Eileen VanTassell (Michigan State University)

My job search started after a postdoc that I decided to do, and in the sciences now you really need to do that. If you’re not in the sciences, you can go right from your undergraduate degree and look for academic positions. Usually though if you want to be a professor in academe, you’d have to go for at least your masters and probably your Ph.D. How many of you are finishing up Ph.D.s here? A number of you are.

I would say that my view of academe was extremely unrealistic when I started out. I thought I was going to find this community of scholars, all of whom were going to help me and be intellectually challenging and ready to debate all kinds of unusual and different issues, and what I found was that people are people. And you will find a few of those, but for the most part a Ph.D. does not give you any special human curiosities or skills that you wouldn’t find in your grandmother’s house or down the street somewhere in your own neighborhood. I really had to learn that I had to seek out those individuals. So I was very unrealistic about that. I got myself into a lot of trouble as a result, right off the bat.

I think it’s really important that if you take a job in any kind of high stress situation that you make time for yourself and that you don’t give up your own hobbies, so that you don’t sacrifice too much of yourself because you have to stay strong. And in order to stay strong and be able to give of yourself, you have to be able to give to yourself, too. And so I think you can get really burned out in an academic situation or even a nonacademic situation where there’s job stress when you’re first starting out, there’s bound to be. So what I do is I participate in martial arts; I participate in the Native American community, and I love gardening. And I try to do some of those on an ongoing basis, just to keep myself healthy.

My priorities are my family first, then my job, then my hobbies. And I think the family and job come into conflict often. And every person has to decide for themselves, based on the situation, just how far they can push that job envelope with respect to their other priorities. So, I think anything I said about that would be a little dangerous, but there are going to be colleagues and mentors that you can always call on. And I recommend that you do not use individuals in your current department – or the department that you find yourself in or the unit that you find yourself in if you’re not in academe – but that you seek out values mentors where you are now. And I would suggest that you keep close ties with those individuals that you trust and that you seek advice like that from them, because you can’t tell always what the values are of the people that you’re meeting for the first time and you may offend someone without even knowing it. So, I recommend that you give yourself lots of time in a new position to find mentors that you trust, and that may take a year or two or even three years to do that.

With respect to interviewing, I would not bring up the issue of a spouse. And the main reason is because I’m not currently married, so it would be inappropriate, but – it would be dishonest, I could of course make one up but that’s frowned upon – what I think works well is that you let your employer know that you are happy in the relationship that you’re in and there are many, many ways of doing that without going out of your way to bring up your relationships, which I don’t think you need to do. But you could say things to the effect that “While I’ve been married or in my current relationship for 5 years and I’m really lucky to have found such a supportive person.” Having a supportive spouse is very important often to employers, such that you are a stable person that is going to have the kind of home support that will allow you to do the job that you’ve been hired to do. If you are in a very stormy or difficult situation, your employer may feel that you may not be able to handle the position. Same thing with children. You may have listed how many children you have on your resume. It’s not really legal for anyone to ask you specifically about your spouse or your children, but you are free to bring up good and happy things about your spouse or your children. Never bellyache about it, I would say. Don’t reveal negative things about how difficult you’re finding childcare and so forth and so on. That’s not a good idea.

With respect to evaluating the community, I don’t think there’s any really good way to do this except by asking potential friends that you may have at or near that area, or perhaps people here at UM who have been at the place where you’re planning to go. So do some background work on that. Then I would say check out some of the local newspapers and community magazines when you get there for that kind of information.

With respect to evaluating the place that you’re going to be – or where you’re thinking about being – I would say that you can usually tell whether the people you meet are happy. And that’s very, very important. If people seem to be happy, if they seem to be somewhat relaxed but with – I would say – a nice professional tension, and you probably know what I mean by that. So that they’re not so laid back that you can tell that nobody’s getting anything done here, but they’re not so tense and driven that you can see right away that unless you publish ten papers right away in your first year you’re not going to make it. So you want to find a kind of a balance there. So it’s important to find out in an academic situation whether the people in your unit are productive, and that’s easy to do. You can ask people that you meet for their recent papers, and that’s perfectly acceptable. If they don’t have any, that’s perhaps a warning sign. Or if you’re looking for a position in a teaching institution where research is not so demanding or your productivity is less important than perhaps your classroom, you might ask people about their classes and what kind of students they encounter there, as a way to talk about things. It’s always a good idea to meet students while you’re there, if you’re on a campus, or to talk to ordinary working people at any kind of job situation you’re at. So, if you go into the cafeteria, you can talk to people about what kind of place it is, and see what people have to say.

