In today’s post, we’re going to focus on how to do a quick review to understand a faculty job announcement to determine if you need to go further with considering the open position.
This post is part of a series. In the first post, Step 1: Identify Your Preferred Work, I addressed the various types of work that academics do. It includes some reflection questions to help you determine you work preferences. Then I shared the intersection of type of position with type of institution to understand typical workload expectations in Step 2: Use Appointment Type and Institution Type to Narrow Your Search. You might want to keep track of the information you’re gathering. My Free Job Search Tracker can help you keep the details organized and easy to find.
Before searching for an academic job, it’s a good idea to have an idea about the type of position you want to work within. And, more importantly, the type of work you want to be doing as a faculty member. This will assist you in narrowing your search to only positions that fit with your goals. When you’re done with this step, check this resource on the interview process.
Finding Faculty Job Postings
First, you might be wondering where to find positions listed. Many institutions across the US list open positions on the job board of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Today, there are over 34,000 open positions listed.
The good news is that you can use a variety of search tools and filters to narrow your search. I recommend not narrowing your search by salary because many institutions do not include the salary in the position listing and that removes all of them from your search results.
My next recommendation is to look for open positions listed with professional organizations. For example, in my field, there are two main places I look for open positions – the American Sign Language Teachers Association and the Conference of Interpreter Trainers.
Most professional organizations will have a job board to search for open positions. Even if your field has professional organizations, I wouldn’t discount the need to look on The Chronicle of Higher Education website. Some institutions don’t pay to list positions beyond the Chronicle.
Job Title & Institution
The first things you’ll see for most posts are the job or position title and the hiring institution. With this information you can glean quite a bit to help you understand a faculty job announcement without reading more.
At first glance, just having the job title can tell you if the position is likely to be tenure-track or a reappoint-able or short-term position.
Here are a few job titles I saw when I searched for full-time positions:
- Professor of Practice @ a doctoral university with very high research activity (R1)
- Coordinator of ASL Programs/ Assistant Professor @ Master’s College & University (larger programs M1)
- Assistant Clinical Professor @ doctoral university with high research activity (R2)
- Assistant Professor @ Community College and another @ R2
- Instructor @ R1
- Visiting Assistant Professor
- Lecturer (various types of institutions)
- Teaching Assistant Professor @ R1
Based on the titles alone, I see 3 types of positions: tenure-track, career-track, and contingent instructional faculty.
Tenure-Track
Assistant Professor positions are almost always tenure-track positions. The same is true if a position says that it is Assistant/Associate Professor or Open Rank Tenure-Track. Without more information I don’t know the required duties of this position, but I can assume that unless it is at a Community College it will have at least some scholarly requirements.
In the previous posted I mentioned that tenure-requirements vary by institution type; so, we’ll need to dig into the institution’s classification and the wording of the posting to know if and how much research, teaching, and service are expected. Usually a terminal degree (i.e., doctoral degree) is required for this type of appointment. However, tenure-track positions that are in teaching focused institutions or in very new fields may only require a master’s degree.
Career-Track
Professor of Practice and Teaching Assistant Professor are generally used for career track positions. These titles are rarely associated with tenure-track positions. Career-track faculty usually have continuing appointment that allows some employment security after a probationary period.
Generally, these positions, do not require scholarly productivity even in research intensive institutions; however, they have teaching and service obligations. These positions often have an evaluation and promotion process. These positions usually require a master’s or doctoral degree.
Contingent
Lecturer or Instructor are often full-time positions with annually renewable contracts based on department need. Often individuals in these positions focus solely on teaching; however, in some cases they may be required to serve on departmental or institutional committees. Often individuals with master’s degrees can be hired into these positions.
Other Titles
A couple of the titles in my quick search, do not fall neatly into one of the previous categories. One example is the Coordinator of ASL Programs/Assistant professor position I saw listed. In this case, it is likely to be a tenure-track position that has some time assigned to administrative duties of the ASL degree programs. Careful reading of the position description would be needed to understand specific job requirements.
Finally, the Visiting Assistant Professor position is often used for 1-3 year appointments based on institutional need. The position may be needed as a sabbatical replacement. It could be used to make a hire when a full-time tenure-track position has not yet been approved. This type of appointment may be used for other reasons as well.
The important thing to note is that it is not a long-term position. It is not a tenure-track position. Unlike other jobs where if you get hired on in a temporary position you’ll have better luck transitioning into a full-time position, this is not always true with Visiting Assistant Professor positions.
Find the Key Words to Understand a Faculty Job Announcement
It’s important not to stop your review of positions with the very general overview of position title, but knowing the general expectations for the type of position allows for a quick scan of the posting to determine if it will be a fit for your career trajectory.
Next, you should do a quick scan of the position announcement for key words that are important to you. The words I mean, are the words you determined are the types of work you want to pursue.
For example, if the type of appointment (tenure-track or non-tenure-track) was important to me, I’d look to see clues about that.
If I wanted to spend the majority of my time doing research, I would look for key words: scholarship, publication, research.
However, if my main goal was to spend my time on teaching tasks, I’d look for the types of courses I’d be teaching, and any words that gave a hint that research work might be involved.
If I was looking to lead and have impact on the trajectory of a program, I’d likely read more about the coordinator position to see what all is involved – just making schedules and filling out reports, or building a new program.
Professor of Practice @ R1
The job positing has several indicators that the position will not have research responsibilities. As expected, the position is a career-track, not a tenure-track appointment.
Tenure-track @ R3
In the next example, the institution type is sometimes called “striving.” It is classified as a doctoral/professional university, the 3rd tier of doctoral universities. Within the last decade the institution was a Master’s level institution.
The position explicitly states it is a tenure-track position. Unlike many institutions, the tenure-track position is open to individuals with a master’s degree. The position announcement emphasizes teaching, and also explains the expectation for research and service at all levels of the institution. The emphasis in teaching is found in several areas. It is mentioned in the first paragraph. The 2nd paragraph indicates that in addition to strong teaching research and service are required. Again in the 3rd paragraph the advertisement discusses teaching in terms of scope of curriculum requiring team oriented faculty member.
Instructor @ R1
In this sample, you can see the position requires teaching 4 courses per semester, hold office hours, and work closely with coordinator to prepare syllabi, lessons and materials. There is no mention of other service or research obligations.
From this information, we can tell this is not a career-track position because it states “annual renewable possible contingent on satisfactory performance, availability of resources, the needs of the university, and sufficient enrollment in assigned courses.”
Now it’s your turn
From the samples provided you can see that the intersection of position type and institution type leads to a range of duties and responsibilities.
Go ahead an do a search for positions in your discipline. What can you learn about the opening just from the announcement? Any that you can eliminate because it’s not the type of work you want to be doing? Any that sound just like what you want to be doing?
In our next post, we’ll explore how to tailor your application to the job announcement.
Do you want insider information about the Faculty Interview Process?
Grab this Faculty Interviews Demystified training now!
