This is the second installment of the Landing an Academic Job Series. You can read the first post, Identifying Your Preferred Work, here. This post will discuss how to use the position types and institution type to narrow your job search.
In the previous post, I explained the myriad of duties that faculty members may do in their careers. Of course, not all faculty members do all of those duties every semester, year, or even in their careers.
In this post we’re going to look at the interplay between employment context and job title to explain typical faculty roles, duties, and responsibilities. When you’re looking for a new position you want to find one with responsibilities that align with the work you prefer (see, Identifying Your Preferred Work).
Job Title Gives insight to the Position Types
First, let’s take a look at the types of faculty positions that exist across institutional types. Generally these can be classified into 4 categories:
- Part-time faculty, known as adjunct faculty in many institutions,
- Full-time Non-tenure-track faculty,
- Full-time, tenure-track faculty, and
- Tenured Faculty (usually your not directly applying for this type).
Part-time and full-time non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty are considered contingent, meaning they are filled based on the needs of the department. They may be contracted semester by semester, by the academic year, and in some cases in short 3-5 year contracts.
Full-time NTT positions have a range of position titles such as lecturer, instructor, visiting faculty, teaching assistant professor, and clinical faculty. In some cases, the positions may have program specific names, such as ASL Specialists.
Tenure-track (TT) faculty serve several years in a probationary phase (usually 5-6 years). Then they apply for tenure by submitting a portfolio (sometimes called a dossier) of their significant work and contributions. Once tenure is granted, the faculty member has a perpetual contract with the institution. This doesn’t mean that the faculty member can never be terminated. Barring financial exigencies, egregious behavior, or closure of a program, the tenured faculty member can be fairly certain their position will not be eliminated from the institution.
Employment Context
The role, responsibilities, and duties of each faculty member – even with the same job title- varies to some extent based on employment context. While there are anomalies, responsibilities and expectations are predictable based on the combination of job title and employment context.
A brief overview of higher education employment context may be useful before we consider how position type and context intersect.
Carnegie Classification
If you’re reading this blog, you likely already know there are different types of higher education institutions. We can categorize institutions as 2-year technical and community colleges; Bachelor’s degree granting institutions, and institutions offering graduate degrees.
In fact, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been classifying higher education institutions for decades. They classify institutions into 7 basic categories (Special Focus, Tribal, Associate’s, Baccalaureate/Associate’s, Baccalaureate, Master’s, & Doctoral).
However, if we’re just focused on the types of students faculty may teach, we can use our 3 tier system: AA degree focused (AA), BA degree focused (BA), and MA/Doctoral degree focused (Grad). Of course this varies since faculty who teach MA/Doctoral students may also be teaching in institutions with high numbers of undergraduate students, and the faculty may teach only undergraduates or a combination of graduate students and undergraduates.
Who works with which level of student is often determined by the degree that the faculty member holds. Generally faculty hold at least one degree higher than the courses they teach. Often these expectations are spelled out explicitly in faculty handbooks or hiring guides, and are often dictated by standards of accrediting bodies (see this piece by the American Federation for Teachers for a more in depth look at this issue).
The Intersection of Position Type & Institution to Understand Workload
Each faculty member has a specific employment status, loosely represented by job title. And each faculty member works within a specific employment context, represented by AA, BA, and Grad program focus (for the purposes of this post).
The key to landing an academic job that will feel satisfying is to land a job that aligns the work you want to do with the work expected of that faculty member in that context.
Generally, part-time faculty position types teach courses for 100% of their time. In some cases the teaching responsibilities may include some course design or overhaul. In those cases, we could consider that part-time faculty are spending some time on service, although it is not likely to be accounted for in their workload distribution.
Varying Workload
The figure I’ve created represents what some full-time faculty experience as their workload distribution. Based on my experience and research, the distributions are typical of the relative distribution of work. The distribution can vary depending on the specific position, institution, department, and employee.
As the chart indicates, NTT faculty spend the majority of their time teaching across institutional contexts. The amount of service obligations varies across contexts. I’ve included some scholarship responsibilities for NTT working within Graduate program focused institutions; however, this is not always a requirement. And it may also be expected of NTT faculty in baccalaureate degree focused institutions. In many institutions, NTT faculty do not have service obligations beyond attending faculty meetings, and in some cases, not even that is expected.
Tenure-track faculty are expected to engage in scholarly activity across BA and Grad focused institutions. BA degree focused institutions likely have the widest range of scholarly productivity expectations. In some BA institutions faculty may only be expected to attend conferences and read scholarly literature. In others, faculty are expected to publish peer-reviewed journal articles at rates varying from one every few years to at least one per year. Some associates degree focused institutions also expect some scholarly activity among their faculty, although at lower proportion than other institutional types.
Finding a Fit with your Position Type and Institution
As you consider applying for positions in the coming months consider the following questions.
- What proportion of teaching, service, and scholarship would you like in your next faculty position?
- What types of institutions and position titles would most likely allow for that proportion?
- What types of positions might you eliminate from your consideration because they do not fit with your goals and preferences?
Next Steps
In the next installment of the series, we’ll explore the structure of job advertisements and the information we can glean from them. That will help you make decisions about which opportunities to pursue as we continue the Landing an Academic Job series.
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