The Philosophers' Cocoon

Job-market catastrophizing? It is not the only way

[EF: I discussed the blogpost "Job-market catastrophizing?: a conversation" with Krishna Del Toso, who continues to write and think as a philosopher but is no longer paid as one. He agreed to share his reflections below:]

Here's my two cents.

I must say that, as I see it, the root of the "catastrophizing" lies in the fact that as far as the academic work is concerned (whether it is philosophy, literature, physics etc.), you aren't totally in control of the effects of your choices, whereas in other domains you are. This condition that characterizes wannabe academics bring about two aspects: 1. you don't need to train the instant reactivity to external stimuli (I'm talking about the kind of reactivity that can make the difference between leading a business brilliantly… or not), 2. you enter a sort of vicious circle in which the "catastrophizing" is nothing but a passive, fruitless, element that nourishes, and is nourished by, the observation that things go as they go because of a sort of inviolable and tacitly admitted norm (kind of Heidegger's "das Man world").

Of course, I was myself in this very vicious circle when I was hoping (mind the word: hoping!!) for a position at the university, long ago, and I was wearing myself out of "I've never done enough", not to speak of the struggle for publications (a struggle often driven by the aim of adding an extra title in my cv: mere form, devoid of real substance… should research be like this? Definitely not!) and of the almost depressing waiting-time in the maybe-you’ll-be-the-next "parking lot" for researchers after a position. I was waiting for others to decide for me, and that, back then, looked quite obvious, normal.

Fortunately all this no longer wears me out, fortunately we live in a fast-changing world… and fortunately the Aristotelian saying, often remembered but rarely put into practice, according to which "being (and so philosophy too) can be said in many ways" remains always valid.

Now I'm bringing my knowledge of philosophy into non-strictly-philosophical fields, such as early-stage business (I'm currently working on a book on this subject) and personal growth (a colleague recently asked me to make together Youtube video conversations on this matter). The time to actualize the aforementioned Aristotelian message is ripe: consider that Google inaugurated the CPO position, Chief Philosophy Officer, not because it's cool but because they need philosophers. I also continue as an independent scholar with my research in the spare time, avoiding all boring stuff and focusing only on arguments that really tantalize me (of course now I write less articles than before, but they're published on the same international journals). But the most important aspect is that now I know (I mean, crystal clear awareness!) that if I work well, I pick up all the fruits of my actions because I damn deserve that, if I don't, the bad effects are entirely on me… because I damn deserve that. Such a huge relief!

Reader submission: the perspective of a long-term non-TT faculty member

A few weeks ago, following Amanda's very nice suggestion here, I invited long-term non-TT faculty to share their perspectives on their jobs and the academy on the Cocoon. Here is the first submission I have received (if you would like to share your story, please just email me at [email protected]):

By Anonymous

I thought about writing a submission for the “Long Journeys” series on the Cocoon and then again when the “Real Philosophy Jobs” series came out but ultimately decided against it. When the invitation for a non-TT perspective appeared, I decided I would finally share my story and my observations. It includes a long journey and a real non-TT philosophy job at the end.  I am about to start my third year of a full-time, permanent teaching position in a philosophy department at a public university.  Prior to this, I accumulated many years of experience in the profession doing temporary jobs that are now becoming more of a norm rather than an exception.

Real jobs in philosophy part 10: Katia Vavova (Mount Holyoke College)

Many thanks to Helen for inviting me to contribute to this series. I am assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts, which is a small, liberal arts college for women. 

Career path. I have been at MHC since 2012. Before that, I was a post doc at Amherst College. I completed my PhD in 2010 at MIT, where I worked primarily in epistemology. My postdoc gave me teaching experience and time to expand my research into ethics. 

Research. The financial research support at MHC is tremendous. Everyone is guaranteed about $1700 for travel per year every year (for a conference or talk in which they are a participant—it’s slightly less for attendance only). Even if you don't manage to negotiate a start up or research budget, you’re covered. Faculty can also apply for yearly research grants from the college. I’ve received one per year since I’ve been here and haven’t paid for any travel on my own, despite a quite busy global travel schedule. There is also financial support for faculty to learn and collaborate together by, e.g., creating reading groups or faculty-only seminars.

There is also public recognition of faculty research. Accomplishments are announced and celebrated at monthly college-wide faculty meetings. There are also “Faculty Fridays” where faculty share their recent research.

