Elevating faculty affairs’ impact on institutional success: three takeaways from a recent convening

What is the role of faculty affairs in promoting teaching effectiveness? How can a centralized faculty affairs department support faculty professional development and research? What systems do colleges and universities have in place to assist with faculty on-boarding, mentoring, and career advancement?

Despite the prevalence of these issues, faculty affairs leaders have historically lacked a national convening organization focused exclusively on faculty affairs. Last month, the Interfolio Convening on Faculty Affairs Research (iCFAR) brought together faculty affairs leaders and researchers to discuss both research and practice in this growing area of importance in higher education. At the convening, Interfolio’s Chief Client Officer Carol Gersten presented results from the FAIR (Faculty Affairs Inventory Research) study—an analysis of how faculty affairs departments at more than 50 institutions present their value to faculty.

The convening provided an opportunity for experts to share insights on best practices from their institutions and strategies to elevate faculty affairs as a critical service within institutions. Several participants lamented the few opportunities for faculty affairs leaders to meet, exchange ideas, and consider collaborations across universities. Four speakers highlighted the following key aspects of faculty affairs.

#1 Catalyzing Instructional Innovation

Lindsay Wheeler, Assistant Director of STEM Education Initiatives at the University of Virginia, discussed her research concerning faculty affairs’ impact on instructional quality and student learning. Among her findings was that an excessive focus on lecture format may actually be detrimental to student learning outcomes, with a disproportionate effect on underrepresented minority students.

In response, UVA faculty affairs leaders are evaluating course-level learning and faculty professional development to help professors identify innovative teaching practices that can be applied in the classroom. Professor Wheeler’s research shows that faculty affairs can play a constructive role in helping faculty branch out from traditional instructional practices such as lecturing.

#2 Propelling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Academe

Jaime Lester, Interim Director and Professor of the Higher Education Program at George Mason University, explored the various types of faculty affairs support and programs that institutions commonly offer. She emphasized that, currently, programming tends to be either one-size fits all or heavily focused on early-career faculty. Moreover, underrepresented and female faculty are more consistently tapped for service/mentoring/committee work that isn’t typically credited/considered in the promotion process.

#3 A Faculty Hiring and Search Engine

Autumn Reed, Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), shared best practices for improving faculty diversity and UMBC’s application of the Interfolio Faculty Search module, including inclusive search processes—such as critical comparison of applicant pool diversity data to national statistics on the academic labor force, and explicit shared criteria for evaluating faculty job applicants—improving the campus climate, family-friendly policies, mentoring, and career advancement programs.

To help implement these best practices, Reed then discussed specific steps that institutions can take to improve faculty diversity. For example, she outlined how diversity hiring recruitment plans, STRIDE peer education, postdoctoral fellowships for faculty diversity, and Interfolio’s Faculty Search tool can create a more inclusive search process.

iCFAR included faculty and leaders from the University of Virginia; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; George Mason University; Virginia Tech; Virginia Commonwealth University; American University; Strayer University; University of Maryland, College Park; University of North Carolina; American Association of Colleges & Universities; the American Council on Education; and the American Institutes for Research.

This blog concludes a three-part series that explored themes in faculty affairs, including research into unique and common practices and attributes of faculty affairs departments.

8 letter of recommendation tips to help your student stand out

This post continues our series, The Smart Scholar.

As a professor reaching the end of the spring semester, you probably have a lot on your plate. You might be grading finals and wrapping up all loose ends before summer approaches. Maybe your program is still in full swing, particularly if it operates in trimesters or quarters. No matter how this time of year affects your schedule, there’s one thing for certain: many of your students are applying for jobs, internships and graduate school. You may have been approached by a few students about writing their letters of recommendations to help them secure their first jobs. Perhaps some of your colleagues have even reached out to you, asking for a recommendation to help them secure a teaching fellowship or academic grant.

Although you’re likely writing many letters, you should try your hardest to make the piece stand out to improve your student or colleague’s chances of reaching their goal. Follow these letter of recommendation tips to create the most compelling argument possible.

