THE PREPARING FUTURE FACULTY PROGRAM: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
by A. Leigh DeNeef

B. Differences PFF Made in Negotiating the Job Market
If changing the climate on the graduate campus was one way PFF improved the day-to-day life of at least those students who participated in the program, changing their comfort level in the job market seems to have been its most universal impact. Although the question did not receive high scores on the quantitative portion of the survey (3.3), virtually all the alumni who agreed to be interviewed said that whatever career path they followed, PFF made them feel that the choice was really their own and allowed them to “hit the ground running.” Scott Howard (English) reports that at the University of Washington, PFF “raised the consciousness among graduate students about the realities of the job market and how to better prepare for that.” David Karp agreed, adding that PFF was “enormously useful in terms of framing the whole job application process and how to market yourself for different institutions.”

For some alumni, PFF was more than “useful.” For Jennifer Egert, it literally “opened up alternative career paths beyond a life in either clinical practice or a Research I university.” Wendy Crone had a similar experience: “Since I came from industry, PFF was one of the key things that helped me see the breadth of opportunities in the academy. It also taught me what kinds of skills each of these opportunities would require and, therefore, how to be a viable candidate. For me, in other words, it really made an academic position possible.” For some alumni, like Jason Cody (chemistry, Northwestern), PFF confirmed an earlier choice to pursue a career at a liberal arts college; for others, like Susan Swithers (psychology, Duke) and Angela Bryan (psychology, Arizona State), it confirmed the research university route. For still others, like Charles Cogan (history, Northwestern), it “exposed the fact that you can have a rewarding career at a community college.” An anonymous alumnus from Florida State sums up the preparation PFF offered: “Before PFF, I hadn't given much thought to how many different things ‘assistant professor' could mean, depending on the type of institution at which you work. PFF opened my eyes.”

Two generalizations can be made about how PFF prepared students for the job market. First, PFF students felt that they knew more about the American academic scene and the variety of institutions that comprise it than their non-PFF competitors. (Absent confirming data, it is impossible to know whether or not the alumni are correct in this assumption, but their own confidence may be the more relevant issue.) In the words of Carlota Ocampo, the very fact that you have PFF experience “distinguishes you from the rest of the job applicants.” Kim Zeuli (engineering, Minnesota) put it this way: “My non-PFF colleagues/competitors did not have the knowledge that I had about the differences between various kinds of colleges and universities.” The effect of this ostensibly greater savvy was that PFF students felt generally better about themselves—surer, smarter, more “in the know,” more professionally competent—in the market than their peers. It gave me, says Carlos Morrison, “a real edge.”

Second, they felt, almost to a person, that they knew better how to present themselves as professionals who could “fit” in different institutional environments. Carlos Morrison states that the most important contribution PFF made to his professional development was the opportunity to teach in a variety of institutional settings. This experience, he says, “made me feel I could operate anywhere.” Wendy Crone said that PFF “helped me figure out the things I needed to do to make myself more viable, and it prompted me, even in graduate school, to do things—like reviewing journal submissions—that I wouldn't have naturally pursued because I realized the advantages they would give me later on.” James Rolf (mathematics, Duke) says PFF forced him “to rethink my own personal niche—the precise balance that I wanted in my career between teaching and research.” Stuart Noble-Goodman says it this way: “I was far more savvy about what a potential employer was looking for and how to present myself in the most persuasive light.”

Even alumni whose initial positions were post-doctoral appointments (as is normally the case in the sciences) appreciate the advantages PFF provided for the job market. Jennifer Egert is a case in point: “PFF helped me understand the radical differences in the missions of academic institutions—different roles for faculty, different kinds of students, differences in what counts as publication, etc. These things will guide me in my career choices.” Angela Bryan's experience was even more telling, in that she intentionally asked to teach a class during her postdoctoral appointment at the University of Kentucky so that she could “practice” achieving the kind of balance between her research and teaching that her PFF program taught her she would need when she began her academic career. As a result, when Angela accepted a tenure-track job at the University of Colorado, she not only had considerable experience in precisely this delicate balancing of faculty responsibilities, but she also had two courses ready to offer.

PFF helped students prepare for the job market in other very specific ways: writing an introductory letter of “interest”; developing a CV; fashioning a teaching, research, or diversity statement; preparing professional and teaching portfolios; anticipating the job interview and the campus visit; addressing potential colleagues; talking to deans and presidents; organizing the job talk. Some of this “new” knowledge came at a painful price:

While sitting around the faculty lounge with various English professors at Meredith College [a women's college in the Duke cluster], our discussion turned to a recent [faculty] search they had conducted. They bemusedly recounted a number of letters they had received from applicants that followed the formula of introduction, dissertation description, research program description, a bit about teaching, and conclusion. These letters, as they bluntly put it, went straight into the garbage, because they showed no understanding of what kind of institution Meredith is. . . . I looked over at my colleague, Ted Hovet, and saw on his face the same crestfallen look I imagine was on my own—both of us had applied for the position under discussion, and both of us had written precisely the kind of letter they had thrown away.