Is the leadership of your institution fairly stable? I think that’s important to look at. Or is the dean changing every couple of years or the president changing every couple of years or your department chair. And you also want to look at what the benefits are apart from salary. For instance, what is their retirement program like? What is the community like with respect to such things as provision for your recreational needs? Do they have an athletic program that you can participate in? Or whatever your interest is? Can that be met in this community that you’re going into? Also, does the institution invest in the appropriate resources to support you in the job that you’re going to be doing? At my institution, that would mean a world class library, and I would insist upon that and never go anywhere that didn’t have a world class library. Although nowadays with e-mail and being able to download all your resources at the click of a key, it’s less problematic. But still I would say if you’re at an institution that your not etherneted so you can’t get at those resources, you could be in a difficult situation. So, think about that. Think about what resources you need and make sure that the place you’re interviewing has that and can meet your needs. And then if appropriate, what are the institution’s provisions for daycare or plans for daycare if you intend or already have a family, and I think I’ll stop there.

Jeanne Raisler (Nursing)

I’m Jeanne Raisler. I’m a Nurse/Midwife. Like a lot of people in Nursing, I did my Ph.D. later. I worked as a midwife, delivering babies for 18 years before I went and got a doctorate, and you’ll find that’s very common in Nursing. You’ll see all these salt-and-pepper haired people getting their doctorates, so I say that to tell you that I think how I would evaluate the job thing is somewhat age-related, and some things that might be important to me might not be important if I was 28. I also wanted to ask – a bunch of you here in the front raised your hands saying you were finishing up your doctorates but what about the rest of you? Where are you at? Because basically my presentation is oriented towards people in doctoral programs as well.

In my profession, until recently, there haven’t been very many Nurse/Midwives who had doctorates. So what that means in our profession is that when you come out of your doctorate, there are more jobs than you could shake a stick at and immediately what they want to do is make you the head of the department. That may sound great, but it isn’t because as anybody who is in academia knows, if you have to be the head of the department right away and spend a huge amount of time on administrative tasks, it means you’re not going to have time for your research and that means that you’re not going to get tenure. So we have a syndrome in Midwifery and Nursing where people – they graduate and the phone is ringing off the hook with employers, they get a job, it all seems great, but then there they are and for example at a place like this – which is a world-class university – the truth is that your administrative time doesn’t really count, your teaching time doesn’t really count and it’s very sad to say that because I think we all feel that teaching is really important, but I’m being really honest with you. It doesn’t count. I’m sure you have all seen people get tenure whose student evaluations are absolutely abysmal but whose publishing and grant-writing records are stellar. Now as Eileen said, there are institutions like this that focus very much on research and grant-writing and there are other institutions that may focus more on teaching. And I think that’s very important to see and know the difference, and to look in your heart and ask, “What do I really want?” If you really care about teaching, you may not be happy in a place that doesn’t reward it or that even considers it an opportunity cost if you spend too much time on your teaching. So it’s important to know that about the place.

I’ll just say a few things about tenure-track. I think some people are born for tenure-track. They thrive on the stress. You can see them going through their seven years, just really doing well. I mean, yes, they’re stressed, but basically they love it. They’re getting out the papers, they’re getting the grants, they’re networking around the country, they’re going to the top of their profession. I don’t know very many people like that. I really don’t. For many people, I think, the tenure track is a very, very stressful seven years, and so in that sense, it’s probably a much better thing to do when you’re younger, before illness or family life situations or all the things that hit you in middle age come to take your time away. I think when you are on a tenure track for those years – if that’s what you want – it takes most of what you’ve got during that time. People I know in my school, they’re working nights, they’re working weekends, most of the time. Not that they don’t ever take a vacation, but they’re working most of the time. And then, you know what, they get tenure, they’re still working, almost all the time, nights and weekends, and so you have to love it. In a place like this, you have to love research, otherwise it really isn’t worth it.

