In an email query this weekend, a reader asked:
"Teaching schools" (whatever vague and ill-defined collection of institutions that picks out) claim to value teaching. So one would think that applications at teaching schools would be evaluated along broadly the following lines:
(1) Will this person stick (e.g. Can this person do whatever is needed to get tenure, and are they going to stay and try to get it?)? If no, discard the application; if yes, go on.
(2) Do they have evidence of their ability to teach? If no, discard the application, if yes, go on.
(3) Among those that are left, look for those with the most evidence of having ability to meet our teaching needs.
This seems sensible. But here's the deal: I meet (1) for sure. And I have taught (actually taught; not just TA'd) more than 40 courses. And I've taught broadly. And I have great evaluations. So I *feel* like teaching schools should be beating down my doors. But they aren't.
What's more is that when I see who gets jobs, they've often taught maybe a half dozen courses. So what gives? Why are so many `teaching schools' overlooking all my teaching experience? Let's suppose for the sake of discussion that I'm not wildly messing up other parts of the application (I've had (and sometimes paid) enough people to look at my materials that that's plausibly the case.).
The question, I guess, boils down to this: why don't teaching schools actually seem, in practice, to value teaching experience? In what bizarre-o world does it make sense to *hire* someone with demonstrably *less* experience doing what you claim is important in your job than many of the people you've refused to even *interview*?
I appreciate and empathize with the reader's frustrations. But allow me to offer a few thoughts in reply, and then open things up for discussion.
It's impossible, without seeing this person's dossier, to know what might be holding them back on the market. In my experience, it could be anything–including dossier materials themselves (as, in my experience, a fair number of candidates present themselves poorly in their cover letters, research statements, and teaching statements, irrespective of their accomplishments–which we can talk about if you like). However, one first reaction is that they may be underestimating what search committees at teaching schools are looking for. In their query, this reader imagines search committees at teaching schools going through something like a three-step process:
- Will this candidate get tenure and not jump ship?
- Do they demonstrate the ability to teach well?
- Can they address the department's teaching needs?
In my experience, all of these things are indeed important. But they are by no means the only things that search committee members consider. They also consider how well a given candidate fits the department and institution where this is much broader than the courses one can teach (including idiosyncracies of individual search committee members); how original and interesting the candidate's research and teaching appear; what a candidate's online presence is like; what background the candidate has in service to the university and students outside of the classroom. Whether hiring departments should focus on some of these things is of course a normative question. Still, my sense is that search committees at teaching schools can care about all of these things, and tend to evaluate candidates holistically, not just narrowly focusing on whether the person is likely to get tenure and can teach courses effectively in the department (as an important aside, my sense is that one important reason for this is that there are usually dozens of candidates who satisfy questions 1-3 above).
A related issue here is that one should not, in my experience, underestimate the extent to which teaching schools can care about research. Generally speaking, people at teaching schools know they are not going to hire the next Kripke, or David Lewis, or Korsgaard, or whomever. That being said, people at many teaching schools do care about research–and in addition to qualitative judgments about how interesting a candidate's research appears, my experience is that teaching schools may care about quantity of research. During my time on the market, I found that the more I published, the more interviews I got at teaching schools–and, in some empirical research I did on recent hires, I found the publication quantity seemed very important at teaching schools (something which also coheres with my experience working at such a school: departments, tenure and promotion committees, deans, and other administrators tend to look favorably on research output). Finally, one reason why search committees at teaching schools may care about this is as a kind of 'tie-breaker.' If you have a lot of candidates who otherwise look similar (which in my experience is not uncommon), one obvious difference may be research output.
Finally, I think it is possible that for many jobs at teaching institutions, the answer to question 3 ('Can they address the department's teaching needs?') may be a threshold issue. For instance, in my department, there may be three particular courses that we would need a new hire to teach. So, if we were doing a hire, every candidate who had background experience with those courses would have what we are looking for–and the ability to teach other courses in addition to those may or may not play any role in deliberations (and, among those who can teach what one is looking for, one may use other things–research, service, etc.–when deciding who to interview). While this may seem disappointing–given how I've said teaching experience matters–I still think the broader one's teaching experience is, the better: as it may increase the number of departments one's experience makes one a good fit for.
I realize that, in an obvious sense, all of the answers I have just given may seem disappointing. What are teaching schools looking for? In a market as terrible as the one we find ourselves in, the honest-to-goodness answer is probably: everything. They are looking for people with good research outputs, teaching experience, 'fit', originality, projects they find interesting, how well one's dossier is put together, and so on. As someone who suffered on the market for seven years myself, I know all too well how impossible of an endeavor it can seem to figure out what hiring committees want. The only answer I was ever able to find–and one that worked for me over the course of the better part of a decade–was to work as far as I could to improve as a candidate across the board: to publish more, design and teach new courses, innovate as a teacher, and so on. At the end of the day, that is all one can do in a market like this. I really wish I had more comforting answers. But I don't. :/
To end on a somewhat more positive note, I think it may be worth it for candidates like our reader to seek out and consider community college jobs, if they aren't already. I have some friends who work in full-time faculty jobs at community colleges, and I have mostly heard great things. Community colleges are (or so I hear) looking for teachers, and I expect the more teaching experience one has, the more competitive for these jobs one is likely to be. I also expect CC jobs may have fewer applicants, as they do not seem to be advertised as widely. While some people put CC jobs down, I again have mostly heard very positive things from people who work at them. Fwiw
But these are just my thoughts. What do you all think?
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