Other benefits specific to MHC result from its location: it is within 20 minutes of Amherst College, Hampshire College, Smith College, and UMass. Though four of these are quite small, with tiny philosophy departments, together they form a large and exciting philosophical community. Since some recent retirements at MHC, we are a department of three permanent faculty. It doesn’t feel that way thanks to the greater community. All of the five college philosophy departments also constantly host talks and events.

Finally, pre-tenure faculty get one paid semester of pre-tenure leave after reappointment. There is an option, which many take, of an unpaid second semester—to be funded by either external grants, past frugality, or what not. After tenure, faculty have the same option every four years. This is generous: many other institutions provide only one semester every six or seven years. 

Teaching. MHC’s teaching load is 2-2, excluding occasional independent studies and thesis projects. Three of the classes are roughly introductory and in the areas hired to teach, the fourth is a seminar on any topic. The classes are largely discussion based and writing intensive. Most have between 20 and 30 students, though some are larger. (Logic gets up past the 70s and is one of the only classes with a grader.) Since the classes are always writing intensive but not always small, grading can be quite onerous—especially if you take seriously your job of teaching critical thinking and writing, as most faculty here do. 

The teaching is thus more intense here, but it is also more rewarding. The students choose MHC because they value the liberal arts. They are thus refreshingly not cynical or dismissive about the value of philosophy (like my MIT students were).

The proximity of MHC to UMass also provides opportunities for graduate teaching and advising. I taught a graduate course there in spring 2014, and have been on a number of graduate student committees.  I suspect some of this kind of part-time work with graduate students is possible at other undergraduate only institutions, but it’s particularly easy to get at MHC.

Service. The benefit of a small department is that there isn’t as much bureaucracy. Our department does, however, meet fairly often to discuss the curriculum, learning goals, and to think about the future of the major and the department. College service usually starts after the first year and involves standing on one college-level committee and evaluating grant proposals, fellowships, appeals, or the like.

Mount Holyoke is faculty run. Everyone is expected to attend monthly college-wide faculty meetings, where most of the business gets done. This way of running the college, and the expectation of attendance, says something about the culture. Faculty are expected to be involved in the life and functioning of the college. 

All of this, of course, can provide more pressure and means of procrastination. Research is hard, lonely, and there aren’t as many deadlines (or urgent looking student faces) to push you to get things done. This is why it’s so good, and so important, that MHC cares about and supports research. Both the college and the faculty want colleagues with active and exciting projects. MHC’s self-conception is as of a research and teaching institution—not just a teaching school, as such places are often viewed from the heights of top-tier philosophy programs.

Culture. MHC’s is a women’s college. Members of the student body are either female or identify as women. (The faculty is co-ed.) On a daily basis, working at a women’s college—at least this one—is not all that different from working at a co-ed school. Differences in my experiences at MHC, Amherst, and MIT are likely better explained by the distinct self-conceptions and cultures of the colleges, which don’t have to do with the sex or gender distribution of their student bodies. Teaching at MHC has, however, made certain, independently important issues especially salient and urgent for me. Consider, for example, diversifying syllabi: it’s harder to commit to teaching a standard all dead white dude Introduction to Political Philosophy when you think about what your audience would be like. Beyond that, teaching philosophy at a women’s college can be a nice antidote to what it’s like to be a woman in philosophy. 

Real jobs in philosophy part 9: Neil Sinhababu (National University of Singapore)

This Real Jobs in Philosophy post comes with an opportunity to become my colleague by getting a real tenure-track job like mine! More information is at the end of this post.

Career Path

In my first year at Harvard, my chemistry grades fell from an A first semester to a C second semester because I couldn't stop thinking about philosophy. I was crazy about Nietzsche, so I ended up doing my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin where lots of Nietzsche scholars were. In graduate school it became clear to me that Nietzsche's question of how there could be objective good and evil after the Death of God was basically the question of whether naturalistic moral realism was the right metaethical theory. As I turned my focus to metaethics, I discovered that every area in philosophy borders on metaethics in some way. So I've tried to learn as much as I can about everything. 