I guess what I would say, when I got out of my doctorate, I really thought I totally knew about the job search and what it was all about, because I really thought I did. Maybe I did, but I guess I didn’t really know – perhaps – myself very well. So that’s what I would really encourage you is to look into yourself. The tenure is the thing we are all supposed to want in our doctoral programs, but then ask, “Do I really want it or is there some other venue I might like better?” As I said, perhaps something with teaching, perhaps – if you’re in a profession – something out in your profession. It’s not the only way to go.

So, anyway about the culture. I don’t know if all our fields are similar. You will see the culture when you go on your job interviews. You’ll probably have a round of a couple of days. You’ll meet with the department, and then you’ll give a research presentation. You’ll be taken out to dinner. You know, if you were to come here to Michigan, I’m sure you’d be taken to Zingerman’s, you’d go to the Gandy Dancer. You’d get driven around the neighborhood. You’ll see quite a bit that way, but if they really want you, they may not tell you, they may not be totally forthcoming about all the stresses of the job. And in that way, I agree with Eileen that you probably in your field already have a kind of an invisible college or a network, you probably know – if you’re going out for your doctorate – you probably know or can call people who can tell you about the culture in that place, because in every job interview they get pretty similar. What do they want? They want you to be world-class researcher, world-class writer, fabulous teacher, do community service. You know, they’re not going to say that much. Well, I have more to say but let me stop here and let Naomi go or whoever wants to go next.

Naomi Andre (Music)

Well, I have basically four points I want to make. One, not all departments that I’ve run into in the university are like Midwifery in the fact that the phone rings off the hook when you get your degree. In fact, I’m in Musicology which is music history – though I’m housed up at the School of Music, it’s closer to the humanities, down near the Liberal Arts and LS&A – and in my field and in a lot of other humanities – from my friends I knew in graduate school – the situation of the job market (which you guys probably know the best) but my understanding is that it was horribly dismal in the recent past or in the past and now it’s just somewhat dismal. So such a panel talking about personal and professional fit implies a type of luxury – “Well, here are my seven offers, let me figure out which one – I get the big car here, the big house – what do I want?” So, I guess what I’m trying to say that if you’re fortunate enough to be weighing a couple or several offers, that’s great. I’ll try to be relevant, say things that are relevant to you people, but I think that what is relevant to everyone, and particularly those people who have made it through – and you feel so exhausted after you get your dissertation done, you go through grad school if you’re finishing up a postdoc and getting your publications out and then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, the job search!”

So, one thing is to realize that you are going to change. You will change personally and professionally. It’s a thing of life, as you guys know. Your interests when you first came in to graduate school – what you wanted to study – might have changed. Rarely is it just the way you thought it would be. Sometimes it might even be in the same general subspecialty, but that’s going to change. And we’re talking careers here: most tenure-track positions are anywhere between six and eight year clocks. You’re going to change within that. Your personal lives are going to change, too. Think of people – you know, you get out of college, you get out of grad school – unless you’re some Wunderkind (which you guys probably are, of course), but in your job you’re probably going to be in your late twenties, early thirties, mid-thirties. This is the time when people want to buy houses, you want to have kids, you want to have some at least illusion of stability. So, your personal life might change. You might get married. Unfortunately, if you are married, you might get divorced (we won’t talk about that, though). You might have children; you might buy a house. So, while you are looking around and trying to get it right: “What’s the right place for me?” One, your research interests are going to change and evolve over your career – that’s very, very healthy – and two, you’re going to change and that’s also hopefully healthy. So, there’s no one formula for doing it right and none of us are even pretending to say, “Well, here’s how you do it.”

