how to make myself competitive for a liberal arts college job

[neuropsych76]

Hi friends,

 

So I used to go on this site all the time before grad school and have sadly not been very active now that I am in grad school. But I did find it to be incredibly useful during my time here so I decided to give it another shot!

Anyway, here is my predicament. I'm currently in the middle of my PhD in cognitive neuroscience. I have realized that research is just okay for me. I don't really want to do it primarily for a career. I still really like science, but I have really graivitated towards teaching and science communication. I sometimes give talks/do podcasts for the general public on science and I really enjoy doing that MUCH more than doing research.

 

I also went to a small liberal arts school and I really enjoyed it. I think my personality, strengths, and interests certainly align with being a professor at a small liberal arts school. I really would like to focus on teaching and science communication for a career.

 

Here is the tricky part. I know I need teaching experience (I'm working on it, been a TA, hoping to teach this summer) and research (hoping to have a several pubs including 1-2 first author), but my research is all fMRI work. If I apply to teach at a small liberal arts school, they will likely NOT have an MRI scanner there. So does this put me at a huge disadvantage? I've read it is helpful to be able to continue your research even if you go to a small liberal arts school and be able to incorporate it into your teaching if possible, but I can't really do this with mine. The only silver lining is that my research is very methods focused and I know statistics/research methods pretty well. Perhaps I can focus on that?

 

Thank you for any insight!!

[Lisa44201]

Can you network with folks who do have access to an fMRI, such that they collect the data, and y'all co-author? I would think even 1-2 pubs a year would be better than nothing. Also, e-mail some of your old profs at the LibArts school & ask what their tenure requirements are, then ask how that would work for you, given the potential future issue of not having an fMRI machine.

[neuropsych76]

Can you network with folks who do have access to an fMRI, such that they collect the data, and y'all co-author? I would think even 1-2 pubs a year would be better than nothing. Also, e-mail some of your old profs at the LibArts school & ask what their tenure requirements are, then ask how that would work for you, given the potential future issue of not having an fMRI machine.

 

Thank you Lisa!! I did think about helping with experiments outside my university, but I know that would be tricky and I probably wouldn't be first author. I do know that liberal arts colleges do not require a high amount of publishing for tenure, but I'd still need some independent research I would imagine. But yes, I am in the process of asking liberal arts professors about this, but I'd figure I'd post here as well

[fuzzylogician]

Here is the tricky part. I know I need teaching experience (I'm working on it, been a TA, hoping to teach this summer) and research (hoping to have a several pubs including 1-2 first author), but my research is all fMRI work. If I apply to teach at a small liberal arts school, they will likely NOT have an MRI scanner there. So does this put me at a huge disadvantage? I've read it is helpful to be able to continue your research even if you go to a small liberal arts school and be able to incorporate it into your teaching if possible, but I can't really do this with mine. The only silver lining is that my research is very methods focused and I know statistics/research methods pretty well. Perhaps I can focus on that?

 

That is probably going to create difficulties for you. One aspect of (most) job applications, most certainly for any R1 TT job but also for liberal arts colleges is a statement about your future research interests. Teaching is indeed very important to liberal arts colleges, but these days there are enough strong candidates that they can also require a strong research portfolio for hiring and for tenure. This research will have somewhat of a different flavor than at R1 institutions because you'll be mostly involving undergraduates, rather than graduate students, in your research and you will therefore need to be a lot more independent -- but it's still a very important component of the profile of a hirable candidate.

 

Your future interests are supposed to grow out of your PhD work, and you'll spend some time during the application process thinking about how you might explain your dissertation (and other) research as fitting into a larger research program. If you will not be able to continue any of your current work at a certain school, that will certainly hurt your ability to publish and conduct research at a timely fashion there. You'll have to start over from scratch, and maybe even rethink your research program. Your past experiences will therefore not be a good indication of your potential to succeed in the future. That will mean, to most people, that you are not a good fit and hence a dangerous hire for that school. If you know that this is where you want to end up, I'd start thinking right now about how you might pitch your research so it can be relevant for the jobs you are interested in, and how some aspect of them can be carried on there. Then I'd get started on doing exactly that kind of research, so you can prove that you have the experience to successfully carry it out. I understand that this is very difficult to do, but if you are unable to turn yourself into someone who could fit in a liberal college environment and work with the resources you have there, I think you'll have a hard time getting hired. Sorry I don't have a better answer than that.

[Lisa44201]

I'm not so sure you wouldn't be first author; if they only did data collection, and you wrote everything else, including the analysis, I would think they'd take second author.

[neuropsych76]

That is probably going to create difficulties for you. One aspect of (most) job applications, most certainly for any R1 TT job but also for liberal arts colleges is a statement about your future research interests. Teaching is indeed very important to liberal arts colleges, but these days there are enough strong candidates that they can also require a strong research portfolio for hiring and for tenure. This research will have somewhat of a different flavor than at R1 institutions because you'll be mostly involving undergraduates, rather than graduate students, in your research and you will therefore need to be a lot more independent -- but it's still a very important component of the profile of a hirable candidate.

