A fellow job seeker discovered a snafu when uploading the e-letterhead to schools’ online application systems. (This is NOT related to Interfolio use, but you might just SAVE AS PDF for all letterhead usage, to be safe.) See below.

Begin forwarded message:

While I am sure most of  us check the documents we upload for online applications, I have noticed that the 2-page digital department letterhead, if saved as a Word document will show up as letterhead only (without YOUR LETTER) when uploaded (even if it shows up with text on the computer you are using). It is necessary to save it as a pdf for your cut and paste text to show up.

On a Mac, saving to PDF is as easy as opening the doc in Word, then clicking File>Print. One of the “print” options is to “Save As PDF”. I don’t have a PC handy, but googling instructions seems like you have the same option on a Windows machine running Word. If not, you can always use the Macs in 408 to save things.

Also, an issue that was raised in the job-mentoring discussion this past Thursday: Sometimes jobs require you to save all your files into a SINGLE PDF, which is easiest to do with Adobe Acrobat Pro (not the free Reader), but that program is pricy. Instead of purchasing it, use the machines in 408 or 221a — they all have Adobe Pro installed and you can easily compile multiple files into a single PDF and rearrange pages, etc.

Other PDF compilation programs, for PCs:

• To create a “PDF printer” – works like a “normal” printer on a Windows PC for any application: http://www.pdfill.com/freewriter.html
• To merge, split, etc. PDF files: http://www.pdfill.com/pdf_tools_free.html
• For minimal editing and annotation of PDFs: http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer

for Macs:

• Print to PDF in any version of Word
• use Preview, which comes free with all Macs

for both platforms:

• http://www.ilovepdf.com/

Generally speaking, we recommend Interfolio. It’s pricing structure is easy to understand and to choose which option you might want (one-year, multiple years, etc.) Which option you choose might depend on how good your chances are on the market given whatever your area of expertise is, but it’s always the case that the more years you choose to stay with Interfolio, the better the overall deal will be. None of this is to say that Interfolio is cheap, but all of it is relative to the number of applications you send out. Like the GREs and transcripts, there’s an initial fee and a per-dossier-sent fee. Check out their website for the most updated pricing structures. They even have document-scanning services for those of you who still prefer print (or can’t figure out how to use the e-letterhead. Oh wait, that’s your advisors

Also, check out this Profhacker post, which outlines excellent recommendations for thinking about compiling your dossier. No need to repeat good advice when you can go to the source!

1. MLA Convention interviews
2. Phone Interviews

More and more, due to the (sometimes unnecessary) expense of sending a search committee to MLA to interview candidates, we’re seeing more phone interviews, so we’ve added that as a new category with some discussion. (This is good because if grad students can schedule more phone interviews, then they may not have to pay to attend MLA! But that’s a hard decision to make, and usually one that has to be made early in the process.

Also, sometimes phone interviews are bumped up to video interviews, which are a little better in terms of reacting to people’s facial expressions and tones of voices. More information on each is covered in the context-specific posts about these kinds of interviews.

For job seekers, the research agenda is important because it is a document that many research-intensive schools will want to see as part of the application process. Basically, the reason they want this is because they want to know that you are a good enough researcher to get tenure at their research-intensive school. For some schools (think Big Ten, etc.), “resaerch-intensive” may mean that you are required to publish a book (sometimes two!) before going up for tenure in your sixth year there. Usually, but not always, your first book will be a modification of your dissertation, so they want to know how you plan on extending your research *beyond* your dissertation.

Schools that aren’t research-intensive rarely ask a job candidate for a research agenda, but it’s still a great document to prepare now because, likely, you’ll have to create one as part of your third-year review (at many kinds of schools, although probably not at teaching-intensive schools like community colleges). So start now.

This document may sound daunting, but it’s really just serving to tell the story about your area of interest. You can google “research agenda” and find lots of advice and examples. Most of them will be for academic careers in the sciences, such as this one. The advice is still mostly relevant, however, for humanities scholars, since the point is to show you know what you’re doing when it comes to research, and that you can hit the ground running once you are hired.

I found a great checklist of things to include in a research agenda (pdf) and how to write one on the University of Washington website. There are examples of research agendas in the humanities in the Academic Job Search Handbook, but I need to find my copy so I can bring them to our workshops! Aim for one to one-and-a-half pages, single-spaced, for this document (at least to start). Follow the Format and Content recommended in the linked PDF. It’s pretty spot-on, and includes a summary of your dissertation, which you need anyways.

