Apr 26, 2013 · Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright teaches international relations at Georgetown University. This semester, she's teaching a course called America's National Security Toolbox once a...
Apr 20, 2022 · A professor is the highest academic title held at a college, university, or postsecondary institution. Professors are accomplished and recognized academics — and usually considered experts in their areas of interest. A professor teaches upper-level undergraduate classes as well as graduate courses. They are also likely to be involved in ...
Most community colleges require a master's degree. Certification. Not required by state law. Projected Job Growth (2018-2028)*. 11% ( all postsecondary …
Aug 07, 2021 · If we add two summer courses for the sake of a year-round number, that means the typical college professor would be lucky to make $35,560 per year, and often might expect to make more like $21,336—that is, during the years when they could cobble together full-time teaching work at different institutions.
Distinguished professors are usually awarded this title because they are highly regarded and seen as a leader in their field of study. Some schools have their own title for a distinguished professor, like Yale University's "Sterling Professor" title or MIT's "Institute Professor" award.
Distinguished professors are selected through a nomination process, and they often receive additional salary and research funds. Candidates are usually selected by a committee and then endorsed by administrators, such as the school's dean or president.
Typically, a visiting professor stays at the school they're visiting for several months to a year. Visiting professors are typically offered a stipend by the host university, assuming that they are receiving salary from their home school.
Tenured status is highly competitive, and earning it is a time-consuming process that usually takes between 5-7 years. In addition to job security, it often comes with better wages, making it a special achievement in higher education. Associate professors usually have tenure, though not always. Even full professors are not always tenured.
Tenure is an indefinite academic appointment (i.e. a job that lasts as long as you want it) that can only be terminated in extraordinary situations, like a school being in so much financial trouble it might not survive (the fancy term is "financial exigency") or a department being closed.
It sits at #8 on this list because of the position's temporary nature, and because a visiting professor is unlikely to serve as part of the leadership in a school or department.
Institutions usually host visiting professors to bring new perspectives, collaborate with researchers and other professors, or temporarily fill a vacancy in a department. Most visiting professors teach for only a semester, but sometimes they stay longer.
Community college teachers are professors and instructors who work at the postsecondary level, teaching in 2-year college settings. Unlike professors, who work in 4-year colleges and universities, the focus for these professionals is more often on teaching, with less emphasis on research and publication.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicted that the number of positions available for postsecondary teachers, a classification of which community college teachers are a subset, would increase by 9% between 2019 and 2029.
According to the BLS, the average annual salary for the field of post secondary teachers in 2019 was $79,540, but pay varies widely.
The requirements to teach at a community college are usually to have a master's degree or at least graduate study in the subject to be taught.
Adjunct teachers do not work full time and may only teach one or two classes. Full-time community college teachers have a full course load, work full time and are paid on a yearly salary. Full-time teachers may have additional benefits, such as health insurance, dental insurance and privileges at the school and community.
Community college professor requirements do not include certification as a community college teacher is not required by state law, but it is helpful for those who do not have teaching experience. Required Education. Most community colleges require a master's degree. Certification.
Some schools are now offering graduate-level certificates for community college teachers looking for a formal grounding in educational theory. These certificate programs may be partially or completely offered online and are in addition to graduate work completed in the field of study.
First, the AAUP’s report shows that the typical American college professor today is an adjunct. In other words, part-time contingent faculty members (professors hired by the course and considered “part-time” workers no matter how many courses they teach) are the largest single class of college professor.
By how wide a margin? According to data from 2019, the AAUP report says, 42.9% of American college professors are part-time contingent faculty members. That means the adjunct workforce is significantly larger than the combined number of tenured professors (26.5% of the faculty) or tenure-track professors still seeking tenure (10.5%). It is also more than twice the number of full-time contingent faculty members, such as “visiting” professors or “professors of practice” (20.0%).
Here’s another way to look at those figures: Across American higher education, adjuncts outnumber tenure-seeking junior professors four to one. That means adjunct professors, more than new professors who will one day have tenure, represent the future of the professoriate.