 

Your future interests are supposed to grow out of your PhD work, and you'll spend some time during the application process thinking about how you might explain your dissertation (and other) research as fitting into a larger research program. If you will not be able to continue any of your current work at a certain school, that will certainly hurt your ability to publish and conduct research at a timely fashion there. You'll have to start over from scratch, and maybe even rethink your research program. Your past experiences will therefore not be a good indication of your potential to succeed in the future. That will mean, to most people, that you are not a good fit and hence a dangerous hire for that school. If you know that this is where you want to end up, I'd start thinking right now about how you might pitch your research so it can be relevant for the jobs you are interested in, and how some aspect of them can be carried on there. Then I'd get started on doing exactly that kind of research, so you can prove that you have the experience to successfully carry it out. I understand that this is very difficult to do, but if you are unable to turn yourself into someone who could fit in a liberal college environment and work with the resources you have there, I think you'll have a hard time getting hired. Sorry I don't have a better answer than that.

 

Thank you for your insight fuzzylogician. Unfortunately, I think you are totally correct. I really do not want to teach at an R1 school which I know is sac-religious to even mention to my department, but I know myself and I would simply not be happy doing research full time and I really value education. I still have to do my dissertation and I know it will be quite a grind for me.

 

I suppose I can try to emphasize how like Lisa44201 mentioned I can work with other faculty who have scanner access, but that seems like quite a stretch honestly. If I were hiring someone needing off-campus resources to do research it would be a risk and since these jobs are so competitive I would certainly prefer a safer candidate.

I'm honestly pretty lost on how I would pitch my research to schools who do not have scanner access. Again, I could try to emphasize my statistics background, but that really isn't a research area by itself. Ah, this is pretty stressful haha. If anyone has any suggestions that would be fantastic, but I know this will probably be something I'll have to figure out by myself.

 

Thank you guys!

[juilletmercredi]

I actually just went to a conference at my university this past Friday on working in SLACs - what the lifestyle is like and how to be attractive to them.  I also really want to teach at a SLAC, so I was super excited to be there.  (I also went to a SLAC myself).

 

One of the major things they said was that you need to find a way to scale your research down to the SLAC size, including incorporating undergraduates and finding a way to do the research that you want to do with the resources available to you at your SLAC.  To that end, I think saying that you will collaborate with others who use an fMRI scanner - assuming that fMRI is central to your research and the only way that you can get it done - is a bad idea, unless the SLAC you are applying to has a consortium agreement with another large school that you know definitely has a scanner (examples might be Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr with UPenn, or Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Amherst with UMass-Amherst).  They want to know that you can independently conduct research and set up your own lab, and constant collaboration for ALL of your research is not a feasible plan of action to explain.

 

They also said that one of the common misconceptions about SLACs is that the faculty don't do research, or much of it.  They said that (especially at the most selective ones, like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Amherst, etc.) they are still expected to do research and spend 40-50% of their time on it, sometimes a bit more, because they are only teaching 2/2 or 3/2 loads.  It's just that the quantity of research is less.  But they still need 1-2 publications in peer-reviewed journals a year to get tenure, and those of us in the sciences are still expected to successfully obtain grant funding.  If you're aiming for a more middling or lower ranked SLAC the expectations are also less (maybe a pub every other year) but they are also teaching heavier loads (anything from 3/3 to 4/4).  However, the conference I went to was for selective/top small colleges, so they spoke more about the experience there.  It really was a balance, not all teaching.

 

So they say it's a mistake to apply to a SLAC (at least in the top 100ish) and assume or act like you won't do research or don't like research, because they are very much looking for scholars and scientists and they want evidence that you will be productive.  It's not just helpful; it's required, and you're required to explain in your application materials how you will include it in your research and incorporate undergrads.

 

I also asked about the teaching experience thing.  As a psychologist I've had a variety of experiences, which ranged from mostly being a grader all the way to preparing lectures, leading seminars and preparing assignments and exams...but I've never been the instructor of record for a whole class myself.  I likely won't have the experience before I apply, either (writing my dissertation now on a fellowship, and I'll be doing a research-based postdoc for the next two years).  The professors I talked to said that that was fine - of course they like to see instructor experience, but they've hired plenty of people without it, as long as you can talk in a compelling way about how your past experiences prepared you for teaching.  I also checked out recent hires at some of the top colleges and it seems like that's true - actually, most of the new hires in my field (psychology) didn't have experience teaching a full class themselves.  But almost all of them had research-based postdocs!

 

Actually, by perusing the CVs of those who got hired at top colleges it seems like many of them would've also been competitive for R1s, too.

 

How early are you in your program?  Can you develop another line of research/another interest that can be done at small LACs?  For example, since my interests are also methodological, I'm also using large national datasets in my research and I plan to have a line of research that is based primarily on large national datasets.  That way I also have some research to work with while I'm setting up my lab at a SLAC (I do longitudinal studies).

