Religious College Interviews

For those philosophers who are interested in applying to religious universities, the application process may be a little different. This article give a good outline of what do expect.

By Susan VanZanten at Inside Higher Ed

Interview processes at colleges and universities typically cover three areas — scholarly goals, teaching abilities and collegial potential — but if you land an interview at a religiously affiliated institution, you may find some additional emphases, unusual twists, and unexpected encounters. Here’s what to expect and how to prepare:

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2011/05/16/essay_on_interviewing_at_religious_colleges

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Philosophy Job Applications: Getting Through Phase One

The following is a summery of the main point made in a post on The Combat Philosopher regarding getting a job in philosophy. This post focuses on getting through the first round of the application. That is to say, getting to the interview at the APA. These are some suggestions from someone who has worked on hiring commitees. I suggest reading the whole post Here.

Summery of The Combat Philosopher's post copied and pasted:


Having served on numerous hiring committees, both in philosophy and in another discipline, I have a few words of advice for people who are going on the market.


1.  It is a profound mistake, though a common one, to think that the academic hiring process is a rational one.

UTexas Resources for Teaching Your First Class

Some great resources form Texas University on creating a course at the university level. This will be a great resource for any student teaching their first course.

http://ctl.utexas.edu/teaching-resources/


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All About Teaching Portfolios

In this post I give you some resources for creating a teaching portfolio and a list of  possibly required materials.


A teaching portfolio is a very important part of applying for jobs in philosophy because the majority of graduate students will not go straight into research positions and most will be at teaching colleges the rest of their careers. This being the case it is  really good to have a portfolio to prove one can teach well. 

Productivity Tips for academics

Some Great productivity tips and tricks, such as:

1. My philosophy: Optimize transaction costs.
2. Don't work from home.
3. Eliminate temptation to waste time.
4. Salvage dead time with technology.
5. Get rid of your TV.
6. Consolidate email accounts.
7. Work from a laptop.
8. Use a calendar system.
9. Power-use a smartphone.
10. Turn off instant messaging.
11. Minimize collaboration costs.
12. Use a citation/paper-management system.
13. Procrastinate productively.
14. Iterate toward perfection.

http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/

Introduction to the Philosophical Career

This is the best concise outline of professional philosophy I have seen so far and I highly suggest reading it. It is clear, honest and a quick read. here is a link to the main article and all the sub-points

http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/grad.htm

   1.    Why are you writing this FAQ?

       2.    What can I do with a philosophy degree?

       3.    What do philosophy professors do?

       4.    I love learning about philosophy. Will I be a good philosopher?

       5.    Where will I get a job?

       6.    What will I be teaching?

       7.    But I’m really smart, so I’ll be one of the few at the elite schools, right?

       8.    Can I advance in the profession through talent and hard work?

       9.    Will I influence the field through my insightful articles?

       10.  Will I survive in my field?

       11.  How does one advance in philosophy?

       12.  Why the hell would I want to become a philosopher??

Getting the most out of Graduate school

Some interesting advice, check out the comments:

Getting the Most Out of Grad School

Tips on Publishing in Graduate School

Tips on publishing in philosophy from Gualtiero Piccinini over at Philosophy of Brains blog.

14. Be happy if your paper gets a “revise and resubmit”.  Revise your paper and make sure you address all of the referees’ comments, even if you don’t entirely agree with them.  In addition, write a separate document in which you go through the referees’ comments one by one and explain what you did to address them.  If you think a comment is completely wrong, explain why in the most respectful way.  Then resubmit your paper together with your response to the referees’ comments.

15. Rejections are a natural part of the process.  Anybody who submits nontrivial work to philosophy journals gets rejections.  Consider that Wittgenstein submitted the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to many publishers and they all rejected it.  If you receive feedback on your paper, study it carefully and revise your paper so as to prevent anyone from making the same criticisms (whether fair or unfair).  If you received no feedback, ask yourself whether the paper might have weaknesses that can be remedied.  If yes, revise the paper before sending it somewhere else.  If not, submit it immediately to another journal.

Full posthttp://philosophyofbrains.com/2008/08/08/tips-on-publishing-in-graduate-school.aspx

12 Suggestions for New Graduate Students

This advice comes from a research psychologist but I found the advice quite helpful and it seems like much of it could be easily applied to philosophy.

 As a beginning graduate student, you may have doubts that you measure up when it comes to the skills required to produce original research. The following is a list of twelve suggestions, distilled from my nearly seven years in graduate school, to help you realize your full research potential.

1. START RESEARCH EARLY

2. WRITE DOWN IDEAS

3. KEEP UP WITH THE LITERATURE

4. WORK ON SEVERAL PROJECTS SIMULTANEOUSLY

5. LOOK FOR COMMON THEMES EARLY

6. RESERVE TIME TO WORK ON RESEARCH

7. SEEK OUT ADVICE

8. VIEW EVERYTHING AS A POTENTIAL PUBLICATION

9. ATTEND CONFERENCES

10. COLLABORATE WITH OTHER STUDENTS

11. KNOW YOUR STATISTICS AND METHODOLOGY

12. FINISH WHAT YOU START, BUT KNOW WHEN TO QUIT

Full artice: here

David O. Brink; UCSD: Graduate Study in Philosophy

This is a great little PDF outlineing what to expect from graduate school and how to apply.