After a near-miss in the 2006-2007 academic year, I sent off 99 applications in 2007-2008 as I was finishing my PhD at Texas. When friends outside philosophy asked where I was applying, I told them that I was applying everywhere -- even Singapore! So it was a surprise when I got an email inviting me for a flyout at the National University of Singapore. I didn't know what to expect, but I found an exciting community of philosophers interested in issues from ancient Chinese philosophy to contemporary metaethics. It ended up being my only tenure-track offer, but I would've chosen it over any of the other jobs I interviewed for. I got tenure at the end of 2014, and I'm happy to still be employed there today. 

Current Institution

Singapore is an island city-state slightly smaller than the five boroughs of New York City, with a population between 5 and 6 million. The National University of Singapore is its major public research university, with about 28,000 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students. If Singapore were North Carolina, we'd be its UNC-Chapel Hill. 

After building successful research units in the sciences and technical fields over the years, the university decided to invest more resources in humanities research. As a result, our department has expanded considerably in size and quality over the last 25 years. Several newly wealthy nations in East Asia are moving in a similar direction, with new philosophy units opening up at a variety of universities in Hong Kong, Macau, Korea, and Taiwan. At present we have about 12 permanent faculty, though this is down from a peak of around 17 due to retirements and other attrition. We have a vibrant MA program and a small but good group of PhD students. 

I have a nice light 2/2 teaching load. With a number of colleagues working beside me in a broad department, I've mostly gotten to teach things I like. Over the years that has ranged from epistemology to political philosophy to Nietzsche, with metaethics at the center. Students in Singapore are generally intelligent, hard-working, and very polite. 

Since our students are very good, there are considerable research supervision duties outside of teaching -- supervising independent study modules, undergraduate theses, and graduate work. Some of our best undergraduates are now at philosophy PhD programs at ANU, Arizona, Brown, and Penn, and one is getting a psychology PhD in the UK. 

It's a very friendly department. I usually knock on all my colleagues' doors at noon before going to lunch so we can eat together, and then we sometimes get coffee afterwards. My colleagues in Asian philosophy are interested in engaging with contemporary Western work, and my colleagues working on contemporary stuff are curious and interested in what philosophers thousands of years ago in Asia were doing. (I've acquired an appreciation of Mohist moral philosophy in ancient China from my colleague Loy Hui Chieh, and I've learned a lot about cool classical Indian arguments in metaphysics and epistemology from Jay Garfield.)

I've managed to use the flexibility and research funding that comes with the job to give an enormous number of talks -- 50 in 8 months during 2011 when I had a semester off of teaching, and 60 in 8 months during 2013 after I taught extra classes in prior semesters to get an extra semester off. Right now I've gotten a post-tenure sabbatical with a summer on each side of it, and I'm pretty sure I can give well over a hundred. It's delightful to have an intense Q&A on one of my favorite ideas every couple days, and then eat and drink with a variety of experts on a range of philosophical issues as they tell me all sorts of cool things they know. If you'd like me to come by your institution in the next year or so, let me know! I'll be going all around the world.

I was mostly shielded from major departmental service obligations prior to tenure, but in the past year I was head of a search committee. This was an exciting but extremely time-consuming process, as we were trying to get extra positions from our administration which might be awarded to people coming out of graduate school with spectacular publication records. As it turned out, we got one of these bonus positions for Bob Beddor, who came out of his PhD program at Rutgers with two papers in Phil Studies, one in Phil Quarterly, and a Phil Review R&R, plus a co-authored Stanford Encyclopedia article! Seeing that, our administration gave him a prestigious Presidents' Assistant Professorship. But we ended up unable to fill a serious teaching need in moral and political philosophy. Now we're advertising specifically in that area. 

So if you're looking for a job teaching moral and political philosophy at one of many up-and-coming universities in Asia, please apply! Our PhilJobs ad is here, and it connects to the AcademicJobsOnline site where you can submit an application:

http://philjobs.org/job/show/5026

Real jobs in philosophy, part 8: Marcus Arvan (University of Tampa)

I hope everyone is enjoying our Real Jobs in Philosophy Series so far. Given that we haven't had any contributions from anyone at a midsized liberal arts university (MLAC), I thought I might chime in at this point to share what my job is like.

