Table of Contents
Overview of the hiring process
Application materials:
Cover Letter
CV
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Portfolio
DEI Statement
Narrative of a Classroom Activity
Note that the samples are password protected and may not be copied or distributed without the owners’ consent. Email [email protected] or [email protected] to request the password to view the sample documents.
Overview of the hiring process
Navigating the academic job market may be the single most stressful thing an academic has to do. For many of us who have been long-term adjuncts or off the full-time market for a while, the application process can seem daunting and the required documents and their conventions unfamiliar. We may not consider our MAs and MFAs sufficient qualifications for full-time lines. Many of us with PhDs may have been conditioned to seek out professorships, which have dwindled as the job market has contracted and become less likely possibilities the further we get from grad school.
Don’t forget that you may be a superb candidate for lectureships, full-time positions that are most often teaching-focused and come with benefits and forms of job protection similar to tenure-track positions. Some lectureships emphasize administrative service and carry secondary teaching responsibilities or weigh both equally. Lectureships can be ideal if you enjoy teaching, are interested in learning and sharing pedagogies, want to avoid the “publish or perish” life, or prefer more creative or nonacademic forms of intellectual and artistic endeavor while teaching. Adjuncting for a long time and across multiple campuses can give advantages when applying for lectureships. If you haven’t recognized them yet, we hope this guide will help you recognize and make use of these advantages.
Preparing a cohesive and compelling application demands time, effort, and focus. And resilience. The process asks you to perform an inventory of your professional self that is deep, extensive, and psychologically taxing. A host of uncomfortable feelings, anxieties, and resentments may surface and they require time to process, or repress. Teaching, other employment, or completing a dissertation or writing project while preparing an application only compounds these challenges.
Many exceptional candidates are turned down for jobs every year. Though no reflection of your qualifications for a position, this can be discouraging. We encourage you to persist and to turn to us, your colleagues, for support and advice.
An Insider Perspective
Academic job market handbooks abound, and we have links to other resources, some fairly exhaustive, that you may want to consult. This page offers strategies and tips on the specific documents in a typical application package from people who have been on the other side—serving on search committees, reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and participating in department discussions about job searches. We’ve also included a short section at the end on getting started for those of us who are unsure of how to begin.
Our goal here is to give our adjunct faculty some insider-knowledge, some advice for setting themselves apart, and some models from candidates who have landed jobs in recent years.
Create a Specific and Coherent Application Package
In consulting any model or guide, always tailor application materials for the specific job listing in order to best represent YOU. Generic materials suggest a lack of interest and are rejected quickly.
Your documents must engage the specific elements contained in a job posting. Read a listing carefully to determine the type of position and attendant responsibilities, timelines for the process, and specific materials required of you. Learn more about the institution, department, student body, and the research and pedagogical culture. If details about the latter are not included in the listing, do independent research to see what you can find out. Make sure the details you emphasize in your documents reflect what you have learned.
Craft a coherent application package of mutually reinforcing documents. Each document in your application has its own focus while engaging key ideas shared across all your documents. For example, elements of your history of inclusivity that you detail in your DEI statement will appear in your cover letter, teaching philosophy, and the sample syllabus that may be required.
Prepare templates of each document required in advance and adapt them for an application.
Timing and Planning are Essential
Creating your application package is incredibly time- and labor-intensive and psychologically draining. To do this properly, know the timeline–when jobs are posted and the specific deadlines involved. Create a conservative timeline for yourself.
Job searches in English usually begin in the fall, with advertisements appearing in the MLA Job list and the Chronicle of Higher Education in September or October, with deadlines for applications in November and December. But advertisements may also be posted in late December, January or even February, especially on CUNY’s job list.
Given that you may have a heavy teaching load in the fall and that the winter break is so short, try to get your materials together by the end of summer. This means drafts of your cover letter, CV, writing sample(s), teaching philosophy, and diversity statement.
Recommendations
Equally important, reach out early to request letters of recommendation from three or more professors who can speak in detail about your teaching. Let your referees know the type of position and the differing importance of the various elements they should cover. The earlier you ask potential recommenders, the more control you have over the process, the happier they will be, the more time they will have, and the more likely they will be to write the kind of glowing letter that is standard in job candidates’ dossiers.
For adjuncts, especially long-term adjuncts applying to teaching-focused lectureships, testimonials to your current teaching carry most weight. If you have not been observed recently, seriously consider requesting an observation from your chair or writing director and then asking your observer to write you a recommendation. Make requests at the start of the semester.
