Becoming a Professor: A Guide to a Career in Higher Education

Becoming a Professor is designed primarily for graduate and undergraduate students and others – instructors, lecturers and new tenure-track professors – contemplating careers as professors in post-secondary education at colleges, institutes, and universities. The book identifies kinds of higher education institutions, and types of teaching positions along with the nature of each position’s responsibilities and advantages and disadvantages. It explains how graduate students can promote their future as faculty members while they are still in graduate school and suggests ways to find suitable faculty positions and succeed at the application and interview process. The book also addresses a range of other matters that influence careers in higher education once a candidate is hired in a faculty position – such matters as the tenure and promotion process and how to succeed in other aspects of the professorial role (research, service, teaching), and as well as how to avoid pitfalls (political and ethical aspects) in such positions.

Table of Contents:
Preface Chapter 1: Higher Education’s Significant Contexts Part I: Preparing to Become a Professor Chapter 2: Types of Higher Education Institutions Chapter 3: Types of Teaching Positions Chapter 4: Profiting from Graduate School Chapter 5: Search Committees, CVs, Interviews, and Job Talks Part II: On-the-Job: Research/Creativity, Teaching, and Service Roles Chapter 6: Publishing, Performing, and Products Chapter 7: Teaching Chapter 8: Service Obligations Part III: Influential Issues Chapter 9: Ethical and Legal Matters Chapter 10: Professorial Politics Chapter 11: Promotion and Tenure Part IV: Postscript Chapter 12: The Future: Careers in Higher Education References Index

About the Author :
Marie Iding (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara) is a professor of educational psychology University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, where she has taught for over twenty years. She has also taught, and presented research or workshops in diverse locations around the world, including American Samoa, Chuuk (Federated States of Micronesia), Vietnam, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, Kenya, Spain, Portugal, Fiji, Australia, Jamaica, Poland and Scotland. R. Murray Thomas (PhD, Stanford University) is a professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he also directed the program in International Education. His list of professional publications exceeds 400, including 59 books for which he served as author, coauthor, or editor.

Review :
Comprehensive, exceptionally well organized, thoroughly 'user friendly' in content and presentation, Becoming a Professor: A Guide to a Career in Higher Education should be considered essential reading by anyone considering or aspiring to becoming a career academic. . . .[The book] is a strongly recommended addition to all college and university library Educational Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists. College professors typically do not receive the quantity or quality of the professional development training they need. Becoming a Professor by Marie Iding and Murray Thomas seeks to begin to fill this void by offering a concise, organized, and friendly guide to becoming a successful academic, including a balance of useful basic information about academic life and useful advice based on years of experience. Had Becoming a Professor been available to my generation, our academic careers could have been not only more productive but much more fulfilling. Just as The Joy of Cooking formed a generation of culinary artists, this book rejuvenates higher education. Professors Iding and Thomas have probed into every aspect of academic life, sifting out the values and skills that make higher education such a rewarding profession. Becoming a Professor is more than a must read for those seeking academic positions, in academic positions, advising those in academic positions (e.g., deans), and for the general public curious about what professors do with all their time if they aren’t teaching. Becoming is an easy, marvelous read. It’s hard to put down; one’s learning curve is steep.