1. Know when to say no

When a student or colleague asks you to write a recommendation on their behalf, it’s important that you ask yourself the following questions:

Do I know this colleague or student well enough to write a convincing letter?
Do I have the time to write the letter?
Am I the best fit as a letter writer for this candidate?

If you’ve said no to any of these questions, it may be best to decline the request to write a letter of recommendation. Even though saying no feels like you’re letting your student or colleague down, you’re really helping them in the long run. A hiring manager or scholarship committee can see right through a letter from a recommender who does not have a close relationship with the applicant. Likewise, you’re less likely to produce a convincing letter if you have to rush through it. This is unfortunate for the candidate because there may have been a better letter writer who could speak with more conviction about their qualifications for the award, job or university admittance.

When you politely decline, explain your reasoning to the student or colleague. They may feel the stress of having to find a new contact to write a letter on their behalf, but they will likely understand where you’re coming from and may even thank you in the end.

2. Create a timeline

The application process can be stressful and intense for individuals who are looking to advance their careers or education. For that reason, they may not have stayed on top of their own scheduling goals, causing them to leave a great deal of their work to the last minute. You may have a colleague or student reach out to you about writing a letter of recommendation with an unrealistic window of time to complete it. In order to set yourself (and the applicant) up for success, we suggest sharing the following timeline with anyone looking for a reference letter:

I will need two to three weeks to write the letter.
After writing the letter, I will need one or two weeks to edit the letter.
After editing the letter, I will need one week to either submit the letter electronically or mail the letter to the appropriate person.

Having a transparent, realistic timeline will give you more than enough time to complete the task, while providing yourself some wiggle room in case you get caught up with other tasks. More importantly, it helps the applicant know how much time they will need to give you before the application deadline. It’s important to be straightforward and honest in this type of situation so that everyone is clear about how long it will take for you to write the letter of recommendation.

3. Decide what to put in the letter

In order to write an effective reference letter, you’ll need to determine exactly what information should go into it. Here are some important components to include when you are writing a recommendation letter:

A compelling opening
Your relationship to the candidate
Personal qualities about the candidate
Candidate’s problem-solving skills
Candidate’s understanding of a related subject area
Information about their communication and interpersonal skills
A closing that ties together all the reasons you believe the candidate is qualified

Don’t forget to include some basic information about yourself as well for credibility. Here are additional pieces you’ll want to add about yourself:

Full name
Job title
Years in the profession
Contact information, such as your phone number and email address

4. Ask for a draft template

Whether or not you’ve written letters of recommendation related directly to your students’ or colleagues’ academic and career pursuits before, you may want to work from a sample letter. Request that the applicant send along a draft template related to the program or job title they are applying for. Not only can this help you in the letter writing process, it can ensure that you write the best piece possible on their behalf. With a draft to guide you through the letter writing process, you’ll know the proper angle to take that speaks to the requirements and expectations of the school, job position or award the applicant is seeking. In addition, it can cut down on the amount of time it takes you to write the letter, as you’ll have a good jumping-off point to work from.

5. Request specific information

Even though you’ll be the major player responsible for drafting and sending the letter of recommendation, it’s crucial that the person requesting the letter meets you (at least) halfway, providing you with adequate information about the role itself. Your letter focus should be about the candidate, naturally, but you’ll need some details about their goals and aspirations, as well as how they connect with the desired role.

Ask that your student or colleague send along their resume, cover letter or personal statement, academic transcript and information about the graduate school, award or job itself. Request a copy of the program or job description; that way, you can see exactly what the organization or admissions officers are looking for from ideal applicants. This can help you craft the right narrative, highlighting the candidate’s strengths that relate directly to the expectations of the role or program.

