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INSIDE THIS ISSUE - April 22, 2010
2. The Job Hunt: Applying to Positions at Liberal Arts
Colleges
by Marissa Martino Golden, Ph.D.
April 22, 2010
A Note from the Editor
Tracy Steen, Ph.D.
Graduation is just around the corner, and this means that some ABD Survival Guide readers will soon be ABD's no more! Nothing pleases me more than when I receive e-mails like this:
"I want to let you know that yesterday I successfully defended my dissertation.
I cannot thank you enough for all the encouragement and advice I found in
the survival guide."
--Adriana Martínez, Ph.D.
Congratulations, Dr. Martínez! Congratulations to everyone who is moving toward Ph.D. status this semester, this year, or this decade. In the spirit of moving forward, this issue of the ABD Survival Guide features an article by Dr. Marissa Martino Golden with practical suggestions about how to land an academic position at a liberal arts college.
Dr. Golden received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and she is currently a tenured professor at Bryn Mawr College, a small, academically rigorous, liberal arts college located on a picturesque campus in the western suburbs of Philadelphia.
Yes, this is a photograph of the actual campus of Bryn Mawr College. Could you see yourself walking across the lawn to teach a small seminar class? If so, be sure to read Dr. Martino Golden's helpful suggestions about how to land a dream job at a liberal arts college.
Feel free to post the Inspirational Quotes that follow the article in your new office!
The Job Hunt: Applying to Positions at Liberal Arts Colleges
Marissa Martino Golden
Associate Professor of Political Science
Bryn Mawr College
The economic outlook is bleak. Harvard has a hiring freeze. There were only 39 jobs posted for positions in German Studies in 2009. All the more reason to cast your net widely and consider applying for jobs at small liberal arts colleges.
The advantages of working at a liberal arts college are myriad. Teaching
is highly valued, classes tend to be small and students tend 
to
be bright and motivated. You have opportunities to get to know colleagues
in a wide range of disciplines outside your department. And colleges are often
located in pleasant locales ranging from major metropolitan areas to small
towns and villages throughout the United States.
So how does one go about getting these jobs? First, liberal arts colleges are not community colleges. They are looking for teacher/scholars not just teachers. They are looking for the same qualities in your dissertation that a major research university (hereafter referred to as a Research I University) wants. And they want you to have a track record of publications or at least evidence that you are on the road to a successful scholarly career.
But they also are looking for your teaching skills. Here, the key is to craft a teaching statement that feels genuine rather than boilerplate. And to be able to talk about specific courses you'd like to teach and how you would teach them.
Finally, liberal arts colleges will be evaluating you as a potential colleague. The most important thing you can do when applying for these jobs is to do your homework. Familiarize yourself with the college and its culture. Familiarize yourself with the faculty in your would-be department just as you would at a big public university. But most importantly familiarize yourself with what a liberal arts college experience is all about.
Good job candidates, with quality dissertations and strong letters of recommendations, are a dime a dozen. But what stands out in the liberal arts context is job applicants who seem to "get it," whose application letters, conference interviews and on-campus call-backs all reflect an appreciation of the small college experience.
What follows provides would-be applicants with a step-be-step guide regarding how to tailor your application for positions at liberal arts colleges.
The initial application
Your application should consist of the same materials as it would for any job:
• A copy of your CV
• A letter of application (hereafter referred to as cover letter)
• A writing sample
• A Teaching Statement
• A Research Statement
• Letters of recommendation
The CV and writing sample do not need to be specially tailored for liberal arts jobs. However, the other materials should be.
First, make it crystal clear in your cover letter that you are specifically interested in jobs at liberal arts colleges. Aside from having a good dissertation project and strong letters of recommendation, the most important thing at this stage is to convince the search committee that you are genuinely interested in this type of position.
Members of search committees at liberal arts colleges don't like to get burned. They don't want to invest all their resources in a brilliant scholar who, at the end of the day, is going to turn down their offer in favor of a position at a research university. So be specific and show that you "get" their mission and culture and desire to be a part of it.
Second, your teaching statement is critically important. Try to avoid a generic statement and instead focus specifically on how you would conduct small classes and the breadth of courses you can teach. Small colleges are, as the name implies, small, and so they are looking to hire individuals who can teach a wide range of subjects, not just their area of specialization.
They are also looking for innovative ideas about how you would engage students in a small classroom setting where there is less emphasis on lectures and recitation sections and more emphasis on class discussion, small group projects, even field trips to local museums, archives or geological sites.
Third, your research statement should be tailored to the institution. While you need to impress the search committee with the quality of your research, you also need to present a research agenda that will be feasible at a smaller institution with fewer resources and, possibly, less state-of-the-art facilities.
