For University Professors – Career Questions?
I have a few questions about how to reach my goal…….
Does a TA postion help when it comes time to find a job? Or is a research or graduate assistantship good enough?
What is the whole process involved to become a professor? I don’t quite understand the difference between different proffesor’s titles.
What else can I do to help achieve my goal? What haven’t I though about?
Any info will help!
Thanks!
Favorite Answer
First you have to decide if you are just interested in teaching, or whether it is research that makes you excited. If it’s teaching then you need to design your PhD thinking that you are aiming to get a job at a teaching-oriented college. In that case, having lots of TA experience and a teaching portfolio will help you. If you are interested in research then you have to balance research interests with teaching responsibilities, so that you can get a job at a research university.
The whole process of becoming a professor is stg like this:
1. You enter graduate school, you take classes.
2. You take your qualifying exams.
3. You write a dissertation.
4. You get a 1 to 2 year job at some college, where you need to teach classes and also publish articles from your dissertation. Here, you are an assistant professor.
5. If you are lucky you get a tenure-track job which means if you work hard for five years you can become a part of the faculty at that college.
6. Again, you have to publish articles and a book in 5 to 7 years.
7. Then you are examined by faculty members who may or might not give you tenure.
8. If they give you tenure, you stay at that college and can start thinking of having kids and a life. [You are usually at the age of somewhere between 35- 40 at this point]
9. Then if you publish articles and books you can move on to become an associate and then a full professor. The process is different at each university.
At this point you probably havent thought about anything that you are going to face in graduate school. My advice would be to network with professors, read a lot, take good notes and always remind yourself of your goal, because gradschool is not as easy as it seems.