6. Make it personal

A reference that only touches on technical characteristics of the applicant – such as academic performance and work experience – doesn’t create a compelling argument for the candidate. Since a majority of this information likely appears on the candidate’s resume, you’re likely regurgitating what is already clear. What their resume, cover letter, statement of purpose and other documents do not reveal, however, is what it’s like to work with them. As a recommender, you can reveal information that a graduate school or potential employer wouldn’t know about the applicant from reading their cover letter and resume alone. Feel free to divulge observations of their work ethic, character strengths and other personal qualities that make them a compelling candidate. Something that many recommenders shy away from is revealing speed bumps the applicant faced. However, a graduate school or employer may be interested in seeing how the candidate dealt with failure or difficulty and what they did to work through their struggles.

7. Follow through with your role as a mentor

Since your student or colleague has requested that you write a letter of recommendation on their behalf, it’s evident that they look up to you as a leader and role model. This should be an honor, as their respect for you has compelled them to ask you for assistance on a crucial aspect of the application process. After you’ve completed your letter, don’t hesitate to ask the student or colleague if they need any assistance or guidance throughout the other elements of the application process. Perhaps they need to interview for a role or program and would like some help preparing for this meeting. If they get into the program or are offered the role, don’t let this be the last time they hear from you. Offer yourself as an ongoing mentor, providing them with an advisor, confidante and networking contact that they can utilize throughout the duration of their career.

There are plenty of resources you can turn to when looking for teaching inspiration. Most of these sources will advise you to make and maintain efficient working relationships with students and colleagues. Positive results that can benefit from relationship building include improved workplace and classroom culture, ongoing networking opportunities and increased respect and authority within your field.

8. Submit the letter the right way

Once you’ve created an effective letter of recommendation, you can take a deep breath. You’ve finished the toughest part of the process. Now you’ll need to think about how you’ll submit your reference. Maybe you think it’s the best idea to send the letter directly to your student or colleague; that way, they can do what they like with it. They may also prefer you to send it directly to the graduate school or organization and notify them when you’ve turned it in.

Perhaps you’d rather send the reference letter to the graduate institution or organization confidentially, without the applicant having immediate access to it. You might prefer the sense of freedom this style of submission gives you, as it takes away the pressure of a student or colleague nitpicking your word choice. You can submit a letter confidentially in any of the following ways:

Mail it directly to schools or organizations
Utilize Interfolio’s Dossier Delivery system

If you’ve never utilized Interfolio’s technologies before when writing and asking for recommendation letters, you might consider implementing this platform into your process. When you choose to work with Interfolio, you can experience the following benefits:

A place to store past letters to candidates
Guaranteed letter confidentiality, if you’d prefer the privacy
A customer service team that’s ready to act on your requests
A quality control check that makes sure the letters you’re turning in have all the required components, such as an official letterhead, signature and relevant contact information

Whether you choose to submit your letter of recommendation through “snail mail” or Interfolio’s seamless technology, follow these letter of recommendation tips to help your student or colleague stand out among the other candidates. The right content, details and mixture of personal details and academic or professional skills can create a compelling argument that sets your contact up for success when applying for graduate school or career opportunities.

What other strategies do you have when writing a letter of recommendation? Please feel free to share with me on Twitter (@ramongoings).

In addition to an online platform for universities to manage faculty reviews, Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.

Author Bio: Dr. Ramon B. Goings is an assistant professor of educational leadership at Loyola University Maryland. His research examines gifted/high-achieving Black male academic success PreK-PhD, diversifying the teacher and school leader workforce, and the student experience and contributions of historically Black colleges and universities to the higher education landscape. As a writing coach and editor, Dr. Goings enjoys supporting the scholarly development of doctoral students and professors in higher education. For more information about Dr. Goings, please visit his website www.ramongoings.com and follow him on Twitter (@ramongoings).

Student evaluations: is it time for reform?

This post continues our series by a onetime academic job seeker, now academic-at-large, on the future of student evaluations.