So, how do you handle that? I would say, look at the place you are seriously considering. Look at the university or the college and look at the community. There were some great suggestions about getting a newspaper, talking to a variety of people, and see what the strong points are. For example, I’m from the East Coast. One thing about the Midwest – yes, I’m finding it to be true, my own biased views – that people are really friendly out here and there’s a very high quality of life in terms of you go to stores and people are…nice. That’s something that if I come up for tenure in a couple of years and Michigan’s been great to me and I love Michigan but I’m from New York, from the city there, and I never realized that being in a place – now this is a life quality element – I want to be someplace where people are nice. OK, that’s a small example. Let’s say you really love downhill skiing and you end up in Michigan – I miss the mountains, I don’t ski – well, then it’s like, “OK, this won’t be a big fit in terms of something I’m really passionate about, but I’m willing to say let me go back to Vermont or let me go to wherever I need to.” Let’s say you’re wanting to settle down and have a family and you get an offer from a school, you know, one of the best schools out there in really difficult inner-city environments. That’s something to think about. Not, “Well, I have to turn in down because of that, but maybe I want to live really far from the school,” which will bring in commuting issues. Look at the strengths of the place – what it has – because that’s how you’ll evolve, that’s how you’ll change. One other example, on a more academic note, I am an opera specialist and I look at women in Verdi’s operas – actually, women on the nineteenth-century Italian opera stage. I was housed in a music department that wasn’t all that interdisciplinary and didn’t encourage it that much. I come here to Michigan and I am now affiliated with Women’s Studies. I am teaching a Rackam Interdisciplinary Seminar next term, co-teaching it with someone in Comp Lit. Interdisciplinary seem to be a big part of what Michigan is and it’s shaping who I am as a scholar and it’s a very good thing, I like this. This is having a very positive effect on my research.

So see what the strengths of the place are. You know, not just if it’s got mountains and you can ski or if there’re lots of lakes and you can swim, although that part is important too, but in terms of this is a school where huge amounts of money are spent on technology and everything is we want all courses to have course pages and be up on the web and Powerpoint presentations and all that – I mean all schools, I guess, in this day and age have access to that – but if that’s a really big emphasis, but then even if you’re like me – a dinosaur and have a hard time with that stuff – you can say, “Well, this is a place where I’m really going to be able to address that and come into the 21st century. So, in terms of fit, when you’ve got a lot of choices, factor that in, but this also fits when you don’t have a lot of choices. What’s strong about the institution, what are the positive points about the place? As well as what are things that aren’t there, that you wish might be there, that will shape you, too. If there isn’t a culture of interdisciplinary work, and that’s at the core of what you do… For example, I’ve known people who’ve come out of American Studies programs and then have gone to schools where they’re forced to be in a History program and there isn’t the interdisciplinary interaction and they’re feeling boxed in. They’re feeling a little uncomfortable because they want to be connected with English, they want to be connected with Sociology. So, look at what the strengths are and see if you like that and then, “Gosh, would this be fun to adapt my life to?”

OK, another point in terms of getting a good fit. Have conversations with as many people as you can, when you’re out there, either on the job interview or if you go and visit on your own – that’s not unheard of. If you ask to come out again after you have an offer, and you don’t know if you want to go there, let them pony up and bring you out if they can afford it. Have conversations with students, with your colleagues, and with administrators, because these are the people you’re going to work with in different forms and you want to know if it’s a creative, exciting, lively environment. Or that – this doesn’t happen that much and you don’t have to be on – you know, in some small New England colleges, the expectation is that students will call you at home, they’ll show up on your doorstep. I mean, it’s good to know that before you get out there. I’ve had a friend who discovered that. OK, so that’s one thing.

The conversation with your dean – or whoever is the main person making your hire – that’s an important conversation. That’s the person who you go to when you want more money. That’s the person you go to when you need to find out – “You know I just need more backup on my computer; I need more things.” So when you go and you’re talking to that person – whoever that is, you know a dean or occasionally I guess it might be a chair – find out if you like that person’s style. Is this a person of no words – doesn’t speak – or is this a person who just keeps you there forever and rambles on? Can you work with that style?

