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Getting a Tenure-Track Job at 44

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By Liz McMillen

Is an older candidate for an academic job always at a disadvantage?

Perhaps not. Take the example of Jennifer Gunn, an assistant professor of the history of medicine at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She entered graduate school in the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania after an unconventional career: She worked as a waitress, a trucker, a technical writer, and a coal miner. What's more, she landed her first tenure-track job at 44, when many of her peers are tenured and onto their first sabbatical.

In a recent interview, Ms. Gunn talked about the pros and cons of delaying an academic career.

Question: So how did you end up being a coal miner?

Answer: After graduating from Hampshire College, I went to a technical college in Birmingham, Ala., and took a course on mining. I was involved with a group of women who were interested in heavy industrial work, and we carpooled around to the mines to put in applications but we never got hired. We filed complaints of sex discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, and then we were hired to settle those complaints. I worked for four years at two different mines. I was the "shot firer" at one -- the one who sets off the dynamite to make the coal fall. But after four years, I was still pretty low in seniority, and they laid off workers with up to nine years' seniority. So I lost my job.

Question: What did you do then?

Answer: After working with my husband's typesetting business for a few years, I eventually applied for a job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and got a job in the office of the vice president for health affairs. My job was planning. I drew all the resources together necessary for planning (though this was before PC's). I did that for a year, but I realized that if I wanted to be in the academy, I wanted a job with more content. I wanted to combine my industrial experience with a longtime interest in science and history.

Question: So you knew you wanted to go to graduate school -- how did you pick Penn?

Answer: I was so dumb! I had been out of school for so long -- I assumed grad school was the same as college, at least as far as financial aid went. I applied to M.I.T., Penn, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Emory. By this time I was divorced, a single parent with two kids, so where I applied depended on where I had family, a support system. I also started looking up scholarships, and amazingly, I got a fellowship for graduate study from the National Science Foundation. I really liked Penn best intellectually, and they ended up giving me money in addition to my N.S.F. fellowship. I entered graduate school in 1989, when I was 34, and finished in 1997. I thought I would get out in four or five years!

Question: Did you ever feel that your age might have been an advantage in graduate school?

Answer: I think I had an easier time psychologically. When I looked at some of my peers who had been out two or three years before graduate school, they had more crises of confidence.

I looked at graduate school as a real integration of my life. I'm really glad I did these things before graduate school. As a historian, I have a much different sense of how things look in documents and how things looked on the ground. That's because I have enough job experience -- I use that as a filter, to find out what life was like.

Question: How many times did you go on the job market?

Answer: I went on the market three times. The first time I wasn't ready. I only applied for a couple of things I was really interested in. The big issue was that I was trying to match logical moving points with my kids' school lives. I had decided not to apply for a postdoc or a one-year, but I ended up applying for the job at Minnesota anyway, even though it was a one-year appointment. It seemed there would be a good possibility of a second year, which did in fact happen. Then they did a national search. I turned 44 the day before I heard I got the job, a tenure-track appointment.

Question: Did you ever think when you were applying that your age was going to be a drawback?

Answer: I may have been naïve about it, but no, not particularly. I'm aware that departments that haven't hired in a long while need young blood, not just intellectually but as a bridge in age to graduate students. I think that's a legitimate concern because some departments have wide gaps. It's not that I didn't get socialized to want a teaching job -- I certainly did. But I've done so many things, I knew I could support myself doing something besides the academy. Needless to say, I'm really pleased about how it turned out.

Question: Was your age ever mentioned or made an issue of during job interviews?

Answer:Everyone is smart enough not to make it into an issue. If I got close during a search, there were other issues that came up. I didn't cover up the fact that I had children -- I didn't want people to have false expectations about who I am. If I had been on the job market for another year, I might have been more worried about it.

Question: What advice do you have for job applicants over 40?

Answer: The main thing is that institutions are genuinely looking for people who hold the promise of scholarship. Show that you are current and active and that you plan on a productive career. Of course everyone is out to show the same thing, but I think that would mean giving conference papers, networking, trying to publish a lot, being up on the current literature, having a plan for your second book. Make it clear that you are bringing new intellectual blood just like a 30-year-old would be assumed to bring. It also helps not to be too self-conscious about your age. Don't be aggressive about it, but assume that it gives you something younger candidates don't have.

The problem now is that the job market is so bad that we'll do anything to get a job. But as I look at the kinds of jobs people have, it's important to think about the conditions of your working life. The pressures to get the next grant, job, or publication can be incredibly stressful. Think about if it's what you want. I feel more certain about who I am, what I want, and what I am willing to do -- that's the good thing about being older.

ALSO SEE:

Career Talk: I'm 50. Can I get a job? Part II

I hadn't reckoned on turning 50: Comments from readers

David W. Johnson: How I became a university instructor at 53

Getting a tenure-track job at 44: A conversation with Jennifer Gunn