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This book contains humorous recollections of the messiness and confusion that fill the days of a pre-tenure academic - from graduate school through the post-doc, and into the assistant professor days. The stories recount the experiences of pre-tenure academics in the thick of things and trying - perhaps unsuccessfully - to make sense of it all.
List of contents
Introduction
By Erin Marie Furtak and Ian Parker Renga
Section 1: Startup Costs
Warning: Scholarship Can Be Hazardous for Your Health
By Ian Parker Renga
Lucy and the Football: My Search for a Job in a Charlie Brown World
By Steve Newton
Chocolate Frosting & The Art of Interviewing
By Heather M. Bandeen
Changing Clothes in the Phone Booth
By Jessalynn Strauss
Section 2: Occupational Dissonance
Whose class is it anyway?
By Julie C. Mitchell
When Homer Simpson Writes Homer's Iliad: Preventing Plagiarism while Keeping Your Promotion
By Troy Appling
How Not to Teach a Class
By Andrew Shtulman
Publish, Perish, or Apply for Social Security: Reflections on the Tenure Process
By Logan Greene
The Life of the Mind...In the Company of Others
By Amanda Jansen
Section 3: Professors Are People, Too
The Village Idiot
By Erin Marie Furtak
Hot Mess Times Three
By Hindi Krinsky
Who's Pro-creating Now?: Two Sides of Parenting in the Academe
By Lara Narcisi and Scott Dimovitz
How I Got Dismissed from Jury Duty: A Reflection on Philosophy and Public Life
By Rick Anthony Furtak
Acknowledgements
About the author
Erin Marie Furtak is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds degrees in Biology (B.A., University of Colorado), Education (M.A., University of Denver), and Curriculum and Teacher Education (Ph.D., Stanford University). She currently studies reforms in middle and high school science teaching, exploring different ways that teachers can be supported to improve their teaching practice and how this relates to student learning. She lives in Golden, Colorado, with her husband and two young children, and spends a fair amount of her free time trying to have a sense of humor about her profession.
Ian Parker Renga is a doctoral candidate in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned a B.S. in biology and B.A. in fine art from Indiana University (2001) and a Masters degree in education from Harvard University (2005). Before returning to graduate school to study teaching and teacher education, he was a paraeducator and autism specialist in Bellingham, Washington and a middle school science and math teacher in Blacksburg, Virginia. He and his wife, Katie, and their dog, Tumble, live in Lafayette, Colorado.
Summary
This book contains humorous recollections of the messiness and confusion that fill the days of a pre-tenure academic – from graduate school through the post-doc, and into the assistant professor days. The stories recount the experiences of pre-tenure academics in the thick of things and trying – perhaps unsuccessfully – to make sense of it all.
