In question-and-answer form, Ms. Mentor advises academic women about issues they daren't discuss openly, such as: How does one really clamber onto the tenure track when the job market is so nasty, brutish, and small? Is there such a thing as the perfectly marketable dissertation topic? How does a meek young woman become a tiger of an authority figure in the classroom-and get stupendous teaching evaluations? How does one cope with sexual harassment, grandiosity, and bizarre behavior from entrenched colleagues? Ms. Mentor's readers will find answers to the secret queries they were afraid to ask anyone else. They'll discover what it really takes to get tenure; what to wear to academic occasions; when to snicker, when to hide, what to eat, and when to sue. They'll find out how to get firmly planted in the rich red earth of tenure. They'll learn why lunch is the most important meal of the day.
Ms. Mentor, that uniquely brilliant and irascible intellectual, is your all-knowing guide through the jungle that is academia today. In the last decade Ms. Mentor's mailbox has been filled to overflowing with thousands of plaintive epistles, rants, and gossipy screeds. A mere fraction has appeared in her celebrated monthly online and print Q&A columns for the Chronicle of Higher Education; her readers' colorful and rebellious ripostes have gone unpublished—until now. Hearing the call for a follow-up to the wildly successful Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, Ms. Mentor now broadens her counsel to include academics of the male variety. Ms. Mentor knows all about foraging for jobs, about graduate school stars and serfs, and about mentors and underminers, backbiters and whiners. She answers burning questions: Am I too old, too working class, too perfect, too blonde? When should I reproduce? When do I speak up, laugh, and spill the secrets I've gathered? Do I really have to erase my own blackboard? Does academic sex have to be reptilian? From the ivory tower that affords her an unparalleled view of the academic landscape, Ms. Mentor dispenses her perfect wisdom to the huddled masses of professorial newbies, hardbitten oldies, and anxious midcareerists. She gives etiquette lessons to academic couples and the tough-talking low-down on adjunct positions. She tells you what to wear, how to make yourself popular, and how to decode academic language. She introduces you to characters you must know: Professor Pelvic, Dr. Iron Fist, Mr. Upstart Whelp, Dean Titan, Professor McShameless. In this volume Ms. Mentor once again shares her wide-ranging unexpurgated wisdom, giving tips on bizarre writing rituals, tenure diaries, and time management (Exploding Head Syndrome). She decodes department meetings and teaches you the tricks for getting stellar teaching evaluations. Raw, shocking, precise, clever, absurd—Ms. Mentor has it all.
There is an urgent need to provide academic professionals with individual, institutional, and contextual accounts of their careers and career-making endeavors. An individual account makes academicians think about what they do and how they might do it better. An institutional account makes academicians reflect upon the organizational environment in which they function and ponder what they might do to improve it. A contextual account connects academicians and their work to knowledge, the knowledge enterprise, and the larger social structure so that they know and understand the impact they and their career-making efforts have on themselves, academia, and general social processes. This book examines academic careers and career-making activities with respect to their main aspects, milestones, and general pathways. In content, it divides into four identifiable parts. Part I focuses on professional preparation. It examines education, degree, reeducation, job search, and job change. Part II centers on organizational employment. It investigates position, research, teaching, service, and tenure. Part III revolves around professional networking. It looks into publication, conference presentation, application for grants and awards, and membership in academic associations. Part IV rises above specific issues. It explores general career pathways and overall scholarly identity.
This is a hands-on guide for graduate students and young researchers wishing to perfect the practical skills needed for a successful research career. By teaching junior scientists to develop effective research habits, the book helps to make the experience of graduate study a more efficient and rewarding one. The authors have taught a graduate course on the topics covered for many years, and provide a sample curriculum for instructors in graduate schools wanting to teach a similar course. Topics covered include choosing a research topic, department, and advisor; making workplans; the ethics of research; using scientific literature; perfecting oral and written communication; publishing papers; writing proposals; managing time effectively; and planning a scientific career and applying for jobs in research and industry. The wealth of advice is invaluable to students, junior researchers and mentors in all fields of science, engineering, and the humanities. The authors have taught a graduate course on the topics covered for many years, and provide a sample curriculum for instructors in graduate schools wanting to teach a similar course. The sample curriculum is available in the book as Appendix B, and as an online resource.
A critical and democratic perspective on American politics, letters, and higher education. Drawing from public and personal experiences, the author invites readers to think about their own level of social consciousness. Topics include: capitalism and class inequality; and teaching and parenting.
Sexual rhetoric is the self-conscious and critical engagement with discourses of sexuality that exposes both their naturalization and their queering, their torquing to create different or counter-discourses, giving voice and agency to multiple and complex sexual experiences. This volume explores the intersection of rhetoric and sexuality through the varieties of methods available in the fields of rhetoric and writing studies, including case studies, theoretical questioning, ethnographies, or close (and distant) readings of "texts" that help us think through the rhetorical force of sexuality and the sexual force of rhetoric.
Explores the mentoring experiences of female faculty members at research universities and describes the kinds of mentoring that appear most to support their career success. Asks what women's personal experiences with mentoring have been, what the characteristics of the mentoring relationships are, and what influence academic discipline has on the mentoring needs of female faculty members at research universities.