Previously on this blog, we talked about ways that you can make the most of the common practice of using student evaluations to assess instructors’ job performance in higher ed. Since then, the recognition that student evaluations are inherently flawed—data show that they don’t reflect what’s truly being learned in a class, may have contributed to widespread grade inflation, and often result in lower scores for women and minority professors—has become ever more widespread. Last summer, an arbitrator in Ontario, looking at this evidence, ruled that Toronto’s Ryerson University must stop using student evaluations in measuring teaching effectiveness in cases of promotion and tenure.

The recommendations we made in the earlier blog post about making the most of a bad system, and procuring solid student evals that can help you along, still stand:

Give students plenty of time to fill out the forms
Talk to them about the forms’ purpose
Try, if you can, to give them specific questions that reflect the course materials

But if the evidence that student evals are counterproductive and unfair has you sufficiently convinced that the whole practice needs an overhaul, perhaps it’s time to push for your institution to change its policies.

In a comprehensive review, published earlier this year, of the way that some universities are already altering their relationships to evaluations, Kristin Doerr of the Chronicle of Higher Education offers some models for reform:

The University of Southern California has largely moved to a peer-review process, whereby teaching evaluations from other professors take primacy over student assessments in the course of promotion-and-tenure decision making. Peer reviewers must take anti-bias training to reduce the subjectivity of their judgments. The University of Oregon is following suit in implementing a more comprehensive and standardized peer-review program.
At Berkeley, in the division of mathematical and physical sciences, instructors under review write reflections that are considered alongside evaluations, to give context to their students’ input. (This is similar to a practice earlier described by David Perlmutter, a dean at Texas Tech, who reports that his institution allows professors to give students supplemental evaluations that add more information to the picture that standard evaluations paint.)
Also at USC, the school has made revisions to the types of questions asked in student evaluations, making questions more specific in a bid to minimize bias.
At Oregon, the university is moving away from numerical “circle the 5”-type evaluations, and toward questions that ask about specific elements of an instructor’s teaching, and then ask students to provide written comment.
Oregon also offers a midterm student experience survey that only the professor can access, offering the opportunity for professors to learn about things that aren’t working in that semester’s classes before it’s too late to change them.

Maybe your university is among those rethinking student evaluations right now. If not, maybe 2019 is the year to suggest some change.

Tweet us your thoughts on ways you can harness your institution’s current policies on student evals, and/or ways you would reform them and include #Interfolio.

Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.

Preparing to enter the academic job market

This post continues our series, The Smart Scholar, on preparing for the academic job market.

The months of May and June are an exciting time for colleges and universities as students are preparing for graduation and our higher education colleagues make announcements of their new positions. Bearing in mind the summer shuffle of individuals in higher education and slew of new graduates, it is important to be prepared for the academic job market—especially because it is extremely competitive.

However, where do you begin? In this post I provide three suggestions on best preparing yourself to enter the academic market.

Update your job materials

While the summer time is typically slow for open positions in higher education, it is the perfect time to update your materials such as:

Curriculum Vitae and/or Resume
Cover Letter
Letters of Recommendation

For instance, have you had any experiences over the past year that would position you as a vital candidate in your field? If so, update your materials so that when search committees come across your documents, they have the opportunity to see these new experiences. Also, if you have had some gaps in your higher education employment, I would suggest you update your cover letter to explain why this was the case. This is helpful for search committees who may first see your resume and have questions about your gaps. I always believe setting the narrative for yourself as the candidate is better than leaving it up to the discretion of the individuals reading your materials.

Subscribing to the job forums in your field

Part of the work of entering the job market is keeping abreast of the job opportunities. As a result, it is helpful to subscribe to the various job forums in your field so that you know when positions of interest are open. As I described in a previous post, you should continue to keep a spreadsheet of the various jobs you are applying for and their due dates (more on due dates below). This will ensure you get letters of recommendation and other materials completed prior to the job posting deadline.

Read postings carefully for job material deadlines

While this may seem common sense, it is critical that you read job descriptions and specifically take note of the deadlines. For instance, does the posting state a “priority deadline” and also that the job will remain open until filled? My advice here would be to make sure your materials are submitted by the priority deadline as that may be when the search committee will actually begin to review materials. If for some reason you miss the priority deadline, reach out to the chair of the search committee who can provide insight into the status of the search and if submitting your materials would be a viable option at that point in the process.