My third point is when you are thinking about fit, don’t sacrifice personal interests and relationships, though it has been outlined by my colleagues that a tenure-track position is stressful. Yes, I know that first-hand. Nobody is ever going to tell you, “Hey, you know, you’re working a little too hard. Why don’t you take a break?” Probably nobody tells you that in grad school, if they ever told you that maybe in high school or college. So, the relationships you have with your family, with your friends, developing new relationships – and you need to do that not only with your colleagues but also with people outside of your department. You need to be able to have people with whom you can have candid conversations, and you don’t worry that they’re evaluating you for tenure. These are things that you need to nurture. Let’s say you go through, you work really hard. You sacrifice all your friendships, all your hobbies. You get tenure, and then you’re a boring person…with tenure. And you probably don’t even want to live your life – it’s like what else do you have? So be an interesting person with tenure. Get tenure and be interesting and continue to have all your hobbies. And – I said four things – but actually I’m done.

Alford Young (Sociology, Afroamerican and African Studies)

Good afternoon. I will be brief if for no other reason than the fact that so many good ideas were already shared, prior to my speaking. So, I will simply talk about three spheres of considerations that I took up in approaching the job market and thinking about personal and professional fit, and then talk about some life course thinking that I think matters to many of the issues that have been raised earlier. In what may seem like an oversimplified description, I divided my approach to the job market and my career into three contexts or areas of concerns: departmental or programmatic, institutional, and regional. And at each level, I thought an awful lot about what’s going on there that matters to me, that would excite me or disturb me about being at a particular institution. And of course this was predicated upon having more than one option. I realize for a lot of professions, you may have that one option, so the choice is to be an academic then or not. And you may have to go ahead and start a career. But thinking about having better possibilities, imagine that sort of breakdown.

And departmentally, I clearly wanted to begin my career in a research institution, but in one of the many ways in which I’m unusual among most of my colleagues, my other preference – my second choice – was a liberal arts college. And I’m the only person I know in my department at Michigan that had that sort of situation. But it meant being very clear about what I wanted to do in the long run in terms of research and teaching. And starting off in a research institution – for me – allows me to better situate myself in the discipline that I’m in. Michigan Sociology is a very good place to be – in Sociology. And I feel like other interests, goals, and objectives I can fulfill having started where I’ve started.

So with that in mind, I thought a lot about – not just in Michigan but in other places – the departmental culture. Clearly, a research institution is going to demand a lot of research, but there’s a different kind of institutional culture. In some places, faculty share papers with each other; they meet to talk about research. Other places, they don’t. They say, “Go out and do good work – however you do it – just be famous when it comes time for tenure, and we’ll make a decision.” That, again, is an oversimplification, but that gives some indication of the culture. I read Michigan – particularly Sociology – as a place that tends to leave you alone a little more than some places that I thought about. But it’s something to think about. Do you want to be part of a culture where people are sharing papers, sharing ideas? Where you feel a sense of networks or ties in your department to programs or people that can promote what you do? Or are your networks or ties better established with people at other places and you just pretty much want to have an office and resources to get work done and understanding in your institution that being good at getting work done is all that matters. They’re not really concerned whether you talk to other people about what you’re doing, but just be famous at what you do.

Also, the particular kinds of institutional demands or concerns that different programs or departments have. In my case, I’m a joint appointment. I’m in programs where almost everyone is jointly appointed, in some case more than two appointments. In some other institutions, you would be the odd person in that kind of situation. It’s something to think about; it’s something to talk to people about in terms of making sense of how you’ll fit in in those programs or departments. Here, I’m like everyone else in the fact that I’m juggling more than one world. In other institutions, you’re in an unusual situation doing that, and you’ve got to determine to what extent you feel comfortable in either of those settings.

Moving out towards the institution. Clearly, a place like Michigan is a very large institution. A lot of students, a lot of people. A lot of different research communities that may focus on the same kinds of issues but have different people involved. That can for you be something that can enhance your work, enhance your sense of a scholarly identity. In some ways, it can be too overwhelming. So, do you want to be at a place that tends to have many different options, many different communities, and many different research centers? Or do you want to be at an institution where what you do is prized more than anything else that is going on there? And so that institution may not be overall the best place in the world to be but if you’re a medieval historian, it’s known for that and you want to be a part of that crowd. Those are some of the ways in which you think about the institutional context. You also think about bureaucratic issues of how research is organized or administered in different institutions and different institutions have different cultures. Some that may be more appealing to you and some that are less appealing. But try to get a sense of what an institution’s statement is about teaching and about research and how that meshes with your own sense of commitment towards those things.