Keep in mind that sometimes the Future Research (or, um, even the dissertation summary) will be a fiction. What I mean is that sometimes you may have to guess how your future research will play out — that’s not the same as lying, so don’t freak out. Use this as an opportunity to start thinking about yourself as a scholar BEYOND your time in grad school and writing the diss. Remember that this document isn’t a contract; think of it like a proposal to yourself. What do you want to work on next and how does that relate to your current work? Sometimes you will become the scholar you forecasted, and sometimes you will end up changing your focus to become something slightly different. Both are OK in terms of research agendas.

(Heck, I didn’t really know what kind of scholar I was, and couldn’t clearly articulate what my research agenda was until I was in my third year on the tenure track. This isn’t a great, or very organized, way of approaching your career, but sometimes it happens. And it’s OK. But it will also reflect your current ability to apply for certain kinds of jobs. We’ll talk more about that f2f.)

lind-philosophy

In her philosophy, Lind examines attributes that she believes makes her a great teacher. Notice that it’s done in an analytical style, though, not in a self-aggrandizing way (of course not!) Carol’s humbleness as a person comes through in her teaching philosophy. Notice, too, that her framework — like I mentioned can happen in the other post about how to write a teaching philosophy — differs from the traditional set-up. Since Carol teaches a range of courses, her approach differs slightly from other examples, but it works well to help us see her range. Note, too, the stylization of the drop cap and the Beowulf references at the beginning, which personalize her philosophy by introducing to readers one of her main areas of interest.

breu-philosophy

Breu’s philosophy is more traditional (i.e., typical) in its format, and also works well. He immediately announces its intentions in the title: “The Democratic Classroom,” which he then defines and explains in the opening paragraph. In the second paragraph, he offers specific examples of how this philosophy plays out in his classrooms and includes a few theorists to support his approach. In the third paragraph, he moves into talking about course content, specifically (as opposed to the “organization” which he’d previously outlined), and provides concrete examples from his 560 and other (in the following paragraph) classes. These examples all point back to and support his democractic philosophy. The last two paragraphs (which may actually be one — I converted them from Word to PDF and may have goofed that up) offer summarizations that point back to the bigger picture and conclusions, as well as offer info about students reactions to his style (i.e., “consistently high student evaluations”).

So, both of these are great models, coming from two different types of scholar-teachers who cover a host of classes — Lind’s is more experimental in its style and Breu’s is more traditional — and both work to highlight the strengths of each teacher.

Generally speaking, teaching philosophies have the following four parts, although you may find successful examples that break from these trends (if you do, let me know, because I have yet to find any):

1. Introductory paragraph. This opening paragraph summarizes your personal philosophy of teaching. In it, you will introduce a theoretical framework that you draw on to support your teaching practices. (iow, the purpose of the teaching philosophy is to show that you actually have researched and reflected on your teaching practice). The theoretical framework can be an area of pedagogy (critical, cultural, feminist, etc.), a combination of them (critical, cultural, AND feminist, etc.), or something else altogether (e.g., I call mine a “Happenings” pedagogy, based on Geoff Sirc’s book called English Composition as a Happening, which I mix with a multiliteracies framework, based on The New London Group’s work. Keep in mind that mine is longer and less formal than yours will likely be, but the basic outline of the formulaic structure is the same).

It’s likely that you DO have a philosophy, but you may not yet have articulated it (which is the hard part). The workshop will help you with this part, if you’re having trouble. The things to keep in mind with this paragraph is that you need to (1) describe, (2) define, and (3) justify/explain what your philosophy is and why you use it, but it needs to be in broad terms (i.e., applicable to any kind of class you might teach), because you’ll reserve the specific examples for the next two paragraphs.

2. Teaching example from Class #1. These two example paragraphs are often where students run into difficulties — they stay too “meta” and don’t get concrete enough. The point of both the teaching example paragraphs is to show how you enact your philosophy (from paragraph #1) in actual classroom practice as well as to show search committees what you can (and want to) teach.

Generally, you’ll have two different courses you’ll want to talk about (to show your teaching breadth — luckily, while at ISU, you’ll have the chance to teach LOTS of different classes, which isn’t the case for PhDs at most universities, so this is where you’ll stand out!). You should choose classes that reflect your area of expertise as well as the kind of job you want. For instance, if you want to teach at a small school where you’ll be asked to teach one section of first-year composition every year, make SURE to include an example from having taught English 101 or 101.10. And if you’re writing your dissertation about women and gender studies, then make sure (in your second example) to include an example from that class which you’ve likely taught as part of your required Teaching Internship. (Right? Makes sense, huh. Show your breadth and depth! They’ll hire you in a heartbeat!) Which course you put in the second paragraph and which in the third paragraph (below) will depend on what you want to emphasize. This may be a nuanced matter that we can talk more about in the workshop.