Here is just a snippet but I suggest checking the whole document out for yourself.

http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/dbrink/GraduateStudy.pdf

David O. Brink; UCSD
May 2006
Graduate Study in Philosophy

• Be Realistic.
o Getting In. Top programs receive approximately 150-250 applications and admit between 5-15%.

o Finishing. Anywhere from one quarter to one half of those who start Ph.D. programs fail to
complete the degree.

Employment: JFP cancelled

The Jobs for Philosophers 190 print issue has been cancelled due to the low number of job ads received for that issue. The JFP190W will be published online on May 6 as scheduled.

http://www.apaonline.org/

Low number of Jobs noted.... Must publish in grad school..... *Aneurysm*

Teaching Philosophy with Background Knowledge and Metacognition

I found this article very quite helpful and hope to add the information to my teaching arsenal.



Reading Philosophy with Background Knowledge and Metacognition

The majority of philosophy graduate students who end up gaining employment, are those who apply to teaching universities as well as research universities for a job. There are many more teaching universities than there are reseach universities. What this means is that if one does not want to face the beast that is unemployment, one should prepare for both. If you are attending NYU or Rutgers you many want to only want to focus on research universities, but for the rest of us it's important to keep our options open.  As mentioned in the post on Getting a Job in Philosophy, one should collect teaching evaluations  for later job applications/interviews/ letters etc.. in order to show that one is a good teacher.  If you decide to keep your professional options open, becoming a good teacher is really important, articles like this will help you teaching ability grow.

A Teaching Handbook for Philosophy Graduate Student Instructors

This is a great resource about how to teach a philosophy course.
http://ebookbrowse.com/teaching-handbook-developing-your-style-ua-2006-doc-d33336550

Qualifying Exams

Qualifying exams mark in an MA program when you are able to start teaching your own classes. In a PhD program it is when one starts work on a dissertation. One should prepare for this exam as early as possible, while any dedicated philosophy student shouldn't have a problem with it,  it can make your life difficult if you do not pass it. In many programs you can take it early or multiple times.   Teaching ones own class would be highly rewarding with regard to experience teaching. Teaching positions as a grad usually pay more than graders. Comprehensive examination are designed to test your background in key philosophical areas such as ethics, modern philosophy and ancient.

Here are some links to material on the subject:

Graduate Teaching: Good or Bad for Hiring?

Leiter's readers respond to the question 'Can teaching too many courses while in graduate school hurt you in the hiring process later on?'
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/how-much-teaching-experience-should-a-job-seeker-have.html

Job Market: Evaluation of Search Committee Tactics

By Adam Kotsko

I have been on the job market for three years and have also served on a search committee as a student representative, and I have come to believe that some typical practices are not optimal. The parts that seem to me to be optimal are basically the beginning and the end — a concise cover letter with C.V. is a great way to kick off an application, and the process of an on-campus interview seems well-suited to generate the kind of meaningful information that search committees need at that late phase. Where things seem to me to fall apart is in the middle stages, namely the application materials required and the various kinds of short interviews.

MA to PHD: Don't Write a Thesis

If one want to go on to a PhD from an MA, a thesis may be inadvisable. Ones thesis (70-200 pages) is compeated during an MA in the last year of graduate study. If one want so go straight from an MA to a Phd one must apply early into one's second year. What this means is the writing sample you will send them will only be a chapter of your thesis and most likely it will be unpolished and underdeveloped. It may be advisable to do a reading intensive program in which one writes a really stellar pollished paper (20 pages) as well as trying to publish/present other papers while in the first year.

Published Writing Samples

Big D asks, 

Okay, job-related question. If I'm submitting a writing sample for an application, and it has been published, should I submit a copy of the final, published form, or a simple copy from my word processing program?

I don't think it really matters. I've had success--that is, I've gotten interviews--both ways. What say you, Smokers?

--Mr. Zero

From: http://philosophysmoker.blogspot.com/2011/04/published-writing-samples.html

[Essential answer is if your going to submit THAT essay submit it in published form. If one is thinking about submitting another essay it complicates the issue.]

External Funding for Graduate Philosophy Students

Found on a great resources, includes links  for graduate student funding at http://philosophyapplicant.wordpress.com. It does not seem to keep updated, but still has some great resources.

Getting a Job in Philosophy: A Guide for Graduate Students

By Brian Keeley:  The following is a very drafty document, i.e., it has plenty of holes. Feedback is extremely welcome... from: http://mugwump.pitzer.edu/~bkeeley/WORK/ADVICE.HTM