Finally, the region. And I’m someone who, prior to coming to Michigan, had never lived in an environment with less than 2 million people. So, as much as Ann Arbor is seen as a thriving metropolis, for me it’s still a small town with a big school in it. And that’s okay. In essence, I identify myself as living where I work. So now that I have a small child, things are changing a little bit, but the first four years here I worked ten hours a day. My wife also teaches at the university; we worked ten hours a day. We didn’t sort of do the things of having hobbies outside my work, but I love my work so it didn’t matter. I mean, I take sociology with me on vacations. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone do that if that doesn’t work for you, but it does for me. But being in an intensive research environment for me – in an environment that I saw as sort of overwhelmed by the university – made sense for me. It was a comfortable way to begin a career. I wasn’t so concerned about having options, avenues away from the institution.

Clearly, people have other concerns. Family issues, children, different visions of ideal community, and those are things you’ve got to think about. A lot of my close friends from graduate school are in urban communities. They take the train to work. Right. There’s some sense of really being away from the institution when they’re at home. I feel like I’m at home with my colleagues, because some of them live across the street from me. So, it means very different things in terms of how you experience the everyday, and that’s something you’ve got to think about and make sense of.

Final point, when I talk about life-course issues, I mean that – God-willing you all live a long time – there’s a long time to do a lot of different things in your career. Some people that I know who are some of the most famous names at what they do, at this point – meaning when they were at my age – were not very well known or perhaps not at institutions that were the most exciting, but it’s a question of planning where you want to be in the long term. It may mean at some cases being at a lesser-known institution or a place that can position you for better options. It may mean deciding that if you’re dealing with a dual career kind of relationship, what have you, that you plot and plan carefully what steps you are going to make so that both of you – ten, fifteen years down the road – get to where you want to be. So that you don’t have to necessarily think about trying to have it all happen to you the day you step outside of graduate school. God willing you’ll be around for a while, you’ve got decades to make things work. To have the time to write the books you want to write, to do the research you want to do, to raise the kind of family you want to raise. And think about that; don’t think you’ve got to try to make it all make sense the day after you graduate. And I’ll stop there.

Questions

Question about whether it matters whether your first job is at a small or large institution.

Eileen VanTassell: I would say no, if I could jump in here. In the sciences, I don’t think that’s the case, because it’s the quality of your publications that are going to count. I would say that, regardless of where you are, it’s really important as a grad student that you go to your national meetings and that you start giving papers and presentations at your national meetings and that you begin to set up a network of colleagues before you’re looking for a job. I think that’s essential, so I would really recommend that. That’s something I forgot to mention. Get yourself out there; get yourself a reputation. And I would also say that often at a small place you are forced to ask small questions because they don’t have the technology. If you are at a big place, like this, it’s a good idea – if you’re not asking one of the big questions – know where your piece fits in the big questions, such that you’re able to envision where your piece of the work might go on a big scale. So, be prepared to discuss your long-term plans, if you want to be at a top school. That doesn’t mean you have to start there, though. Some of our best scientists, at least, have come from smaller schools. And I think frequently you may get a better grounding in your field and be taught by less specialized people such that you may have a better grasp of the theoretical underpinnings of your field than someone from a big school, in some ways.

Question about whether it matters where you start if you want to end up at a research institution.

Eileen VanTassell: Oh, that’s different. I think that’s really different. If you want to be at a top school, then you’ve got to look very, very carefully at your ability to get outside funding at a small school and that means that small school has got to be able to support your work. And by support I mean monetary support, graduate student support – good grad students, library support, computer support, all those kinds of things so you can do top-level research. Then you could be positioned. If you are going to be overloaded with teaching, like you have two courses a semester to teach and you have 400 students or something like that to teach – forget it. The demands on your time will be so great that I don’t think you’ll be competitive at a top school. Other people may disagree.