[neuropsych76]

 

I actually just went to a conference at my university this past Friday on working in SLACs - what the lifestyle is like and how to be attractive to them.  I also really want to teach at a SLAC, so I was super excited to be there.  (I also went to a SLAC myself).

 

One of the major things they said was that you need to find a way to scale your research down to the SLAC size, including incorporating undergraduates and finding a way to do the research that you want to do with the resources available to you at your SLAC.  To that end, I think saying that you will collaborate with others who use an fMRI scanner - assuming that fMRI is central to your research and the only way that you can get it done - is a bad idea, unless the SLAC you are applying to has a consortium agreement with another large school that you know definitely has a scanner (examples might be Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr with UPenn, or Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Amherst with UMass-Amherst).  They want to know that you can independently conduct research and set up your own lab, and constant collaboration for ALL of your research is not a feasible plan of action to explain.

 

They also said that one of the common misconceptions about SLACs is that the faculty don't do research, or much of it.  They said that (especially at the most selective ones, like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Amherst, etc.) they are still expected to do research and spend 40-50% of their time on it, sometimes a bit more, because they are only teaching 2/2 or 3/2 loads.  It's just that the quantity of research is less.  But they still need 1-2 publications in peer-reviewed journals a year to get tenure, and those of us in the sciences are still expected to successfully obtain grant funding.  If you're aiming for a more middling or lower ranked SLAC the expectations are also less (maybe a pub every other year) but they are also teaching heavier loads (anything from 3/3 to 4/4).  However, the conference I went to was for selective/top small colleges, so they spoke more about the experience there.  It really was a balance, not all teaching.

 

So they say it's a mistake to apply to a SLAC (at least in the top 100ish) and assume or act like you won't do research or don't like research, because they are very much looking for scholars and scientists and they want evidence that you will be productive.  It's not just helpful; it's required, and you're required to explain in your application materials how you will include it in your research and incorporate undergrads.

 

I also asked about the teaching experience thing.  As a psychologist I've had a variety of experiences, which ranged from mostly being a grader all the way to preparing lectures, leading seminars and preparing assignments and exams...but I've never been the instructor of record for a whole class myself.  I likely won't have the experience before I apply, either (writing my dissertation now on a fellowship, and I'll be doing a research-based postdoc for the next two years).  The professors I talked to said that that was fine - of course they like to see instructor experience, but they've hired plenty of people without it, as long as you can talk in a compelling way about how your past experiences prepared you for teaching.  I also checked out recent hires at some of the top colleges and it seems like that's true - actually, most of the new hires in my field (psychology) didn't have experience teaching a full class themselves.  But almost all of them had research-based postdocs!

 

Actually, by perusing the CVs of those who got hired at top colleges it seems like many of them would've also been competitive for R1s, too.

 

How early are you in your program?  Can you develop another line of research/another interest that can be done at small LACs?  For example, since my interests are also methodological, I'm also using large national datasets in my research and I plan to have a line of research that is based primarily on large national datasets.  That way I also have some research to work with while I'm setting up my lab at a SLAC (I do longitudinal studies).

 

 

Thank you so much for your comments as I found them to be really insightful and helpful!

 

I am in my 3rd year of my program, so right around the halfway point. I think your suggestion to work on national datasets is actually a rather brilliant solution to this problem. I can definitely analyze pre-existing data now and probably can do a paper in that area even if my dissertation is on my own data. Doing at least one project on existing data would look good for this right? I am going to investigate this more, but I would think that it would a nice sell to liberal arts schools if I could teach undergrads how to analyze fMRI data. All I would need is a computer to access the datasets and I wouldn’t have to worry about collaborating with another school.

 

And honestly, I think focusing on methodology is better for me personally anyway. I think the reason I got so burned out with research is that I appreciate breadth more than depth. It's just how my brain works. I get burned out pretty quickly if I focus on one area too much. I'd love to learn methods really well and analyze various datasets in different ways.

Edited November 7, 2013 by neuropsych76

[danieleWrites]

Not much to add to the topic, aside from this bit of wisdom from some literature professors who may not have anything to offer you:

 

Small colleges want people who have more flexibility in research and teaching because they don't have the money for faculty to be specialists. The other thing is that they don't have the facilities larger colleges have. For example, they may not have the machines you need on hand. Your ability to demonstrate flexibility and, more importantly, your ability to demonstrate that you can solve research problems that involve equipment and funding are going to be key. Grant-writing is your friend. So is creative use of the community.

 

What does the type of SLAC you're interested in want in tenured faculty? It pretty much starts with money. For example, if you haven't gotten your own research grants, or participated in the process in a way you can put out in an interview, do that. An SLAC would prefer to spend someone else's money for your research. Well, all of them would, but SLAC's have less room to negotiate on that. Are your research and coursework highly specialized? Can you get into a department and teach outside of your specialty? Aside from the basic courses that they can pay adjuncts and TAs to teach? Can you be involved in graduate student theses outside of your specialty?