How I got a tenure track teaching position at a community college *

1. Jeff Mahr How I got a tenure track teaching position at a community college *

2. Community College, diversity and adjuncts • Mission of CCs is different from universities • Not selective; educate all but keep rigor high • This creates… • Diversity in my classrooms • Diversity of • academic preparation, age, life stage, culture etc • Hiring committees want to know you understand this • Adjunct – teacher with a semester to semester contract • Bottom line, you need teaching experience to get a full time position

3. My story • Always wanted to teach but listened to bosses too much • Began as an adjunct in Fall 2007 • Taught one class per semester at City College ever since • Introductory Biology (majors classes and non-majors classes) • Began applying for full time positions January 2009 • Got “the phone call” April 2010 from Georgia Perimeter College

4. The application process I • Where I looked: • Higheredlearning.com • The Chronicle of Higher Education (chronicle.com) • Its all online

5. Things that might be useful when you apply • Take advantage of opportunities for professional development • At SDCCD: Flex Credit • Will go on CV, shows you want to be a better teacher • Ask colleagues to visit your class and review you • Extremely valuable for improving teaching • Source of reference letters

6. The application process II • A CV that highlights your teaching experience • How important is your research? Not very. • Statement of teaching philosophy • “Shows you have thought about your teaching” • Statement of diversity • in some form or another, they all ask for it. • Extra questions: specific to each college, many related to diversity.

7. Research the school • Student population statistics • Any school-specific emphases? • Feeder programs to send students into biotech? Nursing? • GPC has an extensive arboretum, I mentioned it as a possible botany field trip

8. The application process III • Cover letter: • each one unique, follow all the standard advice • put in personal touches • Have a document listing all of your professional development activities listed. • If they don’t ask for it, try to upload it anyway • “Other docs” space on online application

9. The community college interview process • First you will get an email inviting you for onsite interview or (Georgia) a phone interview • California CCs: they have already picked the interview day, you pick a time • Onsite interview: • Very regimented • All candidates asked the same questions • No personal chit chat • California: NO follow up questions from committee, hardly a smile. Georgia: a bit more relaxed • Answer the question and work into the answer all that stuff they want to ask you but can’t.

10. My teaching demo options 1. Photosynthesis 2. The sliding filament theory of muscle contraction 3. Protein synthesis 4. Conjugation in bacteria 5. Human nephron function 6. Ethnobotany 7. Nitrogen cycle in ecosystems 8. Phylogeny of birds 9. Lacoperon

11. The teaching demonstration • They pick the topic, you have ~15 minutes to impress them • For my first 3 interviews: try to impress them • Threw in every contrived fancy teaching thing I could • Last teaching demonstration: try to teach them • Starts off with equipment malfunction • When they couldn’t answer questions, I reviewed on the board until I saw that they “knew it” • Prepared 12 slides, got through only 4 • Had sample exam questions that covered that material • It worked!

12. Great website • While it is specifically a geosciences website, most of the questions I was asked at all my interviews were variations on the questions at this site: • http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep/jobsearch/2YC-InterviewQuestions.html