Career path

As I have explained before, I struggled substantially in graduate school (like many people do), especially at the dissertation stage. Fortunately, I finally found my way and received my first job offer, a 2-year Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of British Columbia, while ABD at the University of Arizona in 2008. I successfully defended my dissertation just before beginning the position, and spent one year at UBC. It was a great position, with a light 2/2 teaching load requiring little prep. I spent approximately 80% of my typical work week at UBC on research, and 20% on teaching. However, my fiancé at the time (who is now my spouse) could not work in Canada, and wanted to attend a PhD program in Industrial Organizational (IO) Psychology. So, I applied for jobs in the states, and was offered an attractive VAP at the University of Tampa. The position was attractive for a number of reasons. First, it was in the US, where my fiancé could live and work. Second, it is located in the same city as a top-5 program in IO psychology (which my spouse later applied and was accepted to). Third, while the VAP I was offered was technically a one-year contract, I was told it could be renewed annually for up to seven years, depending on university needs (which I had no reason to think would change) and performance. The fact that the position could be renewed for so many years was particularly attractive, as I figured it would allow me to significantly improve my dossier for the TT job market (I hadn't published as a graduate student, and only published one short "reply" piece while at UBC). In any case, I spent the next six years in that VAP position at UT before finally being offered a tenure track position (with a substantial tenure clock reduction) last year. This was my first year in a TT position, and I passed my mid-tenure review this past Spring.

Current Institution

I am now at the University of Tampa, a private mid-sized liberal arts university with 8,000 students (mainly undergraduate, though we offer 11 Masters degrees). The university has grown substantially during my time here, from about 6,500 students when I began in 2009. Our department, the Department of Philosophy & Religion, is the smallest department at the university. During most of my time here, we have had three full-time members. However, our most senior member retired last spring, so we have had only two full-time members this year. Fortunately, we hired a new full-time faculty member, Chelsea Haramia, to begin this coming Fall. I am expected to devote 45-60% of my time to teaching, 15-40% to research, and 10-40% on service and student involvement (the precise percentage within those spans are up to us to self-define in annual evaluations). During the semester, I currently devote about 75% of my time to teaching, 20% to service and student involvement, and 5% to research. I make up for the sharp skew in these figures by devoting 90-100% of my time to research during summer and winter breaks.

Real jobs in philosophy part 7: Liz Goodnick (Metropolitan State University of Denver)

By Liz Goodnick

I’d like to thank Helen De Cruz for inviting me to participate in this series. I will continue to (roughly) follow the pattern of previous posts in the series.

Career Path

I earned my PhD from the University of Michigan in 2010, after starting the program in 2000 (between taking a year off, changing topics from Spinoza to Hume, and various personal issues and shortcomings--it took a long time). My dissertation focused on Hume’s neglected masterpiece, The Natural History of Religion.

For the last several years of graduate school I did not have funding, so I adjuncted at Eastern Michigan University, Washtenaw Community College, and for the final year and a half, at Illinois Wesleyan University (where my husband had a renewing 1 year VAP position). I went on the philosophy job market 5 years in a row (2008-12), and, during that time, had 4 different temporary jobs. I completed multi-state moves 5 times during this period. 

Current Institution

I am now in my 3rd year of a tenure-track (TT) position at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. MSU Denver is a large urban University with 24,000 students (The 2nd largest in Colorado). We are a commuter campus and many of our students have families, jobs, have been in the military, etc. The philosophy department has 13 Tenured/TT professors, 1 full-time lecturer, and many adjuncts. We have about 40 Philosophy majors and 80 minors. I am expected to spend roughly 50% of my time/energy on teaching, 25% on service, and 25% on research. I don’t carefully track how much time I spend on each of these things, so I’m not sure what my actual ratios are.

Teaching

I have a 4/4 load (and have taught 4/4 every year, with some additional summer teaching). Typically, I teach 3 lower-division sections of the same class (either Introduction to Philosophy or Introduction to Ethics) and 1 upper-division class (so far: Philosophy of Religion, History of Modern Philosophy, a “special topics” class on the Problem of Evil, and a “senior seminar” class on Modern Women Philosophers; next fall I’ll teach Social and Political Philosophy). This keeps preparations to a minimum, while still allowing me to teach classes connected to my areas of interest and research. I have a lot of flexibility on which upper division courses I teach.

 

Real jobs in philosophy part 6: Basil Smith (Saddleback College)

Career Path

I am Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Humanities and Philosophy Departments at Saddleback College. Two years ago, I was granted tenure.

I never thought I’d get here.

