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Should an ABD seeking a SLAC job prioritize teaching experience or their dissertation?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student asks:

I am an ABD candidate who will be on the market next year. I have two solo-taught logic courses and am trying to place at a SLAC.

Even though I am slated to teach medical ethics next AY, I feel uncomfortable with how little teaching experience I have.

I have 2/5 of my dissertation chapters done. Should I aim for a 2-2 next AY (with another prep) and risk slowing down my dissertation progress?

One thing I am worried about is over-committing myself so that I have 2 new preps, a dissertation, and a bunch of applications to fill out. But I don't think this is unique; this labor comes with the territory!

Good question. I noticed that the OP didn't mention anything about publications, so before I respond to their query more directly, let me say something about that.

In my experience, although many SLACs prioritize teaching, hiring committees at them may want to feel reasonably confident that a job-candidate is likely to publish enough to get tenure. Of course, different SLACs have different standards for a tenurable research output, so there's no simple rule for job-candidates to follow there. But, the relevant point here seems to me to be this: if the OP hasn't published much (or at all), then they should absolutely focus on that while continuing the other things they are doing (dissertating and teaching a class here or there).

That being said, if the OP has a decent publishing record, I'm going to suggest that they prioritize getting more teaching experience. In my experience, people at SLACs can care a great deal both about how much solo teaching experience a candidate has and the diversity of courses the person has taught before and is thus already prepared to teach heading into a job. Given that the OP has only taught a couple of logic courses, I think getting more teaching experience in a wider variety of courses is likely to benefit them in applying for SLAC jobs. Finally, while I don't know much about their personal situation, it seems to me that all things being equal, between now and the fall the OP should be able to get a fair amount done on their dissertation. If that's the case (and they have a decent publishing record), I wouldn't worry too much about "overcommitting" to teach 2 courses. Most SLAC jobs have higher teaching loads than that, and my sense is that it can look good to a hiring committee to show that you can handle a workload more like the kind you will experience once you get a job!

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

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4 responses to “Should an ABD seeking a SLAC job prioritize teaching experience or their dissertation?”

  1. The Real SLAC Prof

    I agree with Marcus’s advice about prioritizing publication, if OP hasn’t published. At my SLAC, it would be challenging to get the offer without at least one publication out or forthcoming. But the number of publications past one or two isn’t especially important to us.
    We certainly value teaching experience. This is probably why, in the past 10 years, we have not hired an ABD applicant, even though we are, in principle, open to doing so. I would say ABDs make up maybe 10-15% of the first round interview pool.
    The ABD candidates that we have interviewed have taught multiple classes, although they haven’t always displayed a great deal of breadth in their teaching. As an aside, experience in teaching logic, while obviously its own thing and removed from other types of philosophy teaching, is great (and rarer than one might think)! OP doesn’t reveal their AOS, but one thing we’ve valued in ABDs is experience teaching courses in one’s area of research expertise, when one doesn’t do value theory. That is, a lot of Philosophy of Science applicants have taught ethics, but they have never taught Philosophy of Science. Often it is challenging getting courses in one’s area of specialization as a grad student, but if one can do so, I think it is an advantage.
    This might be controversial, and all SLACs are different, but thinking back over years of searches, I don’t think what sets some candidates apart is really down to number of classes taught. Instead, it is the dreaded “fit.” In particular, it is a kind of intellectual breadth that is actually quite rare. At my SLAC, what we most prize are generalists. Yes, you can partially demonstrate this by the breadth of classes taught, but what we are looking for goes beyond this. There is a kind of generalist mindset that is displayed in one’s research interests, publications, and how you talk philosophy as well. For us, a kind of intellectual narrowness in one’s research is not going to be offset by teaching a bunch of different classes.
    I don’t know if any of that is helpful to OP. I think in this market aiming for a specific type of job probably isn’t prudent. Do good work of the type you love, and let the cards fall where they may is really all one can do. I don’t think maximizing the number or type of classes taught is going to necessarily set you apart when it comes to being a successful SLAC applicant.

    Reply
  2. OP

    I’m the OP. Marcus and @The Real SLAC Prof, thank you so much! This is all immensely helpful.
    To answer a couple of things: I’ve got multiple publications, though none in any top-20 journals.
    My AOS is also in value theory, so I suppose the teaching advice @The Real SLAC Prof gives doesn’t directly apply to me. I’d be interested to hear what a department like yours would value re: teaching in a value theory AOS candidate.
    I also want to clarify: I am not interested in the number of courses per se; I am interested in maximizing my chances to draw from experience when a committee asks me how I would teach course X.
    Thanks again! This is all very helpful.

    Reply
  3. academic migrant

    Sorry this may just be repeating what others say. If you haven’t published your completed chapters yet, it’s worth trying to put them into a decent journal. Try to find those that are fast enough. Good specialist journals are also good. For fast enough, a someone ok ish source is the APA journal survey. Check the journals that fall under the intersection of good enough and fast enough. Avoid especially those that had more than one horror story on the systematic level. (Daily Nous has named at least one journal.)

    Reply
  4. Sam

    This isn’t an either or. To have a chance at a permanent job you need to have top 20 publications and a good teaching record.

    Reply

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