TNP team has put together a Q&A style post about the academic job market. Today our guest contributors answered questions about what happens after submitting your job applications, like how long to wait to hear back from the search committee, or what happens when if we get an interview or a job offer. ​

This week TNP is doing a series of posts revolving around the academic job market with the help of some experienced guest contributors. Today’s post is all about funding – whether it be for your own research or a post-doc position. ​

This week TNP is doing a Q&A with some insightful guest contributors about the academic job market. Today’s post discusses preparing application materials for teaching-oriented academic positions. There are many different resources out there about application materials. You’ll notice that we didn’t ask a ton of questions about teaching and research statements. For more on that, check out Kameko Halfmann’s blog post about application materials to be very helpful. In it, she goes into detail about teaching, research, and diversity statements, as well as providing tips about the cover letter and CV. Below are some other, more specific questions that we had related to application materials. ​

Well I just completed my first two days of class for the fall semester. Not that long ago I was enjoying a vacation over the fourth of July…and all of a sudden here we are just about at the end of the first week of the semester. The first day of the semester brought with it one Intro Psych class and a whole bunch of meetings. Day two brought another Intro Psych class, a lab meeting, and my very first senior seminar. 

​The first week is a difficult one for many reasons. It is especially difficult on my campus because students can add/drop until the end of the week…great for students, but difficult for professors. Every semester I end up with three or four new students at the beginning of the second week who are starting the semester behind. Each semester, I struggle with what to do. Mostly I question whether I should start covering content that first week and hope that the students who come in late are able to make it up without getting further behind. Last academic year, I pushed back the content coverage into the second week and now spend the first couple of days orienting students to my teaching style, expectations, and the course. Yes, I said DAYS, sometimes the entire first week. I could write a lot discussing the things I do and why but I want to focus on a conversation I have with students about student success.

​When I first started teaching as a graduate student, I was assigned courses that students notoriously dreaded. First, I taught a writing lab for our research methods course, where students learned about APA formatting and wrote a research paper. After that, I taught Statistical Methods. In both courses, students routinely complained that the skills taught in these courses didn’t apply to them. They didn’t want to be researchers that conducted experiments, ran data analyses, and then wrote up findings in a manuscript. So why should they take these classes seriously?

I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but we are over half-way through August. The first week of class is quickly approaching.

The Novice Professor is on a mission to start out the school year with a bang. We recently did a series of posts about our New (academic) Year’s resolutions (about our goals on research & writing, teaching, professional development, and productivity), followed by an open letter to undergrads applying to graduate programs this year.

Now, we are focusing on making the most of the first week of classes.