In 1988, when I started studying Philosophy at Purchase College, my interests were interdisciplinary. After completing my B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology in 1991, I entered the Ph.D. program at the Claremont Graduate University. But having lived in Britain, I wanted to return. So I applied to Kings College London to do the MPhil/Ph.D. At Kings, I mostly studied analytic philosophy of language and mind.

In 1997, I met Christopher Norris from Cardiff University, who had similar interdisciplinary interests. So I enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Cardiff, hoping to finish quickly. But actually, after intending to write a thesis that included analytic philosophy, existentialism, and psychoanalysis, I became obsessed with philosophical skepticism. So my Ph.D. thesis addresses epistemic and semantic responses to skepticism.

In 2001, I was trading American equities from my flat on the Isle of Wight to get by. I was oddly good at such trading, but it was truly meaningless work. So I moved back to Philadelphia to begin teaching as an adjunct at Lebanon Valley College, LaSalle University and many other universities. I taught at least 8 classes a semester. I taught whatever anyone wanted no matter what it was. Of course, many would consider this an academic nightmare, but it taught me to manage my time. Still, because of the driving, reading, and preparing, I only defended my PhD. in 2005.

In 2006, I started applying to jobs and was hired immediately by John Tyler Community College in Richmond, VA, where I was made Chair of Philosophy and Religion. My JTCC colleagues and dean were welcoming and supportive, and I felt at home. But in 2009, after a holiday to Orange Country, CA, I applied for a few jobs just to see what would happen. Amazingly, I was granted interviews at almost everywhere that I applied. Mesmerized by the beach, Disneyland, and other fun things, I accepted a position at Saddleback College, where I am now Chair of the Humanities and Philosophy Departments.

Teaching

 At JTCC and Saddleback, the teaching load has been 5/5, with an option to teach summers. Classes at SB are capped at 45 (so 225 students per semester) and faculty are encouraged to let in more. As Chair, I get a modest stipend but the teaching is the same. This teaching load might sound daunting, but it is not that bad. Because I teach Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, and Logic over and over again, preparation is minimal. Moreover, because I arrange my schedule to teach between Monday and Thursday mornings, I have afternoons, evenings and long weekends. Lastly, because I not longer drive between many universities, there is no driving stress, nor recovery time. Given such full time privileges, my 5/5 teaching load can be done.

Recently, I was able to push two new classes - Ancient and Modern-  through the Curriculum Committee, as part of our new AAT degree. So I’m looking forward to teaching Modern.

Still, I think that teaching philosophy at a community college is uniquely challenging, for two reasons. First, because my 225 students are often badly prepared for the subject, they need constant feedback to quell their worries and bolster their confidence. Given this, the grading of such classes is constant, and can be overwhelming. Second, because my students are often badly prepared, they can read sparsely and carelessly, and eventually dismiss philosophy. Even during the class, such students can disparage philosophy (i.e. verbally or online), which hurts enrollment. But actually, because I want my students to appreciate the material, I try to be creative, inclusive, and engaging. Clearly, though, such efforts are work, and can be overwhelming.

Real jobs in philosophy part 5: Leigh M. Johnson (Christian Brothers University)

Helen De Cruz graciously offered me the opportunity to contribute to this series as a contingent faculty member. I want to commend her and the other Cocooners for including VAPs in this, since fixed-term appointments are the “real job” reality for a HUGE portion of folks working in our field. Though my narrative will be much different than theirs, I’m going to borrow the rough format of my friends John Protevi and Eric Schwitzgebel for the following. (Thanks, guys!)

Career Path
I’m currently in the second year of a 3yr VAP appointment at Christian Brothers University, a Lasallian institution serving a broad and diverse student population in Memphis, Tennessee. I did my graduate work at Villanova University (M.A.) and Penn State University (Ph.D.), finished in 6 years, went on the job market the year I defended my dissertation (2007) and before the economy tanked, landed a TT job right out of the gate at a small SLAC (Rhodes College), and labored away in that very small and very dysfunctional department (which was in receivership for 5 of my 7 years there) before eventually being denied tenure.

There is life after tenure denial. In my case, a very good life.

I decided to *very* selectively apply for jobs again in 2014—no more than 5 or 6—as I was more comfortable with leaving the academy than leaving Memphis at that point. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to leave either.