Remember that while letters from supervisors and official observers in your departments are best, letters from directors of writing and college tutoring centers will help you meet the required number of references.
Know Where, How and in What Format to Submit Materials
Read a listing carefully to determine where and in what formats documents should be submitted. Many listings will require you to submit materials through Interfolio; many others will require you to use college or university portals. Some materials may need to be submitted to search committee chairs or department administrative assistants.
Some portals for materials may be clunky, finicky, or counterintuitive. Give yourself enough time to navigate and negotiate them, and, when problems persist, to request assistance or alternatives in a timely manner.
Know the format for materials, whether Word or PDFs, separate documents or a single combined one. It’s a nightmare to deal with these problems at the last minute.
The Review and Interview Timelines
Departments typically review materials in November and December, with the goal of doing interviews in January, but reviews of materials and interviews may occur over the spring.
While most search committees request a complete application package inclusive of all materials, some committees may require different materials at different stages of the review process. Be sure to know when specific materials are required, and do not include unsolicited documents.
There are usually two rounds of interviews–semifinalist and finalist. Semifinalist interviews used to happen at the MLA conference. Now most are done on Zoom. Usually only a small number of candidates reach the semi-finalist stage (between 12-20) but this varies from department to department and from job search to job search.
Job Talks and Campus Visits
Even fewer candidates are finalists (3-5) invited for job talks and campus visits. While they can occur anytime between February and April, they are usually scheduled fairly early in the semester, whether in person or virtual, though job talks for lecturers may come a little later.
Given that all finalists are qualified, the goal here is to identify who fits best as a colleague.
A job talk involves a 30-45 minute talk that demonstrates and reflects upon a classroom activity or practice and exemplifies a key aspect of your teaching philosophy. A formal narrative of this activity is one of the documents often included in your application, The talk is followed by a departmental Q&A. The in-person or virtual campus visit will also generally involve multiple meetings with different people in the department and school, including the chair and possibly administrators, sometimes over meals.
During the job talk, Q&A, and your campus visit activities, demonstrate collegiality. Share your knowledge and teaching expertise in terms accessible to a broad audience. Maintain respect for different pedagogies and practices, especially when fielding questions from perspectives that may seem awkward or outmoded to those well-versed in the most up-to-date research on effective teaching. Remain engaging, thoughtful, generous, and gracious.
Waiting
One final piece of information: many departments will not communicate with candidates or notify them about the status of the search until it is complete. This means that job applicants may receive no communication for weeks or months at a time and may wonder whether they are still in the running.
One useful resource is the English Jobs Wiki page. There candidates offer updates about each job search. For instance, those who got invited to do an interview or give a job talk will often note that on the page indicating when they received the invitation, which allows other applicants to have a sense of what stage the search is at and where they stand.
Application Materials
The application packet for a full-time teaching position commonly includes the following documents:
- Cover Letter
- CV
- Teaching Philosophy
- Teaching Portfolio
- DEI Statement
- Writing Sample (Tenure Track) or Narrative of Classroom Activity (Lectureship)
- Additional Documents
Note that all of the following samples are password protected and may not be copied or distributed without the owners’ consent. Email [email protected] or [email protected] to request the password to view the sample documents.
Cover Letter
A 1-2-page introduction to you and your job application materials, your cover letter is the very first thing most search committee members will read. It’s your way of introducing yourself as a teacher and colleague.
Tip 1: Framing is essential.
Do not send a generic letter. Demonstrate your qualifications for that particular position in that department, and with the student population you may teach. Do your research and underscore details from your teaching, service, and scholarship or conference presentations that make you a good match for the department’s needs.
Frame details positively. For instance, position your heavy adjunct teaching load across different campuses as the way you’ve developed an expansive skill set with different learners. Positivity and enthusiasm demonstrate the type of colleague you will be.
Frame for relevance. For some of us, our CVs may reflect a wide range and history of employment across academia, industry, and non-profit sectors; teaching areas; and scholarly and creative interests. Be sure that you indicate how relevant knowledge, skills and practices gained from these efforts strengthen your candidacy for the position you’re applying to. For instance, show how working as an editor or researcher informs your teaching or how your experience as a writing center consultant makes you more effective when conferencing with students. But if there is no good link between a particular position you had and the job you are applying for, don’t force it.
Tip 2: Stick to the conventions of the genre.
Focus on introducing yourself as clearly, concisely, and elegantly as you can. You want to come across as articulate, confident, and thoughtful. Given the desire to stand out, you may feel tempted to open with something unconventional. But it is easy to hit the wrong note. Don’t risk standing out in the wrong way.
