Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Starting your academic year in mid-summer When do academics celebrate the new year? This is a serious question for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, where the beginning of the calendar year in January is more like the middle of the academic year. It seems like […]
Read More »sessional teaching
Post-PhD precarity
We know that to get an academic position you need to publish from your dissertation. It would be helpful to at least have a good idea of where your research program is going to go next. If you can get started on that next project, even better. Competition is stiff. Even institutions that don’t have […]
Read More »Job hunting in times of change
It’s not just that the labour market is awful right now. Higher education is changing More students. Less public funding per student. Major shifts in the balance of public and private funding, even in public institutions. Stable or declining numbers of full-time, permanent faculty positions (what gets called “tenured” and “tenure track” in North America). […]
Read More »On the road to an academic career
If an academic career is on your list of possible post-PhD paths, there are a few things you should know. The de facto requirements for an academic position have increased. It is unreasonable to expect that you will have all of these additional requirements at the same time as you are awarded the PhD. For most people, there is going to be a period of some other employment between finishing the PhD and getting that secure position. In this post, I lay out some options.
Read More »Eyes wide open to Sessional Teaching
This post is part of a series on sessional teaching. The first installment: Because you need the money. The second: Because you need the experience The third: What if it’s not worth it? The fourth: Make sure sessional teaching develops your skills As term time approaches, those of you who don’t have tenure track or […]
Read More »Make sure sessional teaching develops your skills
If the main reason to do sessional teaching is to gain experience, you might want to be proactive in ensuring that you get the most out of it.
Teaching can be very rewarding. However, the lack of compulsory training for teaching in higher education can also contribute to frustration.
If your main source of knowledge about how to do this is how you have been taught in the past, you have limited options when things aren’t working the way you’d like them to. You might also be a bit lost if you are facing a teaching situation you rarely faced as a student yourself.
Read More »Sessional Teaching: What if you decide it’s not worth it?
So what if you need to pay the rent but you’ve decided that maybe the particular sessional teaching opportunities available are not worth it. They aren’t going to give you experience you need, and they’ll take too much time away from other things that are more important to your career development.
What are your options?
Read More »Why do sessional teaching? You need the experience
An excellent reason to do sessional teaching…
You need the experience
If you are going to make a career as a scholar in higher education, you are going to need to demonstrate that you can teach courses in your field.
It matters what course you have the opportunity to teach, though. This is also where the difference between being a TA on a course and actually teaching a course makes a difference.
Read More »Why do sessional teaching? You need the money
This post is the first in a series. Part 2 considers sessional teaching to gain experience. Part 3 looks at what to do if you decide it’s not worth it. Part 4 helps you approach sessional teaching strategically so you get the skills you need. The introduction is the same so you can start anywhere. As term […]
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