On abstracts

• San Diego State University Writing Center's guidelines for abstract

• You might also find this one-page handout helpful, courtesy of a tweet (@PShannonBaker). See the original tweet by Raul Pacheco-Vega for other resources!

On revisions

• Jessica Calarco's look into the revise and resubmit process. 

On being a peer reviewer

• While different publishers (Wiley, PLOS ONE, Taylor & Francis etc.) offer guidelines on being a journal peer reviewer, Calarco also provides a great breakdown/template on her Hidden Curriculum substack. 

• Similarly, Juan Pacheco-Vega also provides strategies and tips for ethical peer reviews.

Structured supports

• The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) is dedicated to supporting faculty, particularly underrepresented faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in their career trajectories. NCFDD provides online career development, training, and mentoring resources–many of which are free to access, as many universities based in the global North partner with NCFDD.  

Where does one look for higher ed positions, other than in SIG/Division announcements? There are a few places you might want to bookmark:

• Times Higher Ed (THE)

• The Chronicle of Higher Ed (linked here)

• Inside Higher Ed (IHE)

• Higher Ed Jobs (HEJ)

• H-net (linked here)

What to expect: 

• Drexel University has a series of informative YouTube videos on the job market. One is on writing the research and teaching statements. Another is a pretty thorough rundown of the whole academic job market process. The third is on negotiation once you have an offer or multiple offers.

• Caveat: these are broad sessions so they are not early childhood/education-specific. You’ll want to think (and/or talk to a mentor) about the specificities of the process within our field.

• This Medium post has detailed information about what to expect on the job market.

• University of Colorado's guide to academic job applications. 

• The University of Arizona has a simple and helpful two-pager on the first round faculty position interviews.

Examples of materials: 

• The Common Knowledge forum's repository of materials, including sample cover letters and statements.

  • Caveats:  Make sure that you're looking at materials that align with your field of study as these may be more specific to jobs in the humanities, for example. And if you're unsure, check in with your mentor(s) regarding any samples you come across that you might use as a mentor text. 

On mentorship: 

• One of the questions one might ask at the end of a Zoom interview or during the campus visit is about what the college or university offers in terms of mentorship for “junior scholars.” It gives you a sense of what the university values and what structures they have created for new faculty members to thrive. Higher Ed Jobs provides a nice overview of different mentorship structures, and there are tons of great links related to early career development.

On the CV: 

• Your CV is an essential document that stands in for your body of work—from your professional life to your time in the academy. Because you never know when you’ll need to submit your CV, have an easy-to-access version that you can open up and update as soon as you have started and/or finished something. Indiana University and UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has tips and samples of CVs if you need a model. The Professor is In also has very detailed advice as well.

Other paths: 

• Applying for jobs in academia might mean exploring the different kinds of higher ed institutions that are out there. Small liberal arts colleges (SLACs) are one such space. Daniel Laurison's blog post on applying to SLACs may be a helpful way to learn more about them. 

Designing Syllabi

• If you are teaching higher ed for the first time(or even if it's your 50th time teaching), you may find Harvard's Bok Center resources helpful. Here is their take on syllabus design, but you can find plenty of other resources there as well. 

• Visit this Accessible Syllabus site for guidance on how to create more accessible course syllabi. 

Teaching Moves

• Harvard's Instructional Moves website features multimodal modules on different topics related to teaching at the post-secondary level. Modules include building community, facilitating discussions, teaching for equity and inclusion, and much more. You can also focus on individual instructors and their moves. 

  • For example, Christina Villarreal teaches in ethnic studies and education, and you can view a whole class session and a breakdown of her instructional moves. 

  • Similarly, there is a full class session with Gretchen Brion-Meisels (also in education), as well as her moves.

What is service? Service is a critical part of an academic's workload, in addition to research and teaching. It's the work that we as academics do to help develop our programs, departments, colleges, and local/national organizations. Many of you, as graduate students, are already doing service work and you may not even know it. To learn more about how service plays a role in academic life, you might check out the service section of any academic's CV, ask your advisor/mentor about their service responsibilities, and/or read about it here (Chronicle) and here (IHE). Grand Valley State University also has an extensive (but not exhaustive) list of examples of service. 

The life of academics is probably more about failures than it is about successes. It's hard to see that, at times, when all we see are the articles published, grants/fellowship received, jobs gotten. It may be helpful to know that your academic idols have all dealt with many a failure—from manuscripts that finally find a home (maybe) to grant submissions that get some funding (if at all)... Years ago, some folks started to document their failures on their CV of failures and shadow CVs. If you need a bit of a reminder that you aren't the only one who didn't get the thing you wanted, check these folks out here, here, and here. And here's a short list of tips for handling rejection.