What advice do you all have on preparing for the academic job market? Please share them with me on Twitter (@ramongoings).

Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.

Decoding the language of faculty affairs: what we learned from an analysis of 50 universities

This is the second post in a three-part series exploring themes in faculty affairs (FA), including unique and common practices and attributes of these departments.

The initial results of our study of 50 faculty affairs department websites revealed useful insights into how institutions describe their faculty affairs services to their faculty. These findings, we hope, will spark discussion and, perhaps, further research.

After organizing all of the raw data into information types (e.g., staffing, resources, services, news, and events), we coded the information to identify significant themes in the data. What emerged from the coding process was three “orientations” that describe faculty affairs activities/services/resources.

Policy and Procedures Orientation – focus on HR, forms, listservs, HR benefits
Teaching and Research Orientation – focus on instructional quality, teaching, and research resources
Professional Growth and Advancement Orientation – focus on faculty tenure, professional growth, and learning

These orientations are indicative of the various ways FA departments describe themselves to current and future faculty members. Each website we analyzed communicated all three orientations in one way or another, with some departments showing a strong bias for a specific orientation.

Which of these orientations is the most common faculty affairs approach? To answer this question and better understand the prevalence of each orientation, we analyzed the number of website resources that fit each orientation. Slightly over half of all resources were policy and procedure-oriented, one-third were best described as teaching and learning resources, and the remaining resources had a professional growth and advancement orientation.

These findings raise several key questions. While policy and procedures are important, are colleges and universities missing an opportunity to engage with their faculty more deeply by focusing so heavily on them? Would students benefit if more faculty affairs resources were dedicated to teaching and learning? Does the lack of professional growth and advancement oriented resources reveal a need for greater professional development support for faculty?

In addition to examining these three orientations, we also attempted to better understand department staffing. We found that the median ratio of faculty to faculty affairs employees is roughly three. Also interestingly, the most senior leader of an FA department typically has a Provost or Vice/Associate Provost title, holds a PhD, previously worked at an R1 institution, and is female.

While our survey of these departments (the Faculty Affairs Inventory Research project or “FAIR”) does not offer a conclusive view, it is a first step that we hope provokes a conversation about faculty affairs services, staffing, and how such departments communicate with those they seek to serve.

In the third blog of this three-part series, we will share key takeaways from the May 29, 2019 Interfolio Convening on Faculty Affairs Research (iCFAR) where Washington, DC-area faculty affairs professionals will gather to discuss the FAIR results, as well as other relevant research and faculty affairs issues.

Thinking about (and getting ready for) a summer job

This post continues our series by a onetime academic job seeker, now academic-at-large, on where to look for a summer job.

Summers in grad school can be an awkward time for the large percentage of grad students whose funding doesn’t stretch to cover twelve months of rent. And by “awkward,” we mean “extremely stressful and upsetting.” This problem is seldom discussed outside of grad student circles, and so the summer income gap can come as a shock, particularly after your first year. You may have academic obligations that don’t pay—conference attendance, research, and later on in your career, job market prep—but that doesn’t mean you don’t need groceries. So here are some ideas for steps you can take now to make sure you have income in August.

Look inside your school first.

It’s May, and deadlines for opportunities within your department (summer research assistantships; summer teaching) may already have passed. If they haven’t, great! Look there first. But you may need to think outside the departmental box. Try querying libraries, writing centers, or centers for teaching and learning. Visit the office of career services, or their website, to see if they maintain a list of summer jobs inside the university for students. You’ll have an advantage applying to these jobs, as a student; this is an easy way to begin.

Ask friendly professors.

Faculty may know of summer gigs that don’t show up on official lists. A colleague of theirs may have recently landed a grant and may be suddenly in need of research support, for example. It’s worth sending a few polite emails to any faculty members you know well to see if they’ve heard anything through the grapevine.

