Graduate
Prospective Students
Placement of Recent PhDs
The success of recent PhDs, especially on a tight academic job market, is an important measure of the health of any graduate program. We’re happy to share the results of the 2008 and 2009 job searches, which confirm the robust vitality of our programs.
Placement rates are always difficult to quantify, since some candidates restrict their searches geographically or turn down job offers based on personal circumstances. But for the last two years, a key metric is simple: all of our PhDs on the market for the first time landed full-time academic employment.
In 2008, eleven first-time job seekers went on the market. Nine accepted full-time tenure-track assistant professorships; two accepted shorter-term appointments (a postdoctoral teaching fellowship and a two-year appointment respectively). Returning jobseekers at various stages of their careers also had strong placement rates. Three accepted full-time tenure-track appointments; eight began postdoctoral fellowships and lectureships at such institutions as Bowling Green State University, Dartmouth College, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Minnesota.
Although the 2009 job market reflected steep job cutbacks and hiring freezes nationwide, all of our ten first-time jobseekers found full-time jobs, as assistant professors, postdoctoral fellows or lecturers. They received offers of tenure-track positions at the University of Colorado/ Denver, the University of Scranton, Roger Williams University, the University of Montevallo, the University of North Carolina/Pembroke, the University of Singapore, Duquesne University, St. Louis University and Kennesaw State University. Two students accepted postdoctoral appointments, including a named three-year assistant professorship. Of the students returning to the job market in 2009, two accepted tenure-track offers at Mary Washington University and Ohio State University/Newark.
Of critical interest beyond numbers are the kinds of institutions and programs that made offers to our graduates, and in which they will begin their post-graduate careers. These range widely, from large-scale to small, public to private, and rural to urban; they comprise liberal arts colleges, state universities, and major research centers. They include: the City University of New York, Detroit Mercy University, Florida International University, Fordham University, Harvard University, Hunter College, Kalamazoo College, New York University, Notre Dame, Rutgers-Camden, St. Martin’s University, St. Mary’s College (Indiana), the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and the University of Toronto. Historically, Michigan’s placement rates in tenure-track appointments have been steady and among the best in the country. We remain committed to the vigorous support—intellectual, institutional, and financial—that will help insure the widest range of professional opportunities for our PhDs.
In order to give visitors to our site a fuller sense of our graduate programs, we offer below some first-hand accounts by recent PhDs of their job market experiences.
First-Hand Accounts
Laura Williamson Ambrose
As a first time jobseeker, embarking on the job search process resembled both of a thrilling leap and a swift kick into a cold pool—usually not at the same time. At best, the process left me invigorated by the adrenaline-induced clarity it provided as I finally gave concrete language to years of thinking about “my work.” Synapses fired. Chapters of my dissertation began to cohere in my abstract drafts in ways that seemed (gasp!) almost deliberate. Verbs and adjectives appeared on the page as if divinely inspired. Simultaneously, though, I felt exhausted by the process’s demanding hunger for my time and energy. From mid-summer to the following April, my life took on a new shape: the small post office across the street began to dread the sight of me and my armload of applications, dissertation file boxes were literally and figuratively pushed aside to make room for the color-coded splendor of the job files, and the “job documents” folder on my computer grew so large I began to self-combust at the sight of file names such as “job letter 10-07 draft 1.3 b”. Job season had caught me in its clutches and would not let go for nine months.
The remarkable thing about such a bind, though, is that at Michigan it is a shared one. Certainly, the majority of my job search hours were spent alone or with my dedicated advisor as we considered the implications of using words like “epistemology” instead of “representation” or of sending a writing sample that had tenuous connections, at best, to the canon. But those struggles were not unique to me and, in fact, were shared by the dozen or so other graduate students on the market that season, the superhuman staff of the English Department, and a significant majority of the faculty who attended mock job talks, ran mock interviews, and stopped me in the hallway to simply ask how things were going. The shock of the overall process was buffered by the seasoned experience of this support system and the empathy of my comrades in jobseeking. Indeed, regular meetings with a jobseekers group, an informal panel with faculty on the interview process at MLA, “meta” conversations following my mock job talk, and email exchanges with the graduate chair and my committee gave me crucial opportunities to ask the “dumb” questions: What is a dossier? How strict is the 15-20 page limit for writing samples? What should I wear? Did I speak to quickly? What do I do if I don’t actually know the answer to a question? How do I negotiate??
Although hindsight is 20/20, my sense of Michigan’s strength in preparing graduate students for the job search is not a sudden realization. The moments before I sealed an application envelope, walked into my MLA interviews, and stepped up to the podium to deliver a job talk, I consciously and unconsciously pulled from the support network and the practice sessions that the Department provided me with in the months previous to calm my nerves, clear my head, and envision the job (and the sleep) to come. Now months later and despite mild warnings that job anxiety would quickly turn into a dash of first-year faculty stress, I'm still relishing in the novelty of my newfound status: employment. The word certainly does have a ring to it.
Keith Green
—Assistant Professor of English,
University of Rutgers-Camden
I went on the job market last year for the first time, and I am fortunate enough to be writing this piece as a tenure-track professor. While that experience may be atypical, as many people spend more than one year on the market, the way that people go about getting their jobs is probably quite similar. So, here’s what I learned about snagging the big one.
My first piece of advice would be to know what you want. Are you more of a researcher or a teacher? Do you feel more at home in the classroom or in the library? Could you live without writing articles or books? Or can you live with, and even feed off, the constant pressure to publish and produce? Most of us need some balance of the two, but find a program that is as close as possible to your sensibilities. For almost every kind of academic, there is a comparable institution (even if they are not hiring).
Once you have identified potential institutions, find out exactly what they want. Writing an outstanding dissertation is a great thing. But presenting your work and intelligence as solutions to a department’s needs is just as important. Learn how to frame yourself in a way that complements your prospective department. “I could add courses in X, Y, and Z,” you might say, “which you don’t currently offer.” As one department chairperson told me, “Psych them out!” Find out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and where you fit in. Don’t think of yourself as an applicant, but as a problem solver.
Laugh and smile during your interview. Departments are not just looking for scholars, but colleagues – people who can laugh at a joke and, when appropriate, tell one. I also found that when I was smiling and comfortable, my mind was better able to react to the unexpected. If I was tense and stiff, then my responses were also tense and stiff. Keep in mind that most good interviews are like conversations, not interrogations. Yes, prepare the 2-minute, 5-minute, and (eek!) 20-minute versions of your research, but don’t just shove it down your interviewers’ throats.
Lastly, nail the job talk. If you get that far, they already think you are hirable. But the way (in my experience) to separate yourself is not to play it safe (reading with your head down for 30 minutes), but to be courageous. For the first five minutes of my job talk, I didn't read the paper I was presenting, but summarized the book project I was working on that would hopefully get me tenure. When I began to read my paper, they understood how it fit within a larger project that would change my field and add worth to their department. So, interact with the room and own it.