Naomi Andre: I’d like to address that. Speaking in the Humanities – I mean, in any field – prestige never hurts. However, if you’re at a very prestigious school and you don’t do much, then that’s going to hurt you. So, distinguishing yourself, I think, will make a really big difference. Now sometimes it’s easier to distinguish yourself – let’s say you’re at a prestigious school, I’ve heard that it helps in terms of getting grants. It helps when people are reviewing your stuff. It helps if you are around colleagues who are very well respected in the field and you can get them to write letters. I guess what I’m saying – and it probably makes sense to you – being in a prestigious place and going to another prestigious place, there’s a clear route. Going to a very small place – let’s say that’s the only place you get a job – do the best work you can. Try to navigate through getting overburdened, but one strategy I’ve heard from a friend of mine, he didn’t want to get tenured there so he made a move before he – you know, he worked hard the first couple years and it was clear he would have gotten tenure there, he’d done enough, but he thought if I get tenure here I’m going to end up here. I’ll be stuck. And I said, “Well, what do you mean, Dan? I don’t understand that. I thought that once you’re tenured then you’re sort of more desirable.” He said, “No. Then I’m more expensive.” So, this is just one bit of experience. You don’t want to just hop from school to school; that makes people nervous. But if you’re at a smaller place and you really want to get to some top-level places then it might be a good idea to stay, do the best you can, and really strategically try to move.

Question about what the disadvantages are of trying to change institutions after receiving tenure.

Naomi Andre: Well, I don’t have any personal experiences but I would think…not that when you’re tenured you’re making lots and lots of money at most places, but you come in at a different level. Because you don’t ever want to take a pay cut, not in academia. So, I don’t know, maybe some of my more experienced colleagues do. I would tend to say it might not make such a difference then. They might just be so thrilled to get somebody who’s already tenured somewhere else; it adds prestige to them.

Eileen VanTassell: Frequently, what I’ve found happens is that, even at larger schools, you’re brought in with a pay raise but no tenure and you are allowed to apply for that after your first year or two. So, losing tenure if you’re a solid, productive scholar is not a big problem. You can always get that back. So, I don’t consider that to be a big problem, and I don’t think it’s a problem going from one small school to another either, because you won’t be offered a job to come in with tenure. You’ll have a trial period. It’s usually quite short. So, what I would do if you’re considering that is have a bunch of papers that you have ready to send out. Don’t send them out until you get there because then they won’t count for this new position that you’re in. A lot of people find that out the hard way. They get everything out before they go and then there’s nothing left to show for when you’ve been there. So, I would leave some of the juicy pieces for publication where you’re at. As evidence for where you’re at. Otherwise, I would say that one of the most important things if you’re at a small school looking for a bigger one, which is your question, is you might also look for colleagues to collaborate with in your work at other schools. Nobody minds joint publications. In fact, teamwork right now is considered very valuable and very important, which also relates to why I think it’s important to get that collegial network going…One of the things is to look at how much teaching you’re expected to do. If it’s more than one course per semester and I would say in the sciences you should certainly, at any big school, ask for your first year free of teaching. That’s a given in the sciences. If you can’t get that then you’re going to be locked in. You’re not going to get your lab set up. You’re not going to get your graduate students attracted. You’re not going to be giving your papers at the national meetings that year and so forth. So, you need to talk to your advisers about what kinds of things are expected, depending on where you interview. If you interview at a small school, hands down you are going to be teaching your very first semester. And it also may depend on what field you’re in or what department you’re in, what your expectations should be. So there’s no blanket answer for that.

Naomi Andre: Can I just make one comment? As the profile of the university is changing, in terms of the student body and then more slowly trickling up to the faculty, I also would like to think that people are not a cookie-cutter type of person. We all have different experiences, different ways of being excellent at what we do. And I urge you to think not just in terms of ethnicity and nationality and racial identity but also in terms of who you are as a scholar and finding that balance for yourself with work and life and family and fun and religion and athletics and whatever are the main ingredients for you. The best fit and balance for you to do your best work is what’s going to be the best thing. It’s not as though, “Well, this is how you do it.” And I know you guys aren’t looking for that but let me encourage you to figure out what it is for you to be happy and to do the most excellent work you can and then you’ve got it all.