Try other universities and community colleges in the area.

These institutions may have summer classes that need teaching—especially if they don’t have grad programs in your areas of study. An email to the appropriate department coordinators could turn up an open spot.

Look for teaching jobs outside of your university.

Tutoring, summer programs for high-school students, even academic camps for younger kids: all of these may pay you a good wage, while offering a way for you to embellish your CV in the future. This side benefit may be especially helpful if you are in a research-heavy department that doesn’t offer many opportunities to teach during the year, and if you want to apply to teaching-focused jobs when you graduate. Summer experiences—even if they’re with ten-year-olds—can help you see whether you truly do feel comfortable and happy in a teaching role, and can offer good fodder for a reflective teaching-philosophy statement.

Try temping, freelancing, or the gig economy.

Yes, driving for Lyft, taking on dog walking or babysitting, or doing some freelance graphic design work can be inherently unstable and exploitative, and it’s hard to know how much income to expect from these pursuits. That’s why we’re putting this idea last! But temping, freelancing, and gigging have some advantages for a graduate student during the summer, because you have more control over the amount of work you do, and where and when you do it. This flexibility may come in handy if you get to late July, realize you really need to work on that dissertation chapter, and have enough money in the bank to do it.

What other recommendations do you have for finding a summer job? Tweet us and use the hashtag #Interfolio to share your ideas.

Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.

The lexicon of faculty affairs: understanding how faculty affairs departments communicate their value

If colleges and universities are cars, then faculty are the engines with their teaching, research, and leadership propelling their institutions’ mission forward. To keep this “engine” running, faculty affairs department provide critical services for faculty–tenure and promotion, hiring, professional development, and more. We’d call them “mechanics,” but clearly the metaphor has been pushed too far.

While faculty receive guidance and information from other parts of their university, the faculty affairs department typically is the department within an institution that centralizes the management of these complex, and sometimes disparate, services into a single function.

Typically, and understandably, the public face of the university–through websites, print, and digital media–is dedicated to serving the needs of prospective and current students. However, this type of external and internal communication is also a crucial tool used by institutions to engage and support their faculty and is a key part of faculty affairs departments.

How do faculty affairs departments communicate the value and purpose of their services and support to current and prospective faculty through their websites? This was the primary question we asked prior to engaging in a project to explore the ways that colleges and universities communicate externally about faculty affairs.

The Research Process

Initially, we reviewed five university faculty affairs websites to better understand the taxonomy of a typical faculty affairs department’s digital footprint. Next, we enlisted the assistance of a data-mining research tool to pull publicly-available university faculty affairs information from university websites for 50 institutions. The 50 universities were selected randomly from three cohorts: R1, R2, and R3, with an oversampling of R1 universities. We call this research project the Faculty Affairs Inventory Research (“FAIR”).

What themes emerged from this descriptive research scan? In the next blog post in this series, we will delve deeper into we learned about faculty affairs department staffing such as staffing ratios, department leadership profiles, and how staff highlight institutions’ efforts to support their unique faculty.

This blog kicks off a three-part series that will explore themes in faculty affairs, including unique and common practices and attributes of faculty affairs departments.

Five places to explore careers outside of the academy

This blog post continues our series, Scholar at Large, written by an academic on five places to explore careers outside of the academy.

This blog series has, so far, taken a bird’s-eye view of the stakes and possibilities involved in exploring careers in the humanities more broadly. It’s been encouraging to hear from friends and colleagues who feel ready to move beyond a “damage-control” mentality of job-seeking and find other ways of approaching one’s career path (and from colleagues who want to better support their graduate students). At the same time, many still aren’t sure how, exactly, to proceed.

To get you started, here are five resources that can help you take tangible next steps in your broader humanities career search.

