This post is a follow-up to my earlier one, "The Pleasures and Perils of Working in a Large Department." Today, I would like to share my experiences of the good and bad of working in a small department. I presently work in a department that has only three full-time faculty (myself included). Here are some of the pleasures and perils I have experienced:
The Pleasures
One of the biggest pleasures I have found in working in a small department is that you no longer feel like you need to "impress" the people in your department with your research. There just aren't that many people around to impress -- especially if, as is the case in my situation, the few people there are in your department work in very different areas. Anyway, I've found that this has made me a lot less insecure. And, because I've felt less insecure, I think working in a small department has made me pursue much more ambitious research projects. My experience being a member of a large department was that, psychologically at least, I had a certain tendency to try to "do what others do" (i.e. write papers similar in style and scope to theirs). Once I ended up in a small department, this pressure disappeared. I just didn't have colleagues to compare my work to.
Another big pleasure of working in a small department is the variety of classes I've gotten to teach, and freedom to choose. Whenever I've interviewed in larger departments, I've been told that I'd be pretty much teaching the same classes every term (with a few exceptions). In my department, however, I'm pretty free to teach whatever I want from term to term. I always have to teach an intro class. Aside from that, however, I've chosen to teach Ancient Philosophy, the Philosophy of Law, a seminar on human rights, and a lot of other stuff. This has been good, not just because it keeps teaching more interesting, but also because I've found that a lot of my research projects stem from what I teach. I just taught Philosophy of Law for the first time this Spring, for instance, and ended up just writing a paper on something that puzzled me.
The Perils
My experience has been that the main perils of working in a small department are simply "the other side of the coin." Although, as I note above, it has been nice to work in relative isolation, it has also been frustrating. Getting feedback on papers is super-hard. Basically, aside from occasionally asking people I know to read paper drafts by email, the only feedback I ever get is at conferences. A second peril is that, by teaching so many different classes, I've found myself really inundated with course prep. I often have two new courses to prepare per semester (i.e. syllabi, lectures, and assignments), which really takes away from the time I can devote to research.
Another peril in working in a small department is that you're almost invariably given a lot of other work to do. I serve on two committees, work as my department's "assessment coordinator" (which essentially means I have to collect assessment data from instructors), am in charge up updating the department website, and other stuff like that. It's not overbearing, but it is significant.
Finally, the biggest bummer -- to the extent that there are any -- of working in a small department is the absence of a departmental social life. I get along fantastically with my colleagues, and occasionally hang out, share a beer, talk philosophy and life, etc. However, on a day to day basis, there just isn't the kind of bustling social and intellectual life of a large department: no colloquia, no department time at the pub after a Friday talk, etc.
On the whole, though, working in a small department is pretty darn good. As you can perhaps tell from these posts, my experience has been that jobs in small and large departments each have their distinct advantages and disadvantages. Anyway, I hope these posts have been at least somewhat illuminating, particularly for grad students who have not yet had a job. I suspect that a lot of the "pleasures and perils" I have relayed may be too obvious. Then again, I don't know. It's sometimes hard to know what is and is not obvious to people in other positions. I'm not sure I even ever thought about what the differences between different jobs would be like when I was a grad student!
Comments