How Six Assistant Professors Landed Their Jobs at Baccalaureate Colleges and Master's Institutions: A Focus on Pathways and Teaching (Un)preparedness

Did you pursue your PhD because you wanted to teach at the college level? Do you find it tricky to balance your interest in teaching with the focus on research at your graduate institution? Are you hoping to do a lot of teaching in your future faculty job but don’t know where to look for advice or what it would be like? This paper shares the narratives of six assistant professors who are at institutions that largely focus on undergraduate education, such as Baccalaureate Colleges and Master’s Institutions. The narratives include each professor’s reasons for pursing their positions; how they prepared for their job and what they wished they had done in graduate school; the interview process at their institution; and the uncertainties they faced. This paper uses the novel emerging methodology of narrative analysis that is meant to connect readers with the stories of participants. Rather than focusing on themes present for many research participants, narrative research maintains the integrity of each individual’s story. In addition to the narrative stories included in this paper, I include a thematic analysis that looks across all the stories, so that we might make meaning out of the stories as a group. The thematic analysis section of the paper is useful when considering the larger implications of this research. For example, by examining how all participants reflect on their graduate school experience and what they wish would have been different, we can provide insight to current graduate students and their advisors. Graduate students might feel empowered to pursue a teaching opportunity despite it taking away time from research, and advisors might consider different ways of supporting their graduate students to achieve their career goals. Six new engineering assistant professors, two females and four males, were interviewed as part of a larger research project exploring the pathway to and current experiences of faculty members at institutions of varying teaching and research activity. This paper responds to the following research question: How do engineering assistant professors describe their faculty job search experiences and preparation for positions at Baccalaureate Colleges and Master’s Institutions? The findings reported in this paper focuses more specifically on how the assistant professors were able, and unable, to prepare for their teaching responsibilities. This paper will likely interest graduate students who are considering academic careers and would like to focus on teaching in their future positons. Faculty members who mentor graduate students may also find this paper useful to understand how to best support their students as they pursue post-graduation options. Finally, future research efforts will explore how some of the findings and recommendations could be implemented into graduate programming and training, such as future faculty and similar professional development initiatives. Introduction and Background As an undergraduate student, I (the lead author) honestly believed that the primary role for all my professors was to teach. I also assumed that each one of them pursued their jobs because of their love of teaching. I remember the day when I was told that teaching was a requirement of the job, and that most of my professors are likely in their positions because of their love of research, not teaching. However, I was also sure that some of them honestly did want to focus on teaching. As a graduate student who is interested in university teaching and how professors are trained to teach, I have focused my dissertation on engineering assistant professors who are in faculty positions at institutions that focus on teaching. Engineering is particularly interesting field to study faculty at Baccalaureate Colleges and Master’s Institutions at since there are fewer faculty at these institutions. In engineering, approximately 65% of faculty are at what the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education calls Doctoral Universities with Very High Research Activity (formerly referred to as “R1: Research Universities (Highest Research Activity)). This means that most PhD students, including those who are interested in teaching, are getting their PhDs at institutions that primarily focus on research. It is further worth noting that teaching quality at colleges and universities in the United States has been in the spotlight in recent years. There has been a national call to bring more attention to improve the quality of engineering teaching, potentially by changing the way faculty members are rewarded for their teaching efforts within the academy. Poor teaching has been blamed by many students for the reason they leave engineering. More recently, studies have shown that students might choose to stay or leave undergraduate engineering degree programs based on their experiences in the first and second year. With teaching quality potentially impact student’s success in engineering programs, it is natural to wonder about teacher training, which is what we will consider next. Graduate school is most commonly viewed as the entryway and socialization into the academic career of faculty member. Socialization, in terms of doctoral students in training, is best understood as the process of making sense of the academic career or other career pathways after graduation. This socialization includes a great deal of preparation in the forms of mentoring and advising, which largely shape a graduate student’s perception of their future career. However, it has been noted that college teaching is a skilled profession unlike others in that it generally does not involve specific mentoring as part of the educational process. Furthermore, some college teaching positions focus on the teaching aspect more than others, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) doctoral students are often not aware of the differences in emphasis among various faculty positions. Faculty positions consist of three main components: research, teaching, and service. Although some engineering graduate students will continue on to faculty positions, the teaching component of faculty positions typically receives little or no attention as a required component of graduate-level engineering degree programs. One main repercussion of this issue is that new faculty, especially at doctoral universities with very high research activities, are often not prepared to handle and balance the demands of a faculty position that includes teaching. This issue could be even more pronounced for new faculty at institutions that put more emphasis on teaching, such as Baccalaureate Colleges and Master’s Institutions. By interviewing assistant professors at Baccalaureate College and Master’s Institutions, where fewer engineering PhD graduates end up in faculty positions, I am bringing to light faculty positions that are usually overlooked, and studying faculty at these institutions might have many benefits. For example, some graduate students might be introduced to a faculty lifestyle and balance that they are interested in, and pleased to find out that not every faculty position is like what they have observed among their advisor and other faculty at their graduate institution. This realization has implications for diversifying the academy, as perhaps these positions that are not as commonly known, will appeal to a more diverse group of graduate students.