Tip 3: Address problem areas.
The cover letter is the place to address any problem areas in your candidacy. You may lack certain qualifications or teaching experience in the desired subject area. Succinctly acknowledge relevant gaps in your training or work experience and then quickly move on to the qualifications that you think are most important. Be creative, but not facile, in highlighting resources and experiences that you can draw from or will enable you to deal with problem areas. For instance, an abandoned book project could be described as the foundation for a series of articles; similarly, you may not have taught a remediation exercise or multimodal projects in a first year writing course, but did in a literature elective.
Tip 4: Focus on teaching and service.
Sequence and emphasize these two elements to reflect the priorities indicated in the listing. Some lectureships focus more on teaching, some more on administrative responsibilities, and some give them equal importance.
For teaching-focus posts, discuss your teaching history first and in detail. Give a comprehensive account of your teaching expertise and indicate how your practices are informed by select theorists, texts, and theories. The teaching statement or philosophy will delve into this more deeply. Include some thoughts on how your teaching has evolved, how you create a safe and inclusive learning environment, how you work with different learners, and how you conference and workshop with students.
You can also indicate your range, but be careful! Always demonstrate your qualifications and enthusiasm for teaching the specific course, sequence, or a range of courses a listing indicates that you will teach.
Bear in mind that departments have many needs: someone who can support assessment initiatives, staff upper division courses at the last minute because of illnesses or retirements, or advise a student publication. Many of us have experience in fields across composition, literature, creative writing, and in industries such as publishing or advertising. Thus another strategy in applying for positions emphasizing a specific course or sequence is to show strategically how your skill set allows you to be a resource they can turn to when all variety of challenges and opportunities arise.
The trick is to demonstrate your qualifications and enthusiasm for the specific field and courses indicated in a posting throughout your letter and succinctly reveal your expertise in other fields. Always frame other teaching possibilities as secondary and contingent: “Should the need arise, my training and teaching history also prepare me to teach English 2800 and 3015”
If you’re in doubt, avoid this altogether and focus on the listing’s priorities.
Prioritize the field listed in the posting. Indicate how a core of practices central to the field specified in a listing informs your approaches to your other areas of coverage. For instance, demonstrate how you use scaffolding methods from your first year writing courses in the literature electives you may have taught. You can also describe how you adapt your practices and strategies to your different courses, learners, campuses, and modalities and how this expansive skill set prepares you for this specific job.
Explore your service in detail. In teaching-focused lectureships, service is often the second most important factor to reappointment and promotion. So, after you’ve explored your teaching, explore your history of service and the specific ways you want to serve the department. Service includes work on committees or in your union, professional development activities you have organized or led, or work on behalf of immigration assistance services, minoritized or vulnerable individuals or communities. Place service and administrative experience before teaching if it is prioritized in the job listing.
If you have had few service opportunities, indicate what kind of service work you would like to do and articulate the values or ideals you think your work could serve. Some research might be helpful here: if you can find descriptions of particular committees or ongoing projects on the department’s website that seem appealing to you, consider mentioning them and indicating how you could contribute to them.
Where to place Publications and Conferences. For a position that does not require a publication history or agenda, place this after service. They are important accomplishments, and your task is to demonstrate how they grow out of and inform your teaching and service. Obviously, for posts and institutions that value them more highly, place them earlier to reflect this importance.
Include professional development. Demonstrate your commitment to improving as a teacher by referring to important forms of professional development you’ve undertaken, such as practicums, pedagogy-focused conferences, workshops, and discussions within the department where you have worked and beyond.
Tip 5: For teaching-centric positions, know the preferred pedagogies.
Most adjunct positions are for first-year writing. However, colleges teach composition in very different ways. At some institutions, first-year writing courses focus on composition and rhetoric, and students read primarily secondary popular and scholarly sources. At others, first-year writing resembles a writing-intensive literature course that may or may not include secondary sources and various lens texts. For such a course, having taught Great Works or electives can be a real advantage.
It is essential to show your knowledge and history using the preferred pedagogies, approaches to teaching, and preferred types of texts for a specific course at a particular institution. To ascertain this, do your research. Visit the department webpage and look for course descriptions, teaching guides, and sample syllabi provided. If these are not present, visit the faculty page and google the syllabi of those faculty who teach the courses you would be asked to cover.
Sample Cover Letters
Cover letter by Harold Ramdass.
Cover letter by Constantin Schreiber.
Below are additional resources from the Graduate Center’s Job Search Portal.