Several of the alumni we spoke with echoed Stuart Noble-Goodman's embarrassment here at not understanding how inappropriate his letter of inquiry really was. Even more emphasized the fact that, in this particular area, they had to rely totally on the cluster campus faculty because their own graduate mentors had few clues about how to fashion such letters and were, in some instances, insisting upon rhetorical and structural formulae virtually guaranteed not to get them past an initial reading—if they even got that far.

PFF contributed to the creation of stronger CVs and credible teaching, research, or diversity statements. Jennifer Egert, among others, speaks about how critical PFF was in “helping me develop the teacher part of my professional identity.” Nor is she alone. Wendy Crone says PFF was the only mechanism for giving her an independent teaching experience. Carlota Ocampo, noting how invaluable PFF was in preparing her for the job market, clarifies that it “gave me a good set of very positive teaching evaluations and a strong teaching portfolio.” Susan Swithers said that her teaching experiences made her more marketable even at Research I institutions. Wendy Crone explains her sense of the relationship between strong CVs and teaching statements and another key moment of the job search, the one-on-one interaction at job interviews. PFF “helped me put together a credible teaching statement. . . . My current employers said they rarely got such statements, and it helped them to know me better.” Speaking of another interview, Wendy reports, “One set of interviewers was concerned that I wasn't experienced enough or up to the challenges of an academic career, but after talking to me about my PFF experiences their fears were relieved.”

The majority of alumni interviewed agreed that talking about the PFF experiences in job interviews was an important ingredient in getting them to the next phase in the hiring process. Scott Howard said that “interviewers wanted to talk about PFF, and it was fun for me to talk about my experiences.” Kim Zeuli had the same feelings: “Most of the people at my interviews were both surprised and impressed by my PFF experience; they thought it was a wonderful preparation.” Wendy Crone says that at her on-campus interviews, “the dean knew of PFF and valued my participation in it.” Stuart Noble-Goodman felt his PFF experience greatly expanded his understanding of faculty culture, how it was changing, and the implications of those changes. “That understanding enabled me to be comfortable with senior faculty and administrators. And I was treated as a colleague, a crucial psychological position for a graduate student or a new Ph.D.” Even when they did not talk specifically about their PFF experiences, alumni report that PFF helped them feel much less anxious about the interview process. Kathee Godfrey reports that she was “a lot calmer about prospective interviews” than her non-PFF classmates because her program taught her what to expect.

Throughout the job market process, Wendy Crone says she “found herself constantly going back to my PFF material” to negotiate the next phase. She, like most alumni, felt that her PFF program provided crucial information and critical strategies at this extremely tense and pressured stage of her academic career. Stuart Noble-Goodman believes his PFF experience was the deciding factor in his initial hiring at a liberal arts school because “I went into my interview with the vice president for academic affairs and talked about faculty preparation and the state of higher education as it applied to liberal arts colleges for nearly an hour.” Stuart later learned that “as I walked to my next interview with the department chair, she had already received a call from the VP with the message that I was, in her mind, the ideal candidate. Without PFF, I would have been just another candidate with energetic but vague ideas about what it means to be a faculty member at a school like this.” Angela Bryan had a somewhat similar experience during her on-campus interviews at the University of Colorado. As it happened, her first meeting was with the dean of the graduate school, who was “thrilled” to discover that Angela had been a PFF participant because Colorado had just begun a PFF program of its own. The dean wanted to learn all about Angela's experience at Arizona State. Angela does not know whether that conversation actually helped her get the job, but it certainly made the interview with a dean go much easier.

For other alumni—Jason Cody and Peter Wyckoff are two examples—the PFF experience was even more literally a step into their academic careers. Pete was hired by his own biology PFF mentor at Guilford College after completing his doctorate at Duke. Although Jason did not do his PFF internship at Lake Forest College, that Northwestern cluster school subsequently hired him twice—first to a one-year visiting position, later in a tenure-track appointment in chemistry—largely as a result of his PFF affiliation.

Not all PFF alumni stories are successful ones, of course, and certainly very few alumni can so specifically track their success to PFF. Still, virtually all the alumni with whom we spoke praised PFF for giving them both general and pragmatic knowledge about the academic job market and, with that knowledge, the power to make informed choices. Surprisingly, almost all the alumni who were interviewed felt they really did have a choice at this stage of their careers; they were not simply grateful to have a job, period! For them, it seems PFF changed the very nature of what we, almost mindlessly, have come to call the horrible academic market. For the PFF alumni, the market was already more open and more inviting.