Now, another way you may want to think about picking which classes to write about is by choosing which assignments in your classes went really well and that exemplify your teaching philosophy. Some job market candidates may want to pick an assignment as “small” as an in-class discussion about a particular book/novel they assigned students to read so as to showcase the course concept, why you chose the book/novel you did, and how you led the discussion (or didn’t, according to your particular pedagogical style) — all in a way that allows you to pinpoint how you use your teaching philosophy in practice. (iow, make sure to explicitly connect your practice back to your theory, as discussed in the first paragraph of your philosophy!). However, the majority of these teaching example paragraphs should be pretty specific and practice in nature — describe how and why you gave the assignment you did, what the outcomes were, what the students learned from it, why you wanted them to learn X from it, whether they did or not, whether they liked it or not (especially if you can include teaching evaluation comments as evidence). This will usually all make you look good, although sometimes powerful philosophy statements can also come from failed teaching experiments. Be careful of those, because they can backfire.

The trick is you only have a paragraph to explain each class/assignment. And these paragraphs are only about 250 words or less.
3. Teaching example from Class #2. Repeat above, using a different class example. Make sure it makes sense how you transition between the two examples. For instance, if you provide a “small” example like the discussion mentioned above, then show a “bigger picture” example (like a final project/paper, etc.) in the second teaching-example paragraph. And both should explicitly refer back to your overall philosophical approach, as outlined in the opening paragraph.
4. Conclusion. The conclusion simply allows you to summarize your examples in relation to your philosophy. (It gives you a little more room to do so, iow.) It also allows you to point out particular areas of teaching that you’d like to focus on in the future — not necessarily classes you’d like to teach (although that may also be applicable), but stuff like: “I’ve reflected on my own teaching and have learned X about successful strategies, but I also want to explore Y.” — So it’s kinda like a mini-dissertation about your teaching practices where you present future research possibilities. The conclusion also gives you a chance to summarize the range of courses you’ve taught and show that your philosophy applies to all of them (which, hopefully, it does… and if it doesn’t, perhaps either your philsophy doesn’t work in all cases, or you need to examine how to better choose your classes and/or descrbe your philosophy so that it does fit all the cases you want to talk about. Again, we can talk about this in the workshop.

Finally, you can google all sorts of example Teaching Philosophies and follow their models. Keep in mind that the TOTAL length is two single-spaced pages, including name and title/description. No more!

Duke University’s Thomson Writing Program Fellows

Georgia Tech’s Brittain Fellows

Berkeley’s list of postdocs in the humanities

Harry Ransom Center fellowships (UT-Austin)

Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas – UT-Austin. (I swear I’m not making that center’s name up! It’s for post-diss work, if your diss was about a “great book”.)

ISIS database (must be accessed from a university IP address)

Update: Here’s the National Postdoctoral Association website, with information on core competencies that students should get from postdoc experiences.

I found a copy of my cover letter for my job at ISU. Compare it to Katherine’s listed in the other cover-letter post.

I’m attaching it because I’ve used Comments (in Word) throughout to explain the different rhetorical moves I’m making. I asked Jim K if he had an old copy of the ad so you could compare the two, as this letter specifically addresses the ad’s language/call. Some of this won’t be as relevant as Katherine’s letter since this was for an advanced assistant position, not someone directly out of school (i.e., the dissertation paragraph is replaced here with a research agenda paragraph). Just be aware of the differences. Also be aware that this letter is by no means exemplary, even though it did get me the job. Plenty of things I would change (small changes) about it now, including the font, which at the time matched the font on my CV, which got mailed together.

Enjoy,
cheryl.

ISU-coverletter-commented

I have linked the SWF file of my job talk presentation here. (You need the free Flash Player to view it.) I built it using a slideshow template in Flash in part because I didn’t know how to use PowerPoint at the time. It’s pretty basic and is certainly more functional than pretty in some respects, but the thing you should keep in mind is that I did not actually SAY any of the information that was on my slides.

So, for instance, when I talked [on Research: Book Project slide] about the visual rhetoric CD I did, called ix, I did not actually name all 13 terms I have listed on that slide, but I did talk about that text’s rhetorical mission and how it jumpstarted the research for my dissertation project. And when I talked about how I viewed my editorial role with Kairos as scholarship [on Researching: Kairos editorship], I did not say that Kairos has a readership of 45,000 people a month. I didn’t need to because that information, while important to show the legitimacy of an online journal, isn’t important enough to say out loud in the context of a job talk. Same with the list of books in the grad class I was highlighting.

iow, use your visual presentation – if you have or need one – wisely by supplementing your speaking with text and images that are relevant to your talk. But DO NOT REPEAT what is already on the slides. That’s just BORING. A powerpoint shouldn’t replace the talk itself, as you can see from viewing mine — it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to a general audience without my providing the oral framework. So I’ve written up a brief description of what each slide (or section of slides) was attempting to accomplish.