Glassdoor, for example, claims the average American adjunct professor makes more than $50,000 per year, and ZipRecruiter claims the same figure is $67,000. Such salaries would hardly be extravagant by middle-class standards in most cities. But in reality, a typical adjunct professor can expect to make only about half that much—with no benefits—if they can get full-time work at all.
But the reality is that many adjuncts today depend exclusively or primarily on their income as college teachers. This is what they face. This is how the typical college professor is rewarded for their work as they keep American higher education going.
Now, some adjuncts do work on a truly part-time basis, teaching a course here and there on the side while maintaining another full-time career that allows them such fripperies as, say, going to the dentist. That is what many college administrators use as a justification for the shabby way they treat their professors.
By and large, these part-time faculty teach for stimulation, prestige, and variety, while the pay provided them supplements their basic income . More importantly, most of these part-time faculty members are appointed to teach, and the nonteaching functions performed by full-time faculty are not their concern.
In discussing compensation we must also bear in mind that colleges and universities utilize part-time faculty members in order to effect monetary economies and flexibility in staffing the academic program. What must be guarded against are practices that exploit the part-time faculty, contribute to poor morale, and adversely affect the quality of education. Such practices inevitably injure not only part-time faculty members, but also their full-time colleagues and, most of all, students.
When a faculty is organized for purposes of collective bargaining, the appropriate test of inclusion in the bargaining unit that is used by the National Labor Relations Board is whether or not a “community of interest” or a “mutuality of interest” exists among the members of the proposed unit. If there is a category of part-time faculty members composed of those who are eligible for tenure, it appears likely that they would be included in a bargaining unit with full-time faculty members. Indeed, the few part-time faculty members who are in this category are often called “fractional time” or “full time with reduced load” rather than part time. Similar claims for inclusion might be made by part-time faculty members paid on a prorata basis, 16 independent of their qualifications or security entitlements. Politically, the inclusion of part-time faculty is often viewed as threatening to the interests of the full-time faculty, and, to the degree that the part-time faculty and full-time faculty have different commitments to the institution, the threat becomes more real. There is a basic problem as to whether a bargaining unit composed primarily of full-time faculty members can fairly represent the part-time faculty if they are included in the bargaining unit. And, if the part-time faculty are excluded from the unit, will the administration exploit them and use them to undercut the full-time faculty? 17 Throughout this statement on part-time faculty problems, we make proposals designed for the better integration of part-time faculty and full-time faculty. We believe that a better integration will improve the quality of education and the academic climate. We also believe that, as institutions move toward improved communication between part-time and full-time faculty members, the likelihood of the difficulties posed above occurring in a collective bargaining situation will be lessened.
Crucial for the sense of professional pride and responsibility that characterize the academic profession is the central role full-time faculty members traditionally play in the determination of the structure and content of curricula, individual courses, and teaching materials. Similarly, a sense of professionalism is derived from the significant role faculty members play in governing academic departments and in the governance of institutions of higher learning. Without access to the governing bodies, a faculty member’s sense of professionalism is impaired, to the potential detriment of the quality of the educational process in which he or she is involved. Faculty members who are treated like “hired hands,” with syllabi they have played no role in preparing, may be insufficiently motivated to perform with the care and ingenuity of the faculty member who is actively involved in shaping his or her environment.
1. Tenure for Part-time Faculty. The 1973 report of the Commission on Academic Tenure in Higher Education discussed part-time faculty service and found merit in the view that individuals who regularly provide part-time service on an institution’s faculty should be accorded tenure if they qualify for it.
Universities and colleges should recognize that participation in academic governance is likely to enhance a faculty member’s sense of professionalism and elicit a higher quality of performance than can otherwise be expected . Moreover, the institution would benefit from the part-time faculty member’s contributions.
WE RECOMMEND that part-time faculty who have been employed for six or more terms, or consecutively for three or more terms, receive a full term’s notice. Any lesser period may prevent their reentry into the part-time market, given the cyclical nature of academic appointments. The issuance of notice should be preceded by a more thorough faculty role in the evaluation process than is customarily the case with part-time faculty members.