BMCC Cover Letter
Community College Cover Letter
Moriah Cover Letter
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CV
Tip 1: Do not overwhelm the eye with clutter.
CVs are tools for conveying professional information about yourself as efficiently and clearly as possible, so the best advice is simply to look at good models (including the ones on this webpage) and to borrow whatever strategies seem most effective. It’s better to take a couple more pages than to squeeze too much information onto the page.
Tip 2: Definitely play with the formatting.
Adjust the formatting to make sure the sections are clearly labeled and demarcated. Share your CV with others and ask them whether it reads well. Try to structure it so that readers can get the information they need in a glance or two.
Tip 3: Use a structure that reflects the priorities of the job description
For teaching-centered lectureships, begin with your teaching history. You may indicate courses you have created and the modalities in which you taught them. If you have publications and conference presentations on the scholarship of teaching and learning, present these before moving to service. Include professional development you’ve attended within the department where you’ve worked and beyond–pedagogy seminars, workshops, practicums.
Sample CVs
CV by Dan Libertz.
CV by Harold Ramdass.
CV by Constantin Schreiber.
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Teaching Philosophy
Tip 1: Be as concrete and specific as possible.
Teaching philosophies can easily be boring and generic. Avoid this by telling succinctly and then showing: Articulate a key concept and then show how it manifests as actual classroom activities and achieves identifiable learning outcomes.
Use vivid details to describe what you did step by step–whether it was a creative group exercise, a classroom debate, a museum visit followed by a free-write, or a multimodal assignment. Discuss how the students responded, why an activity was successful, and how it accomplished stated learning objectives. As much as possible, create a narrative that can hold your reader’s attention.
Make it detailed enough so that readers can imagine trying out the strategies you are describing. If they come away wanting to steal your tricks and use them in their own classes, that means you’ve probably written a good teaching philosophy.
Tip 2: Always include student-centered learning activities.
Make it clear that you do not just stand at the front of the room and either lecture or ask questions to the whole class for the entire period. Even if you do this kind of traditional pedagogy well, it doesn’t make for a convincing teaching philosophy.
Talk about the particular activities you have introduced, the hands-on workshops you have created, and the small group discussions and activities you have facilitated, showing how you enable students to practice the skills you are trying to teach.
Detail how you ensure that these activities are effective. Don’t just say you break the students into groups. Explain what you do—the kind of questions, independent assignments, quality control measures, the formal and informal check-ins that you use—that make group work meaningful.
Tip 3: Acknowledge challenges.
Overconfidence is a bad sign—it suggests you may be unwilling to troubleshoot your classes and grow as a teacher. Discuss assignments or activities that did not go as anticipated and problems you have confronted that you know other teachers can relate to. Address how your reflection upon these experiences and challenges inform the way you have changed assignments, activities, or current practices.
Sample Teaching Philosophy Statements
Teaching Philosophy by Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado.
Teaching Philosophy by Dan Libertz.
Teaching Philosophy by Harold Ramdass.
Teaching Philosophy by Constantin Schreiber.
Teaching Philosophy by Stephanie Vella.
Below are additional resources from the Graduate Center’s English Department Job Search Portal.
Albracht Teaching Statement
Greco Teaching Philosophy
Huang Teaching Statement
Moriah Teaching Statement
Sample Teaching Statement 1
Sample Teaching Statement 2
Sample Teaching Statement 3
Sample Community College Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy Samples Brown University
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Teaching Portfolio
Generally, an optimal portfolio includes:
1. All the other docs included in the website (teaching philosophy, DEI statement)
PLUS
2. Major assignment sheets from one course.
3. A narrative of some activity used in class that demonstrates one’s teaching philosophy.
4. Peer Observations (including most recent)*
5. Student evaluations (3-5 years)*
Tip 1: It must pertain to the listing.
Your teaching portfolio must pertain to the specific job listing and courses you’ll be asked to teach. Create a portfolio of materials for such a course or courses. If you’re not teaching that area currently, give your most recent teaching materials on that area that reflect assignments, texts, and pedagogies that you currently use in the classroom.
If you haven’t taught in that exact field, give materials from a course or field closest to it. Demonstrate through these materials that you know and use relevant practices and assignments to achieve similar course goals and learning outcomes. For example, if a listing is for first year writing but you’ve never taught it, give materials from a writing-intensive literature course.
Give the syllabus, prompts for your major assignments, and any other key rubrics used for a course. The syllabus should show how each major writing assignment is scaffolded and how major writing assignments create a unified learning program.
Tip 2: Be kind to your readers.
