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.

This book provides valuable information and practical insights regarding preparing for and pursuing a successful faculty career. It offers essential guidance through sequential chapters that consider the various stages of a successful faculty career, including what faculty members need to know with respect to each lesson and the role of each topic in contributing to career success. Each lesson also provides useful career guidance regarding things that faculty members should do as well as avoid doing during each stage of a faculty career. The book is designed to serve as an essential learning tool in related career preparation courses as well as a valuable self-study and reference source for faculty members. The unfortunate reality is that most graduate programs do not provide essential career guidance regarding the roles and responsibilities of becoming and succeeding as a faculty member. The phrase “hidden curriculum” has been used to describe this unfortunate reality. New faculty members often discover that they are expected to know so many essential things once they become a faculty member. The mission of this book is, therefore, to contribute to the success of readers throughout their careers as faculty members and enhance their ability to meet and exceed the expectations of their students, institution, and other stakeholders. The various lessons are designed to enhance faculty success throughout one’s career as well as the meaningfulness and pleasure of one’s faculty career.

“Toor’s style is friendly, funny, and genuinely compelling, exhorting students to go deeper with their writing even (and especially) when the stakes are high.” —School Library Journal Writing, for most of us, is bound up with anxiety. It’s even worse when it feels like your whole future—or at least where you’ll spend the next four years in college—is on the line. It’s easy to understand why so many high school seniors put off working on their applications until the last minute or end up with a generic and clichéd essay. The good news? You already have the “secret sauce” for crafting a compelling personal essay: your own experiences and your unique voice. The best essays rarely catalog how students have succeeded or achieved. Good writing shows the reader how you’ve struggled and describes mistakes you’ve made. Excellent essays express what you’re fired up about, illustrate how you think, and illuminate the ways you’ve grown. More than twenty million students apply to college every year; many of them look similar in terms of test scores, grades, courses taken, extracurricular activities. Admissions officers wade through piles of files. As an applicant, you need to think about what will interest an exhausted reader. What can you write that will make her argue to admit you instead of the thousands of other applicants? A good essay will be conversational and rich in vivid details, and it could only be written by one person—you. This book will help you figure out how to find and present the best in yourself. You’ll acquire some useful tools for writing well—and may even have fun—in the process.

Tomorrow's Professor is designed to help you prepare for, find, and succeed at academic careers in science and engineering. It looks at the full range of North American four-year academic institutions while featuring 30 vignettes and more than 50 individual stories that bring to life the principles and strategies outlined in the book. Tailored for today's graduate students, postdocs, and beginning professors, Tomorrow's Professor: Presents a no-holds-barred look at the academic enterprise Describes a powerful preparation strategy to make you competitive for academic positions while maintaining your options for worthwhile careers in government and industry Explains how to get the offer you want and start-up package you need to help ensure success in your first critical years on the job Provides essential insights from experienced faculty on how to develop a rewarding academic career and a quality of life that is both balanced and fulfilling Bonus material is available for free download at http://booksupport.wiley.com At a time when anxiety about academic career opportunities for Ph.D.s in these field is at an all-time high, Tomorrow's Professor provides a much-needed practical approach to career development.

Going beyond providing you with the tools, strategies, and approaches that you need to navigate the complexity of academic life, Don Haviland, Anna Ortiz, and Laura Henriques offer an empowering framework for taking ownership of and becoming an active agent in shaping your career.This book recognizes, as its point of departure, that faculty are rarely prepared for the range of roles they need to play or the varied institutions in which they may work, let alone understand how to navigate institutional context, manage the politics of academe, develop positive professional relationships, align individual goals with institutional expectations, or possess the time management skills to juggle the conflicting demands on their time.The book is infused by the authors’ love for what they do while also recognizing the challenging nature of their work. In demonstrating how you can manage your career, they weave in the personal and institutional dimensions of their experience and offer vignettes from their longitudinal study of pre-tenure faculty to illustrate typical issues you may have to contend with, and normalize many of the concerns you may face as a new member of the academy. This book offers you:• The resources, tips, and strategies to develop a strong, healthy career as a faculty member• Empowerment— you take ownership of and become an active agent in shaping your career• Advice and strategies to help women and members of traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups navigate institutional structures that affect them differently• An understanding of the changing nature of academic work, and of how to grow and succeed in this new environmentWhile explicitly addressed to early career faculty, this book’s message of empowerment is of equal utility for full-time faculty, both tenure-track and non-tenure track, and can usefully serve as a text for graduate courses. Department chairs, deans, and faculty developers will find it a useful resource to offer their new colleagues.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together