic because you have clearly remained active and are apparently still a player, despite that significant obstacle. 3 bits of advice:

1) Make sure that you are healthy first.
2) Make sure that you are healthy first.
3) Make sure that you are healthy first.