The Professor Is In


Book Description

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.




Academic E-Books


Book Description

Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users provides readers with a view of the changing and emerging roles of electronic books in higher education. The three main sections contain contributions by experts in the publisher/vendor arena, as well as by librarians who report on both the challenges of offering and managing e-books and on the issues surrounding patron use of e-books. The case study section offers perspectives from seven different sizes and types of libraries whose librarians describe innovative and thought-provoking projects involving e-books. Read about perspectives on e-books from organizations as diverse as a commercial publisher and an association press. Learn about the viewpoint of a jobber. Find out about the e-book challenges facing librarians, such as the quest to control costs in the patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) model, how to solve the dilemma of resource sharing with e-books, and how to manage PDA in the consortial environment. See what patron use of e-books reveals about reading habits and disciplinary differences. Finally, in the case study section, discover how to promote scholarly e-books, how to manage an e-reader checkout program, and how one library replaced most of its print collection with e-books. These and other examples illustrate how innovative librarians use e-books to enhance users’ experiences with scholarly works.




Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom?


Book Description

In these seventeen essays, distinguished senior scholars discuss the conceptual issues surrounding the idea of freedom of inquiry and scrutinize a variety of obstacles to such inquiry that they have encountered in their personal and professional experience. Their discussion of threats to freedom traverses a wide disciplinary and institutional, political and economic range covering specific restrictions linked to speech codes, the interests of donors, institutional review board licensing, political pressure groups, and government policy, as well as phenomena of high generality, such as intellectual orthodoxy, in which coercion is barely visible and often self-imposed. As the editors say in their introduction: "No freedom can be taken for granted, even in the most well-functioning of formal democracies. Exposing the tendencies that undermine freedom of inquiry and their hidden sources and widespread implications is in itself an exercise in and for democracy."




The Academic Kitchen


Book Description

The Academic Kitchen tells the story of the evolution of an all-women's department, the Department of Home Economics, at the University of California, Berkeley from 1905 to 1954. The book's unique focus on the connection between gender and departmental status challenges organizational theorists and higher education specialists to reconsider their traditional analysis of academic departments. By incorporating gender in the analysis, Nerad reveals the process by which departments traditionally dominated by women, including education, library science, nursing, social welfare, and home economics, begin as separate (and unequal) programs and are subsequently eliminated (or sustained without economic rewards, prestige, and power) when administrators no longer regard them as useful.




Behind the Academic Curtain


Book Description

More people than ever are going to graduate school to seek a PhD these days. When they get there, they discover a bewildering environment: a rapid immersion in their discipline, a keen competition for resources, and uncertain options for their future, whether inside or outside of academia. Life with a PhD can begin to resemble an unsolvable maze. In Behind the Academic Curtain, Frank F. Furstenberg offers a clear and user-friendly map to this maze. Drawing on decades of experience in academia, he provides a comprehensive, empirically grounded, and, most important of all, practical guide to academic life. While the greatest anxieties for PhD candidates and postgrads are often centered on getting that tenure-track dream job, each stage of an academic career poses a series of distinctive problems. Furstenberg divides these stages into five chapters that cover the entire trajectory of an academic life, including how to make use of a PhD outside of academia. From finding the right job to earning tenure, from managing teaching loads to conducting research, from working on committees to easing into retirement, he illuminates all the challenges and opportunities an academic can expect to encounter. Each chapter is designed for easy consultation, with copious signposts, helpful suggestions, and a bevy of questions that all academics should ask themselves throughout their career, whether at a major university, junior college, or a nonacademic organization. An honest and up-to-date portrayal of how this life really works, Behind the Academic Curtain is an essential companion for any scholar, at any stage of his or her career.




From Dissertation to Book


Book Description

How to transform a thesis into a publishable work that can engage audiences beyond the academic committee. When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. “You know something!” I would say if it could hear me. “Now tell it to us in language we can understand!” Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesis committee and into the hands of interested publishers and general readers. Now revised and updated to reflect the evolution of scholarly publishing, this edition includes a new chapter arguing that the future of academic writing is in the hands of young scholars who must create work that meets the broader expectations of readers rather than the narrow requirements of academic committees. At the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is fundamentally a process of shifting its focus from the concerns of a narrow audience—a committee or advisors—to those of a broader scholarly audience that wants writing to be both informative and engaging. William Germano offers clear guidance on how to do this, with advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision. Germano draws on his years of experience in both academia and publishing to show writers how to turn a dissertation into a book that an audience will actually enjoy, whether reading on a page or a screen. He also acknowledges that not all dissertations can or even should become books and explores other, often overlooked, options, such as turning them into journal articles or chapters in an edited work. With clear directions, engaging examples, and an eye for the idiosyncrasies of academic writing, he reveals to recent PhDs the secrets of careful and thoughtful revision—a skill that will be truly invaluable as they add “author” to their curriculum vitae.