Teaching
Like most VAPs, the lion’s share of my work revolves around teaching. I have a 4/4 load, on the semester system, with my regular assignment being 3 sections of Contemporary Moral Values (a general education requirement in most Catholic colleges and universities) and one “other” course (usually an upper-division course like Philosophy of Race or Philosophy and Film) per semester. Because we have a shortage of philosophers in my department, my 4/4 is regularly supplemented with at least one “overload” course each term, most often in the form of a continuing-education/adult course, an online course, or a “hybrid” course. I also teach in the summer. In the 2014-2015 AY, I taught a total of 13 courses.

Real jobs in philosophy part 4: John Protevi (Louisiana State University)

By John Protevi

I’m currently Phyllis M Taylor Professor of French Studies (my primary appointment) and Professor of Philosophy (by an affiliate appointment), at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. For the past year and a half I’ve also been Chair of the Department of French Studies (DFS).

CAREER PATH

I should first explain how a philosopher came to work in a French Studies department. After a couple of majors my undergrad career finished up, 8 years after it began, in 1981 with a BA in Philosophy from Penn State. I then took 2 MAs, first in English and then in Philosophy, leaving Penn State at age 31 in 1986. I finished my PhD in Philosophy from Loyola University of Chicago in 1990, with a dissertation on Aristotle’s theory of time in Physics IV as read by Heidegger and Derrida; this was the basis, after revision and addition, of my first book, Time and Exteriority (Bucknell UP, 1994).

Immediately after the PhD I worked at what was then called Memphis State University as Visiting Assistant Professor (4/4 load split between Intro and Logic), then the following year as an Instructor at a number of schools in the Boston area (Boston U [Political Theory – Hegel and Marx], Simmons [19^th century philosophy], and Spring Hill [Intro]), and then 2 years at Villanova (Western Civ), Widener (Logic and Intro), LaSalle (Intro), and St Joseph’s (more Intro). So that was 3 years in a row of the freeway flyer lifestyle. Fun courses and a great start to a broad teaching portfolio, but exhausting. Luckily I was able to find the time for the transition from dissertation to book and so kept my research production going.

I then got another VAP in Baton Rouge in 1994. During that year my life changed forever when I met Kate Jensen, at the time a newly tenured Associate Professor in French Studies. We got married that year, but Louisiana was in a state budget crisis so the job, which might have been extended, evaporated. So I took a postdoc at University of Warwick for 95-96, and then returned to LSU for 5 years as an Instructor, teaching in the Honors College (Western Civ, again – go ahead, ask me about the Iliad!) before the DFS was able to search for a “French Theory” TT job, a search which resulted in an offer to me. (A note of explanation: while most French departments are almost exclusively oriented to the study of literature, we take an interdisciplinary approach – hence the title “French Studies” – directly employing linguists, cinema studies people, and a philosopher.)

All along the way to my PhD I was teaching as a TA, so that makes 9 years of precarious labor, as the current (and correct) term would put it. So it was another 11 years of precarious labor before I landed my first TT job at age 45.

Real jobs in philosophy part 3: Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)

By Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California, Riverside)

How hard does the typical tenured professor work, and on what? Good information is hard to come by. I will describe my own workload and typical workday, as one data point.

I am a full professor of philosophy, with a six-digit salary and tenure at UC Riverside, whose philosophy PhD program is ranked 28th in the US by the Philosophical Gourmet. Our normal teaching load is four 10-week courses (plus final exams) spread over three “quarters” (hence 1-2-1), plus independent supervision of graduate students.

Unlike most of my colleagues, I try to work regular workdays – about 8:00 to 5:30 Monday to Friday, with evenings and weekends reserved for home life (below, I’ll add some caveats to that). I also try to have relatively normal holidays: the official US holidays, a couple weeks for family vacation during the summer, about a week over winter break, and a smattering of other days off.

My typical day:

Real jobs in philosophy part 2: Kristina Meshelski, working at California State University Northridge

By Kristina Meshelski (Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge)

Cal State Northridge is a large, regionally focused state university in Los Angeles (in the San Fernando Valley specifically, that made famous by the movie “Valley Girl”, etc.).  Locals call it CSUN.  The Cal State system is the largest state university system in the US, and CSUN is the largest within that system, with about 35,000 undergrads.  It also one of the cheapest 4 year universities in the US –for California residents it costs about $6,000 a year, and most of our students qualify for federal grants to offset this.  It is a majority Latina/o campus.  Many students are the first in their family to attend college.  Almost no one lives on campus, and many live at home with their parents.  Many others are a bit older than traditional college age.

