The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

The pursuit to understand the human brain in all its intricacy is a fascinatingly complex challenge and neuroscience is one of the fastest-growing scientific fields worldwide. There is a wide range of career options open to those who wish to pursue a career in neuroscience, yet there are few resources that provide students with inside advice on how to go about it. So You Want to Be a Neuroscientist? is a contemporary and engaging guide for aspiring neuroscientists of diverse backgrounds and interests. Fresh with the experience of having recently launched her own career, Ashley Juavinett provides a candid look at the field, offering practical guidance that explores everything from programming to personal stories. Juavinett begins with a look at the field and its history, exploring our evolving understanding of how the brain works. She then tackles the nitty-gritty: how to apply to a PhD program, the daily life of a graduate student, the art of finding mentors and collaborators, and what to expect when working in a lab. Finally, she introduces readers to diverse young scientists whose career paths illustrate what you can do with a neuroscience degree. For anyone intrigued by the brain or seeking advice on how to further their ambitions of studying it, So You Want to Be a Neuroscientist? is a practical and timely overview of how to learn and thrive in this exciting field.

A guide for graduates from any academic discipline who want to pursue an academic career.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

What does it really take to get a job in academia? Do you want to go to graduate school? Then you're in good company: nearly 80,000 students will begin pursuing a PhD this year alone. But while almost all new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for something else. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find a full-time academic job. In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan combines personal experience with the latest higher education research to help you understand what graduate school and the academy are really like. This candid, pull-no-punches book answers questions big and small, including • Should I go to graduate school—and what will I do once I get there? • How much does a PhD cost—and should I pay for one? • What does it take to succeed in graduate school? • What kinds of jobs are there after grad school—and who gets them? • What happens to the people who never get full-time professorships? • What does it take to be productive, to publish continually at a high level? • What does it take to teach many classes at once? • How does "publish or perish" work? • How much do professors get paid? • What do search committees look for, and what turns them off? • How do I know which journals and book publishers matter? • How do I balance work and life? This realistic, data-driven look at university teaching and research will help make your graduate and postgraduate experience a success. Good Work If You Can Get It is the guidebook that anyone considering graduate school, already in grad school, starting as a new professor, or advising graduate students needs. Read it, and you will come away ready to hit the ground running.

The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal—scientific, objective, and dispassionate—and the inevitably subjective nature of day-to-day instruction. American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The modern university does not reward teaching, so faculty members at every level neglect it in favor of research and publication. In the first book-length history of American college teaching, Jonathan Zimmerman confirms but also contradicts these perennial complaints. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more "personal." As higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which promised to "personalize" teaching by tailoring it to the individual interests and abilities of each student. But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor, the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities, especially for America's least privileged students. Anyone who wants to change college teaching will have to start here.

Becoming a Professor is designed primarily for graduate and undergraduate students and others – instructors, lecturers and new tenure-track professors – contemplating careers as professors in post-secondary education at colleges, institutes, and universities. The book identifies kinds of higher education institutions, and types of teaching positions along with the nature of each position’s responsibilities and advantages and disadvantages. It explains how graduate students can promote their future as faculty members while they are still in graduate school and suggests ways to find suitable faculty positions and succeed at the application and interview process. The book also addresses a range of other matters that influence careers in higher education once a candidate is hired in a faculty position – such matters as the tenure and promotion process and how to succeed in other aspects of the professorial role (research, service, teaching), and as well as how to avoid pitfalls (political and ethical aspects) in such positions.