Academic Duty


Book Description

Aware of the numerous pressures that academics face, from the pursuit of open inquiry in the midst of culture wars, to confusion and controversy over the ownership of ideas, to the scramble for declining research funds and facilities, he explores the whys and wherefores of academic misconduct, be it scholarly, financial, or personal.




The Academic′s Guide to Publishing


Book Description

This definitive guide to successfully publishing social science research demonstrates that completing a project is only the first phase of research. Dissemination is the second phase, and it requires specific skills and knowledge. The Academics′ Guide to Publishing: explains the different ways in which research can be disseminated: in journals, books, reports, the Internet, popular media, and conferences; demonstrates how the structures, practices and procedures involved work - making them easily understood and transparent; and situates research in the larger and changing context of Higher Education. For postgraduates or academics in the social sciences The Academics′ Guide to Publishing provides essential guidance on how to secure a job, how to gain tenure, how to survive research assessment exercises, and how to obtain promotion.




Versions of Academic Freedom


Book Description

Advocates of academic freedom often view it as a variation of the right to free speech and an essential feature of democracy. Stanley Fish argues here for a narrower conception of academic freedom, one that does not grant academics a legal status different from other professionals. Providing a blueprint for the study of academic freedom, Fish breaks down the schools of thought on the subject, which range from the idea that academic freedom is justified by the common good or by academic exceptionalism, to its potential for critique or indeed revolution. Fish himself belongs to what he calls the It s Just a Job school: while academics need the latitude call it freedom if you like necessary to perform their professional activities, they are not free in any special sense to do anything but their jobs. Academic freedom, Fish argues, should be justified only by the specific educational good that academics offer. Defending the university in all its glorious narrowness as a place of disinterested inquiry, Fish offers a bracing corrective to academic orthodoxy."




Academic′s Support Kit


Book Description

′Thanks for the brilliance, wisdom and humour of Boden, Epstein and Kenway. I will buy this KIT for all of my students, as they leave graduate school and venture into university life on their own. The Academic′s Support Kit provides a virtual support group for young academics groping to find their way in the rapidly changing terrain of higher education. And there are some tips for those of us who have been around too long, as well′ -Michelle Fine, The City University of New York `Comprehensive and comprehendible information, alongside sensible, practical strategies and exercises, that I will be able to employ when developing my own academic career and to facilitate my staff development and peer mentoring work′ - Sandra Sinfield, London Metropolitan University `The Kit is excellent. And it is not just for academic starters either. This is a collection of books which every academic could refer to confident that she or he will benefit from the experiences shared, the perspectives offered and the advice given′ - Robert Morrell, University of KwaZulu-Natal `This is an eminently practical guide to getting ahead as a university academic employee′ - Clive Seale, Brunel University ′The ASK Box would be a useful addition to the bookshelves of any research group or teaching team with new and developing researchers. It would be helpful for any department wanting to support its members in the development of their careers. It would also be useful for any senior institutional manager (who may have been an academic themselves) as a reminder of what they as established academics may have forgotten - the complex. Competitive and increasingly tortuous process of becoming an academic.′ - Educate The Academic′s Support Kit is a unique resource that provides all the information, skills and guidance to support academic professional development. Written by a team of experienced and international authors, the Kit offers a wealth of references, techniques and practical advice in the following 6 books: - Building Your Academic Career This volume encourages you to take a proactive approach to getting what you want out of academic work whilst being a good colleague - Getting Started On Research In contrast to the many books available on techniques of data collection and analysis, this volume deals with the many other practical considerations around actually doing research - Writing for Publication This book deals with a number of generic issues around academic writing and considers writing refereed journal articles, books and book chapters in detail as well as other, less common, forms of publication for academics - Teaching and Supervision This volume is on presents explanations and possible strategies designed to make your teaching and supervision work less burdensome, more rewarding (for you and your students) and manageable. - Winning and Managing Research Funding The pressure to win funding to do research is felt by nearly all academics worldwide. This book details strategies that you might adopt to get your research projects funded, and manage your research projects once they are funded. - Building Networks Having good networks is key to achieving what you want in academia. This book describes the kinds of networks that you might build across a range of settings, talks about the pros and cons involved and gives practical guidance on networking activities. All 6 titles are also available to buy individually. This Kit will be an indispensable guide, for those starting out on an academic career, and those needing to make the next step up the ladder. It will also be welcomed as the complete resource for managers and staff development teams.