Avoid excessive or extraneous material. They’ll just skip it altogether. Include 1-2 representative syllabi and the very best assignments/exercises you have. Always remember: search committees are reading dozens if not hundreds of applications.
Make obvious what you have to offer. If you’ve got a particularly creative project or assignment that readers will remember, include that. Even if they forget everything else, if they can say, “That’s the person who has their students do x….” it will be to your advantage.
Tip 3: Collect your student evaluations and peer observations.
Collect 2-5 years of your student evaluations and student observations since some searches may ask for these materials, and they can be hard to assemble on short notice. This can be a longer and more frustrating process than you can imagine. You may have to track down hard copies or copies of originals and digitize them, or request copies from your department.
If you have access to a portal such as myEvalCenter, which makes it easy to obtain student evaluations, you’ll still need time to navigate such a system.
Some committees may not request student evaluations and peer observations because of concerns over possible biases, particularly regarding race and gender.
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DEI Statement
The DEI statement shows your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as a teacher, colleague, potential supervisor, committee member or chair, or any other position or role that you may assume while employed.
Tip 1: Think broadly, give specifics.
Whether or not you are from an underrepresented category, use this statement to articulate your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
As much as you can, focus on concrete steps you have taken, work you have done, and decisions you have made to help empower people from underserved communities.
These concrete steps may include DEI statements included in your syllabi, inclusive practices to create safe learning environments, support for colleagues from underrepresented or minoritized groups, or reparative efforts such as volunteering, mentoring, or teaching in prisons and hospitals, or serving as an immigration assistance service provider.
Tip 2: You can self-out.
If you are from an underrepresented background, the diversity statement is a good opportunity to indicate this and to explain how your background has shaped you as a teacher, and how it has enhanced your ability to support your students and colleagues. Remember, unless you identify your background, it may not be obvious to committee members.
Tip 3: You can identify social barriers you have faced.
These may not be apparent to the search committee. If you have an invisible disability, you should discuss it here. If you are a first-generation college student and/or from a working class background, mention it and explain how it has influenced your scholarship and your approach to teaching.
Sample DEI Statements
Diversity Statement by Stephanie Vella.
Diversity Statement by Harold Ramdass.
Diversity Statement by Dan Libertz.
Diversity Statement by Constantin Schreiber.
Below are additional resources from the Graduate Center’s Job Search Portal.
- Developing and Writing a Diversity Statement
- Rubric to Assess Diversity Statements
- Sample diversity statement 1
- Sample diversity statement 2
- More sample diversity statements and guidelines
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Narrative of a Classroom Activity
Lecturers can be asked to provide a narrative of a classroom activity that exemplifies a core tenet of their teaching philosophy, one that helps them accomplish some key learning outcome or course goal stated in the syllabus. This narrative aims to give a sense of you as an intentional designer of a learning program and show how you inhabit the classroom. It typically becomes the foundation of the job talk.
Tip 1: Proven learner-centric activities are best.
Committee members want a sense of how you enable learning, so select an activity that addresses a specific and familiar need, that is learner-centric as opposed to teacher-centric, and that shows your strengths as a facilitator. Always choose an activity you have used and refined over different semesters with different students.
Tip 2: Intentional design.
Demonstrate your thoughtfulness in design by contextualizing the activity within the semester and assignment sequence and giving its rationale. Indicate the specific learning and course goal/s it serves. Describe the class reflection on how the activity furthers such goals. You can explore how you assess and evaluate this activity or modify it for different modalities and learners.
Tip 3: Be detailed, specific, and engaging.
Give a detailed description of how this activity unfolds in the classroom, its steps, and the time allotment for each. Indicate your specific role, and whether students work individually, collaboratively, or competitively. Explain how you assist students who experience difficulty. Create an engaging narrative and give relevant anecdotes: your reader should want to use this activity or see you demonstrate it.
And Finally…
It really helps to have your advisor or a trusted colleague review your documents for content and tone. If you want an extra pair of eyes on your materials, feel free to write to the chair of the Baruch English Department ([email protected]), the Writing Director, ([email protected]) or Harold Ramdass ([email protected]), a long-term adjunct professor who was recently hired as a full-time lecturer and has played a central role in putting together the mentoring program for adjunct faculty. They will be happy to review people’s job materials. One of them can also set you up with a departmental mentor who can work with you on your application and discuss various aspects of the job market.
(These materials were put together by Timothy Aubry, Harold Ramdass, and Molly Mosher in consultation with numerous other faculty in the Baruch English Department.)