Jeanne Raisler: I really agree with that. That was one thing, in fact, I didn’t mention is that knowing yourself is probably really key. I have at least one colleague who can get more done by 10:00 in the morning than I can do all day, so that person can afford to take more time off, because I’m less efficient in how I work. So, I think it all depends on who you are as a person. But I can also stay up all night working on bugs and love it. So, she can’t. She’s done at 9:30 at night.

Question about what candidates who are more interested in teaching should consider.

Jeanne Raisler: I think that there are smaller schools that have national reputations in teaching, and I think if you’re really passionate about those kinds of things than I would investigate smaller schools where teaching is considered more important. And there are even colleges within big schools where teaching is emphasized, so I think there’s no single answer to that. There is a lot you can do to research that, though, before you go ahead. Amherst, for instance, is an outstanding school. Oberlin is a good school for undergraduate education. What kind of mix do you want? There are many community colleges that are also outstanding, but they tend to work you to death for low pay. So, it’s important to look at what you really want. Question about how candidates can make themselves attractive to primarily teaching institutions.

Naomi Andre: I would urge you to get to know small colleges first. And the way to do that is talk to people, maybe you’ve got some friends or colleagues who went to smaller schools. No? Maybe even something where you could give a guest lecture in a class. Go to campus, see what that’s about. If you’re near finishing or if this somehow works with your schedule, try a one-year replacement position. I mean, the disadvantage is that you have to move an all. But I would urge you… if it sounds like something you really want and you’ve thought about it, it probably will be a fit, but this is your career, and since you’ve got no experience with it, go visit a school. Go see what classes are like if you can’t get a lecture, but get to know the place. Because you might find it’s just what you’re looking for.

Question about how a candidate would introduce herself to a small college in this way.

Naomi Andre: Well, like so many graduate students, you want to sell yourself short. What a great opportunity for them. Go over there. If you want, give them a call, do sort of a version of an informational interview, where you’re there, you’re not looking for a job, but you have something to offer. You could give a lecture on this, you’re heard terrific things about the school – you know, flatter them. You’d love to come by. You could say that you will be on the job market at some point. You’re really interested in smaller schools. You’d be really honored to get to know their school better. I would urge you to tell the truth rather than paint yourself as “Oh please, could I possibly do this?” It’s a boon for them to be able to attract Michigan doctoral students who want to see what they’re about.

Alford Young: Do you go to any conferences or any place where you could actually meet people at these schools? No?

Eileen VanTassell: Some do [go to conferences]. You’d be surprised. Especially the regional meetings. I would find out who at the school is teaching the same material that you are teaching and I would contact that person and set up a meeting and say you’d like to talk to them about what the teaching situation is like there. And then see if they would be willing to host you to come down and sit in on their classes or maybe go to lunch. Offer to take the person to lunch or dinner and just talk. I would not recommend myself that you contact the school and basically give them something for nothing. I think that’s not a good strategy for…I don’t know what the word is…self-preservation. I just think it sounds almost too needy to do that. And it’s too unusual, it’s too outside the normal way in which people do things. That’s my own personal opinion. My sense is that you should start lower and contact faculty that are in your area, maybe teaching the same course you are going to teach.

Question about how to network with people at teaching colleges at engineering conferences.

Eileen VanTassell: They are huge places, but even there you’ll find that there are small schools that specialize in it. Even here in Michigan, there are small engineering schools right here in Michigan that you could contact. And outside of the state…teaching is highly prized at Purdue. It’s highly prized here – I mean at Michigan State. So, I could put you in contact with some excellent teachers.

Question about other organizations which could help a candidate.

Eileen VanTassell: SWE. Society for Women Engineers. Are you in that? U of M has a strong chapter of SWE. You might want to check that out and network. It’s real important to jump in and get yourself known and also find out who’s doing what where.