Finally, if you can, ask your letter writers to write a separate letter for liberal arts colleges. Ask them to indicate that you are genuinely interested in this type of position. They still need to talk about how smart you are and the contribution that your dissertation makes to the field; however, an extra paragraph about their experiences working with you in the classroom or their knowledge of your career goals can lend valuable support to your statement of interest.
The conference interview
You have three tasks during the conference interview:
1. Demonstrate your scholarly competence -- the quality of your dissertation and your expertise in the advertised field;
2. Appear personable -- The departments at liberal arts colleges are usually very small, sometimes only five or six people. It's therefore critically important that everyone gets along. So the people interviewing you are looking for someone they think will be a good colleague;
3. Convince the interviewers that you are genuinely interested in a position at a small college -- try to establish that you have some knowledge about or connection to a liberal arts college.
I've seen lots of highly qualified applicants get "dinged" at this stage because the interviewers thought the applicant wasn't really interested in the job. So play up any connection you have -- e.g., "my mother graduated from Smith and she always talked about how valuable her liberal arts education was."
And don't ask questions that indicate your preference for a large research university. Questions such as, "How many TAs will I have?" or "How many doctoral dissertations will I be able to sit on" are a dead giveaway that your heart lies elsewhere (and that you haven't done your homework). Instead, ask how many (undergraduate) majors the department has, what type of "senior experience" they are required to complete, and the extent to which, and how, the department involves students in faculty research.
The campus visit
One of the big differences between interviewing for a job at a liberal arts college and at a big research university is whom you will meet during your campus visit. At a small college, you will meet with Deans and other administrators, and you will likely meet with faculty members both outside your field and outside the department. And most likely, you will meet with undergraduates, who are sometimes even members of the search committee!
You need to be prepared to converse with biologists and humanists, sociologists and psychologists. You need to be prepared to converse with faculty members in different sub-fields within your discipline. And you need to be prepared to talk to undergraduate students -- yes, at most liberal arts colleges, you will spend part of your on-campus visit meeting with (or eating with) undergraduates.
In short, just as with any school, you will be judged by your research talk. But you will also be judged by the passion you demonstrate for teaching and by your ability to converse with people with vastly different areas of specializations. The more you can find synergies with those folks, the stronger your candidacy will be.
Finally, the "job talk" varies at smaller colleges. Sometimes you will be expected to give a standard research talk on your dissertation. But sometimes, you will be asked to teach a class. And sometimes you will be expected to do both: to give a traditional research talk and to teach a class. Be sure to find out what type of talk they expect from you and who your audience will be (department members only, students, faculty from other disciplines, . . .).
On a search I was recently involved in at a neighboring college, although the talk was a traditional research-based talk, there were more students in the audience than faculty members and acknowledging their presence--with age-appropriate references and humor--went a long way towards indicating what the candidate would be like in the classroom.
That doesn't mean that you should leave your power-point slides at home; many liberal arts colleges promote innovative uses of technology in the classroom. But it does mean that you shouldn't assume that everyone in the audience will be familiar with Foucault or the Navier-Stokes theorem (the fundamental equation for fluid dynamics).
Final Thoughts
Besides looking for good teachers and good scholars, small liberal arts colleges are also looking for good citizens. That means they want to hire people who are willing to spend time advising students, writing letters of recommendation and serving on lots of committees. It also means that they are looking for colleagues who are willing and eager participate in departmental and campus life.
One final word of advice: Even if your dream job is at a liberal arts college, don't play that up with your advisor. Dissertation advisors usually want to produce clones of themselves, and that means placing their students at research universities where they, in turn, will produce the next generation of researchers. So just explain that, given the job outlook in your field, you are trying to keep all your options open.
Conclusion
The most important thing to remember when you apply for a position at a small liberal arts college is that these colleges are looking for teacher/scholars. That means you need to demonstrate both your research qualifications and your commitment to teaching. On top of that, you need to convey your interest in joining a small college community with all the student contact, collegiality and good citizenship that entails. If you do that, your application will stand out, even in a tight job market. And who knows, applying for jobs at smaller liberal arts colleges might open up a whole new world, one as fulfilling and rewarding as a career at a major research university.
Marissa
Martino Golden is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Bryn
Mawr College, a small liberal arts college in a bucolic suburb 25 minutes
outside Philadelphia. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California,
Berkeley, and is the author of What
Motivates Bureaucrats? Politics and Administration during the Reagan Years
(Columbia University Press). Her experience teaching at both liberal arts
colleges and at larger public and private universities has deepened her appreciation
of the benefits afforded by smaller institutions. She has also served on numerous
search committees in both political science and other disciplines.