Colleen’s advice for applying to liberal arts faculty positions

This presents my opinions about what makes a great application to a liberal arts faculty position — not those of my colleagues or institution etc.

First, it can be helpful to remember that the search committee is reviewing tons of applications. In a first pass, I average less than 10 minutes per application. It’d be helpful to have many people give you their 10-minute gut reactions to your application. Now, on to the individual components.

Cover Letter

When I applied to jobs, I applied to a wide variety of schools because I didn’t know what type of job I wanted. I didn’t apply to liberal arts jobs as a back-up in case I didn’t get an R1 job. I think it is important to convince the hiring committee that they aren’t just your backup. Because of this, the main thing that matters is the cover letter! A cover letter can be SO good that I’ll immediately promote the application as one that all of my colleagues should read! As applicable, it should include statements that you’re really excited about:

• working at a liberal arts school
• teaching
• doing research with undergrads
• getting to know your students
• making your classroom a welcoming place
• mentoring students (with a particular focus on students who are underrepresented in CS — if applicable)
• living in that geographic area (if applicable)
• specific courses that they offer that you’d want to teach (this shows that you care a lot about your application and can help them know that you’re serious about the job and would be worth following up with)

Research Statement

I use this as a proxy for whether or not you can explain things. Make ample use of headings, topic sentences, etc. Pictures (if at all possible) are pretty awesome! Don’t copy and paste the abstracts from papers you’ve published — it doesn’t have a logical flow and therefore makes you seem like a terrible teacher. A few other things:

• If you can explain how your research would be accessible to undergrads — that’s awesome. Be concrete about what skills they’d need.
• If you’ve worked with one or more undergrads — talk about what they did.
• If you can describe specific projects an undergrad could get involved in — that’s awesome!
• Make it clear you’re thinking about the liberal arts environment. Don’t reuse a research statement that talks about grad students. Don’t implicitly assume that your students will be around for years.

Teaching Statement

This document is another opportunity to show that you can organize and present information in reasonable ways. Organization, headings, spelling, and grammar matter.

Most people talk about “doing more than just lecture.” It is good if you can provide some concrete examples. The 1-page tip sheets on csteachingtips.org provide tips and explanations, which might be helpful to you as you explain your teaching. It is great to be able to explain how you plan to continue to grow as a teacher — if you have examples of how you’ve responded to feedback — that’s definitely a bonus.

It is an opportunity to write about how you want to support students who are underrepresented in CS. Again the 1-page tip sheets on csteachingtips.org provide tips and explanations related to creating inclusive classrooms. A pet peeve of mine — don’t refer to an individual student as “diverse” — they’re just one person — it doesn’t make any grammatical/logical sense. Sometimes people acknowledge their positionality, e.g. “As a White man.”

A lot of people have had few opportunities to teach. Most faculty went to R1s — so they understand the possibility of having a PhD advisor who thinks that teaching is a waste of time. If this was your situation, you might mention that (in a tactful way). You can show passion for teaching through other volunteer work too — even if you are discouraged from additional TAing or other teaching.

I, personally, avoid reading the teaching statement. People tend to make flawed arguments about teaching and learning — it doesn’t mean they’re not a great candidate, but as an educational researcher I’m practiced in detecting these types of flaws — and they annoy me.

Letters of Recommendation

At least one of your letters should describe your teaching ability. This surprises people sometimes, but you can have a letter of recommendation from faculty with whom you didn’t do research. You might share your teaching evaluations with that letter writer so they can bring evidence in from those. If you were discouraged from teaching in grad school, you might have one of your letter writers say that and that you were excited about teaching, but didn’t have many opportunities available to you.

If there is a red flag in your application, you might ask your advisor to explain it in their letter. Sometimes it can be easier for them to do than for you to do in your materials. You might even ghost write a draft of a paragraph with them that they could include in their letter.

Teaching Demos

At many of the places that I interviewed, I had to do a teaching demo. Before the teaching demo at Harvey Mudd College (where I now work), I had done three practice teaching demos with live students! I bribed my former students and a few fellow graduate students with snacks each time. This feedback from real students allowed me to know what students might find confusing, revise my slides and instructions, and refine the timing. This might be the most polished 75 minutes of teaching in my whole career.