Our official full time work load is 5/5, with 1/1 being devoted to service, meaning a teaching load of 4/4.  Given this, though we are expected to do some research in order to get tenure, we are not actually paid to do any research, unless we win special “reassigned time”.  Reassigned time is relatively plentiful for those on the tenure track, but it is assigned on a competitive basis and you have to apply for it every single semester.  I have not taught a 4/4 yet, and I don’t plan to, but I have spent a lot of time filling out applications.  This would be incredibly frustrating were it not for the support of a really great department – my colleagues do research and they want me to do research.  I think this is something people often misunderstand about “teaching-focused” institutions; they can vary greatly depending on the department culture.  At CSUN we have philosophers publishing in top journals, and with top presses, and some who barely publish at all.  I was questioned rigorously at my job talk, and while my colleagues do care deeply about the quality of my teaching, they are supportive of efforts to get out of teaching as well.  (I find from talking to people that this is not always true at some teaching-focused places.)

Real jobs in philosophy part 1: Mark Alfano, working at TU Delft (Netherlands)

We are starting a new series called New jobs in philosophy. The aim of this series is to give graduate students a sense of the wide diversity of philosophy jobs out there. We give a sense of the nuts and bolts of teaching, across a large range of institutions (from community colleges, SLACs to research-intensive), different levels of seniority (we have assistant, associate and full professors lined up, as well as non-tenure track faculty members such as visiting assistant professors), and we also aim for large geographical diversity. Our first contributor is Mark Alfano, who is an associate professor at TU Delft in The Netherlands. If you are interested in being part, please contact us at either helenldecruz at gmail dot com or marvan at ut dot edu. 

------- By Mark Alfano

I have worked in a variety of settings: various CUNY colleges (large, urban, public university), Notre Dame (large, private, religious university), Princeton (small Ivy League university with immense resources), University of Oregon (large university in a small town that is pathologically obsessed with sportsball), and now Delft University of Technology (large technical university in a foreign country). I'd like to think this has given me some perspective on working conditions.

While I was a Ph.D. student at CUNY, I sometimes referred to the collection of CUNY colleges as an educational gulag archipelago. Most of the grad students who were working there at the time taught between 4 and 12 courses per year. Many also had second and third jobs to help make ends meet. My understanding is that things are now quite a bit better for CUNY folks, thanks in large part to recommendations made by Steve Stich and Brian Leiter when they performed an external review a few years ago. The contrast between CUNY and Notre Dame was pretty stark. At CUNY, I shared a windowless office that had 1 desk with 8 other people. At Notre Dame, I was in the Institute for Advanced Study, where I had my own beautiful office on the 12th floor. Notre Dame also has a crucifix in pretty much every room. While Notre Dame is well-staffed, Princeton was something else entirely. It's hard to comprehend the level of support one receives there, even as a postdoc. I got a lot of writing and interdisciplinary cross-training done during the postdocs at Notre Dame and Princeton, both of which allowed me to devote 100% of my time to research.

But I guess you are more interested in what it's like to have a faculty position. At UO, I was assistant professor for two years. I did some small service tasks, but my time was pretty well protected from the drudgery of committee work. I was the instructor for four different courses each year. Nominally, my teaching load was 5 courses per year, but I was able to get research-related releases both years. To my mind, this was a perfectly reasonable teaching load. Each course ran for only 10 weeks, and for the big ones, I received grading support from Ph.D. students. I spent the rest of my work time on research and grant-writing. No one was expected to write grants in my department, but because much of my work is empirical and interdisciplinary, I teamed up with various people to do so. However, I had problems with how the university and department worked, so I left in 2015.

And I landed in a terrific job at Delft University of Technology. The move was, naturally, a bit stressful. Waiting a month for all one's stuff to pass through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic Ocean can be nerve-wracking. And I can tell you there are certain outfits that, having worn them for 4 straight weeks, I would rather not put on again.

Here at Delft, I do a mix of research, grant-writing, teaching, and service. The philosophy program here is the only humanities unit in the whole university, so that has been a big change. However, my colleagues in other departments, such as human-machine interaction, systems engineering, data science, and industrial design (to name a few), are very open-minded about philosophy. They are especially keen to have ethicists involved in their projects, which is pretty exciting for me, as it means that I get to contribute to the design of products and systems with an eye to the ethical implications of their implementation and use.