Could I get a tenure track faculty position at a small liberal arts college or...

Physics_UG

small engineering school? I currently attend Oakland University's PhD program. Formerly I was in a larger more well known PhD program but that didn't work out. I got sick and had to leave and decided to stay in my home state of Michigan for my PhD.

My dream is to become an excellent engineering educator. I don't much care for a research based professorship at a large university. Do you think a PhD from Oakland University will hold me back? Do I need to go to a more prestigious university for my PhD if I want a tenure track professorship somewhere?

ParticleGrl

Ask your adviser how many of his former students currently have tenure track positions at liberal arts schools. Ask your program how many students in the last decade or so ended up in tenure track positions at liberal arts schools. That should give you some ball-park idea of your odds.

Physics_UG

Actually I don't have an advisor yet. I have just been taking classes. Hopefully I will have an advisor by summer.

Anyways, it seems there are OU grads getting TT professorships at the small local universities (like U of Detroit)

Physics_UG

Also, I recall you were having trouble finding a post-PhD job. How has that bee going lately? Did you find something?

Physics_UG

Actually, I'd even be happy with a TT position at a community college.

Vanadium 50

Four-year colleges often get hundreds of applications for each position. Don't think these jobs aren't competitive - in many ways they are as competitive as research universities. It's just that the criteria are different.

Community college do not have many tenure-track positions. Many (including the one nearest me) have adopted the model where most instruction is done by part-timers. The one nearest me has one tenured faculty in physics. He's the department chair, and its his job to hire the part-timers.

Andy Resnick

No. You *do* need a track record of success- both classroom instruction and scholarly output.

FWIW, freshout PhDs are rarely competitive- no record of teaching (lab TA doesn't count) and few publications (nobody is fooled by long lists of 5+ author papers with the candidate lost somewhere in the middle).

Physics_UG

well, I do expect to do some postdocs before getting a faculty position.

eri

Small liberal arts colleges and universities still get 200+ applications for their professor positions, and expect some research background. They want you to be able to do research with students. If you don't want to do research at all, you can try a community college, but they don't tend to hire many engineers, and they don't require a PhD (you might just want to stop at the masters).