1. Imagine PhD

This is the most comprehensive, clear, and subscription/firewall-free resource I’ve found for career exploration and planning. Once you create an account, you have access to tools that will help you uncover opportunities by bridging the gaps between what your PhD does in academia and what it does in other career pathways (whether addressing those gaps requires building experience or simply shifting vocabulary). These tools include:

Self-assessments related to skills, interests, and values
“Job families” with descriptions, application avenues, and sample job materials
A tool for creating an individual career development plan to help you set specific, achievable, and time-based goals for your career (whether academic or otherwise)

2. Connected Academics

For folks in the humanities, this is an excellent place to start. Thanks to a Mellon Foundation grant, the MLA was able to develop a space for exploring diverse career opportunities for both job-seekers and for departments looking to improve their graduate training. The site includes blogs with perspectives on graduate training and job searching, short articles addressing advice for departments and job-seekers, and profiles of PhDs with careers that are “alternative” to the tenure track. They’ve also collated more pragmatic tools such as planning frameworks, tips for using LinkedIn, or resources for job-searching. One particularly helpful page is Beth Seltzer’s skills self-assessment, practice in job ad analysis, and next step guidance (@beth_seltzer on Twitter).

(Side note: Publics Lab at CUNY is now taking up a lot of this work and moving it forward.)

3. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook

This is, admittedly, a rather unexpected resource, but it’s actually quite informative! The site gives you ways to explore jobs within particular labor categories, and for some jobs, it also includes guidance on how to pursue that career path. The handbook also provides information on things like:

Typical duties
Work schedules and environments
Median pay
Projected employment prospects
Data on local and regional opportunities
Suggestions for similar occupations
Places to look for more information on particular careers (and where to apply for jobs in that career)

4. Subscription-based online communities

There are a handful of growing online communities that provide built-in tools, networks, and guidance for career exploration. The two I’ve seen come up most often are Versatile PhD and Beyond the Professoriate. Some of their resources can only be accessed behind a subscription paywall, but even their free resources are quite helpful.

5. Use the networks you already have!

These include your secondary and tertiary contacts on LinkedIn, your college alumni networks, and the people you know outside of academia (like the cousins you only see at obligatory family gatherings, your friends from church or from Teach for America, etc.). Use these networks to set up informational interviews—which are, in fact, just conversations. When you make these connections, you are cultivating your own professional communities along with developing a sense of how you might fit in a particular field.

Academic Twitter is also a fantastic way of building networks, discovering opportunities, and finding (free!) resources. Folks like Jennifer Polk (@FromPhDtoLife on Twitter), co-founder of Beyond the Professoriate, actively tweet advice and resources and foster connections across PhD and professional communities.

Just taking some time to investigate these options will help you broaden your thinking about your work, give you a better picture of your own capacities and worth, and build a network of humanities practitioners. Enjoy the process!

Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.

Author bio: Dr. Molly Appel is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Penn State University. Her research explores how literature works a space of teaching and learning for human rights and social justice in the Americas. You can find her on Twitter @mollyappel.

Asking for a letter of recommendation

This post continues our series, The Smart Scholar.

With spring here, now is the time I often get letter of recommendation requests from students and colleagues who are looking to secure an upcoming school or employment opportunity. In my last post I discussed the letter of recommendation writing process from the perspective of the letter writer. In this post I provide three suggestions on how individuals should proceed with asking for and securing letters of recommendation.

Select your letter writer wisely

As someone who has sat on a number of search committees I often can see the difference in letters of recommendation that come from someone who knows the candidate well from a letter writer who cannot draft a persuading letter about the candidate’s ability. As a result, I want you to seriously consider who you select as your letter writer. Some questions you might consider are:

Does this person know me well enough to discuss my work?
Do we have a relationship where they would be willing to write a letter for me?
Will this person be the best fit as a letter writer for the position I am seeking?

If you are unsure how to answer the aforementioned questions, it may be in your best interest to have another individual write your letter of recommendation. Given you want strong letters of recommendation, select colleagues who can speak to your abilities from first-hand experience. I always find that those letters feel the strongest.