Most of the time, “professor” refers to a tenure-track professorship appointment. “Instructor,” similar to “lecturer,” covers everybody else who teaches in universities, with jobs that are contract, full time or part time.
She or he will be able to call themselves ‘professor’ but must achieve tenure within a set number of years (usually a maximum of seven ) to rise to the next rank.
In Canada, a rough equivalent to adjuncts are “sessional” instructors who have teaching responsibilities, occasional admin roles, but no research responsibilities and are contracted to teach on short-term contracts. These individuals are not awarded the title of professor, courtesy or otherwise.
There is no shortcut to respect in an academic career other than teaching, and your worth as a teacher is not about the title on your business card or curriculum vitae.
On the other hand, adjunct professors are not part of faculty, but depending on their school’s policies, they may able to use the title “professor” as a courtesy title—namely, one that doesn’t carry any legal weight.
If you have earned a PhD / doctorate, you are entitled to call yourself “doctor,” regardless of whether you are a tenure-track or part-time employee. For some, that is a preferred in-class title (more of which later).
Back in 2016, Matthew McConaughey first got the chance to go back to his alma mater to co-teach a course called "Advanced Producing: Script-to-Screen."
Angelou was named the Wake Forest's first Reynolds Professor of American Studies in 1982. In her time there, she taught courses in "World Poetry in Dramatic Performance," "Race, Politics and Literature," "African Culture and Impact on US," "Race in the Southern Experience," "Shakespeare and the Human Condition," and many more.
Some celebrities bring their talents to the classroom to help students learn directly from actors, supermodels, and directors who are hugely successful in their fields.
James Franco has taught courses at Columbia, NYU, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the California Institute of the Arts, and more.
For a short stint starting in the late 1990s, Oprah taught at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Along with her longtime partner, Stedman Graham, the two lead a "Dynamics of Leadership" course.
Matthew McConaughey is a full-time professor at his alma matter.
Most faculty learn to teach outside of PD opportunities, informally, from colleagues and mentors. Faculty development should respect these contexts and factor them into programming. A lot of PD can mirror teaching, devoted to content, not practice—to what is taught, and not how it is taught.
Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) or mentoring networks where faculty informally observe each other in the classroom and practice their teaching together. The University of Georgia Center for Teaching and Learning UGA Fellows for Innovative Teaching FLC themes FLC programming to align with a university initiative (e.g., SCALE-UP in 2016, challenging gateway courses in 2017). For the 2017 cohort, UGA required each FLC fellow to receive two classroom observations over the semester, one performed by a peer fellow and one by a CTL assistant director.
Scaffolded faculty development is one way to achieve such authentic professional practice. Scaffolded PD is ongoing and features regular practice and demonstration in the workplace. It may constitute sub-practices, including long programming, building communities or cohorts of faculty, and coaching and informal peer observation of teaching practice. Scaffolding PD acknowledges that professional learning about teaching is a process, a commitment, and a way of thinking that takes time, thought, and work.
Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning Transforming STEM Teaching Faculty Learning Program, a blended professional learning program. Instructors first participate in a series of synchronous, interactive online workshops offered every two weeks, as well as reflective discussions. Synchronous sessions guide faculty through the process of redefining their role as instructor in their college courses, as they develop deeper understanding of how learning happens and how to support learning. Members participate in peer observations to provide/ receive feedback on their teaching.
Faculty developers can construct profound professional learning experiences with and for their colleagues. Administrators should plan for adequate allocation of resources and support the heavy lifting that teaching and learning centers will be asked to perform to create and sustain such intensive experiences.
It is authentic in that faculty put into practice what they are learning in the place where they exercise their expertise: in the classroom, clinic, studio, or lab.
Certificates in college teaching for graduate students/TAs that also require a teaching visit, peer observation and feedback, such as Duke University’s Certificate in College Teaching. Duke employs “teaching triangles” where instructors observe other instructors and must also be observed.