If you’re planning to apply for faculty jobs, either in this upcoming cycle or in the future, join us for this virtual four-day Faculty Job Search Prep Camp to get a head start on planning your job search. Through workshop presentations and faculty and alumni panels, we’ll help you understand how you can best prepare for each step of the process, from assessing your readiness to go on the faculty job market and crafting application materials to preparing for interviews and negotiating offers. Throughout the week of August 9th, Faculty Job Search Prep Camp attendees are encouraged to make a virtual one-on-one appointment via Handshake with a Career Services advisor on Friday, August 13th to discuss a faculty job search document that you’d like feedback on. Check Handshake for all the times available for appointments!
Presented and co-sponsored by:
Schedule of Events
Monday, August 9
10am – 11am: Overview of Academic Job Search Workshop
Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786131
What’s the typical timeline of a faculty job search? What are search committees looking for? What should you expect at each stage of the process? This workshop will provide an overview of what a tenure-track job search process looks like from beginning to end. We’ll discuss how application materials, interviewing, and negotiating fit into a process that starts with a job announcement and ends with a new hire as an assistant professor. We will also run through some of the best online tools you can use to support your faculty application, including: the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity, Aurora, LinkedIn, Imagine PhD, Science Careers, Inside Higher Ed, and the Career Services website.
Preparing to Go On the Faculty Job Search: Understanding Tenure and Promotion and Life on the Tenure-Track at Different Institutions
Join PhD alumni and faculty for a conversation on preparing to go on the faculty job market. Panelists will share advice and discuss their own experiences of being job applicants as well as search committee members on the other side of the process. Topics discussed will include evaluating readiness to apply for tenure-track jobs, gaining insights into how search committees evaluate candidates through the lens of tenure and promotion, and acquiring professional development for academic success.
1pm – 2pm: STEM Panel | Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786147 | Faculty Bios
- Sarah Connolly, PhD, Associate Professor, DePaul University (CAMB ’03)
- Shivon Robinson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Williams College (Neuroscience ’16)
- Fang Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University (Physical Chemistry ’15)
- Ekta Khurana, PhD, Associate Professor, Weill Cornell Medical College (Computational Biophysics ’08)
- Alice Huang, PhD, Associate Professor, Columbia University (Bioengineering ’10)
2pm – 3pm: Humanities & Social Sciences Panel | Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786149 | Faculty Bios
- Andrea Contigiani, PhD, Assistant Professor of Management, Ohio State University (Management ’19)
- Aaron Hagler, PhD, Associate Professor of History, Troy University (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations ’11)
- Ana Almeyda-Cohen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Colby College (Spanish and Portuguese ’20)
- Emily Steinlight, PhD, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, August 10
10am – 11am: Putting Together Your CV and Cover Letter Workshop
Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786153
How long should a CV be? How do you tailor cover letters for different institutions? This workshop will provide an overview of best practices for writing your CV and cover letter. We’ll discuss the different sections of a CV as well as the structure and content of cover letters for tenure-track job applications. We’ll also address ways that candidates can customize both documents for a range of institutions.
2pm – 3pm: Writing Your Research Statement Workshop
Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786154
What do you need to include in a research statement? How do you begin writing one? How much of it should focus on the past vs. the future? This workshop will address these questions and many more. We will discuss the goals of a research statement, ideas for how to structure it, and identify ways that you can demonstrate your research fit for different institutions.
Wednesday, August 11
10am – 11am: Developing Statements on Diversity and Inclusion Workshop from the Center for Teaching and Learning
Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786716
What are successful approaches to writing a Diversity Statement that stands out, is authentic to you as an applicant, and is tailored to the institution? Jamiella Brooks, PhD, Associate Director at the Center for Teaching & Learning, will lead a workshop on crafting a strong diversity statement. Students will review diversity statement prompts from a range of institutions, reflect on their own understanding of diversity and inclusion in their own disciplines as well as in higher education broadly, and discuss their contributions and aspirations in enhancing diversity through their research, teaching, and service.
1pm – 2pm: Crafting Your Teaching Statement Workshop from the Center for Teaching and Learning
Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786165
How do you write about your teaching in a teaching statement? What if you’ve never taught your own course before? Ian Petrie, PhD, Senior Associate Director at the Center for Teaching & Learning, will walk you through how to write a compelling teaching statement that gives search committees a sense of who you are as a teacher and what motivates and guides your teaching.
Thursday, August 12
Interviewing for Faculty Jobs Panel
Hear from Penn faculty and PhD alums who are faculty members at a range of institutions about their unique experiences on the interview trail – both as candidates and as search committee members. Learn how they prepared for interviews, the types of questions they were asked, advice on conducting interviews via Zoom, and the structure of their campus visit interviews, among other topics.
- 10am – 11am: STEM Panel | Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786179 | Faculty Bios
Michael Arcaro, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Audrey Blewer, PhD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine & Community Health, Duke University School of Medicine, (Epidemiology ’18)
Yumeng Ou, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania
Cynthia Hsu, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology, Bryn Mawr College
- 11am – 12pm: Humanities & Social Sciences Panel | Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786177 | Faculty Bios
Sarah Gronningsater, PhD, Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Jordan Kodner, PhD, Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Stony Brook University (Linguistics, ’20)
Riley McGuire, PhD, Assistant Professor of English, Worcester State University (English, ’20)
Fernanda Rosa, PhD, Assistant Professor, Science, Technology & Society, Virginia Tech (Annenberg, ’21)
Brooke Stanley, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities, University of Delaware (English, ’18)
1pm -2pm: Negotiating for Faculty Jobs Workshop
Register here: https://upenn.joinhandshake.com/events/786172
This workshop will equip you with the resources, strategies, and confidence for negotiating an academic job offer. We’ll cover the terms of a job offer, what can and cannot be negotiated, research to help you prepare for negotiations, and suggestions on how to approach your negotiating with your potential employer.
*Panel events will not be recorded to ensure that panelists can be candid in their remarks, but all workshops will be recorded and available for viewing on the Career Services YouTube channel by the early Fall.