Make a well-timed request

When talking with some colleagues recently, they mentioned students requesting letters of recommendation mere days before their graduate school applications were due. In our conversation we all came to the conclusion that those students must not have seriously wanted a genuine letter of recommendation!

While it may seem like simple advice, if you are requesting a letter of recommendation, it is in your best interest not to wait until the last minute to make your request. It is important to plan ahead because you never know how many other letters your recommender needs to write for other folks. Getting on their radar sooner than later is a benefit as it will increase the chances of them completing the letter for you.

In most circumstances you know what your application deadline is well in advance. Thus, I would reach out to potential letter writers at a time that would allow for them to take 4-5 weeks to write your letter.

Provide a letter template

From personal experience, I have found that folks whom I reach out to for letters of recommendation have many colleagues and students who have also requested letters of recommendation from them. As a result, I want to make the experience of writing a letter for me as easy as possible. One practice I’ve started doing is actually providing a rough draft of a letter of recommendation to them when I request their assistance.

You may be asking yourself, “Well, why am I writing this letter? This is why I am requesting my colleague to do this!”

Providing a starting point makes writing the letter of recommendation easier. Additionally, if you create a rough draft you can be sure that your letter reflects the points that you believe are vital to your candidacy for the job or school where you are applying. Moreover, I believe that you drafting a letter shows some initiative to your letter writer who in addition to completing the letter of recommendation could make a call to the organization on your behalf!

Do you have any other advice you would give to individuals seeking letters of recommendation? If so tweet me (@ramongoings) with your recommendations!

Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.

How to find a mentor

This post continues our series by a onetime academic job seeker, now academic-at-large, on how to find a mentor as a young academic.

When you’re in graduate school, the expectation that you’ll have a mentor is built into the system: you can’t file a dissertation without an advisor. When you’re a newly minted faculty member, you may be assigned a mentor by your department. But grad students may need guidance from faculty members who aren’t their advisors (advisors vary in quality, after all), and new faculty may not click with their “official” mentor. How can young academics find a mentor? Here are some steps to take.

See mentorship as a natural development in a relationship.

You can’t just email somebody and ask if you can be their mentee. (Well, you can, but you might not get the results you want!) Instead, start by figuring out ways to work alongside the person you aspire to be your mentor. In academia, this might look like collaborating on a panel for your field’s annual meeting or) choosing to serve on the same committee, if your prospective mentor is at your university.

Stay in touch.

If there’s somebody you’d like to have a mentoring relationship with, try to find ways to connect with him or her. If they seem open to it, arrange informal coffee dates or send update emails. Working with them on a project (see above) is also an easy way for them to see your skills in action.

Be helpful.

The relationship between you and your prospective mentor should be a two-way street. Of course, you have been told that “having a mentor” is important for YOUR career, but you should also try to make yourself useful—within the bounds of appropriateness, of course.

Don’t pick up dry cleaning. Do offer to contribute your expertise when you know they’re working on something in your wheelhouse. Looking to someone more advanced in their career for advice does not mean you aren’t bringing something to the table—possibly a new research or learning method—and so you should find ways to showcase your knowledge and skills, too. Remember, take the time to make sure this relationship is worthwhile (and helpful) to both parties.

Read the signals.

Try to get a sense of whether your possible mentor has the time and energy for additional commitments. Timing can be essential! The best mentors will be excited to invest time into your relationship and be responsive to your inquiries. Always be respectful of their time, of course!

Be clear about what you need.

Once you’ve established an ongoing, productive relationship with your maybe-mentor, see how you feel about asking for more. Be specific about your hopes for the “next step” of your relationship. Don’t say “Will you be my mentor?” but think about approaching the conversation with “Would you be willing to introduce me to people at our upcoming conference?” or “Would you be willing to give me advice on navigating x, y, or z dynamic within my department?” Clarity will be valued by your prospective mentor. And, if they don’t have the opportunity to work with you on this project, remember–stay in touch! This conversation is the beginning of an ongoing relationship–whether as official mentee to mentor or simply colleagues.

Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.