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A Humanities Ph.D. Finds Her Niche in Administration

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By Patty Payette

Of all the things I learned in graduate school, the most surprising was that academic life exists beyond the tenure track.

While I continue to watch many of my graduate-school peers -- all of us new Ph.D.'s in the humanities -- struggle to find permanent positions, my decision to pursue an administrative career has widened my professional opportunities and allowed me to make a smooth transition from graduate school to a full-time job in academe.

Suddenly I have a measure of control over my professional and personal opportunities. I was taught in graduate school that my pursuit of a teaching job would be determined by the vagaries of the market and the "rules of the tenure-track game." Apparently, I would have little control over what time of year I could go on the job market, which institutions would consider hiring me, and when I could reasonably expect to start a family if I did get hired.

On top of that, my husband was also working toward his Ph.D. in a similar field. As I liked to joke throughout graduate school, the only thing worse than being a humanities Ph.D. looking for a full-time position was being married to one. My husband and I agreed that our first move out of graduate school would be determined by which one of us landed a position first. As I started to steer my career path toward an administrative job, I realized the flexibility it afforded us would help address our "two academic careers, one couple" problem.

My first foray into administration came early in my graduate career in the English department of a large Midwestern university. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching literature as a graduate assistant. But although my teaching appointment had been renewed, I decided to accept an offer to work at the university's writing center, where I would conduct classroom presentations on writing and work one-on-one with students. I enjoyed the close collaborations and collegial spirit of the center, both of which were sometimes in short supply in my home department, and I felt connected to university life in a lasting, meaningful way.

I remember thinking at the time that as a professor, I could improve and refine the teaching that goes on in my own classroom, but as an academic administrator, I could focus my energy on improving classrooms all across the campus. I saw how my work could have an impact across disciplines and departments, and I was hooked.

When I was offered a plum teaching assignment the following year, I was excited to see how my experience in the writing center could be put to good use in the classroom. I knew how to apply composition theory to my course design and assignments and I saw students respond to my guidance in a new way. The only problem was that I felt hard-pressed to make progress toward my degree while being a thoughtful, thorough teacher. I struggled to prepare for my comprehensive exams while also meeting the daily demands of preparing a lecture, grading, reading student drafts of assignments, and conducting office hours. Get used to it, my professors said, for this is what awaits you after graduate school -- always struggling to balance your duties as a teacher and mentor with your role as a writer and researcher. That was, of course, assuming I had made my way successfully through the increasingly tight job market and had a full-time teaching job to keep me from my research.

I didn't need to be reminded about the harsh realities of the job market. I could see new Ph.D.'s all around me making lonely moves across the country to accept one-year positions, cobbling together adjunct jobs to make ends meet, living apart from their spouse, or delaying their dissertations to accept a temporary, full-time position when they felt burned out by the low pay and bleak prospects after graduation.

At some point, I realized, I just wasn't willing to give over my future to the spoken and unspoken rules of a tenure-track job search. Those rules dictated that once a year I would have a shot at landing a job (during the Modern Language Association conference); that I could only work in departments that were equal to, or below, the rank of my own doctoral program; that I was expected to move to any part of the United States where I could find a job; and that I shouldn't even think about having kids until after I was granted tenure.

But I was heading toward my mid-30s, newly married, and we were determined to stay in the Midwest where we could soon raise kids with our extended families nearby. I couldn't afford to let my future career rise or fall with the number of interviews I had at the MLA conference. I had too many other priorities in life. Besides, I was not going to chase after the "perfect" teaching job at the "perfect school" when it wasn't the name of the university on my paycheck that would make me happy -- or even the amount of the paycheck. It was the tone and tenor of my everyday life that would make or break my sense of personal and professional satisfaction.

I experienced the importance of career flexibility firsthand when I reached A.B.D. status and accepted a new graduate assistantship with the dean of the graduate school. When I wasn't writing and editing publications for the dean two days a week, I was at the library working on my dissertation. This compartmentalized my lifestyle nicely; since I was freed from the pressures of office hours and bringing my work home with me, I was able to make speedy progress toward finishing the dissertation. At one point, the dean asked me to oversee the writing, design, and production of a biannual publication that features innovations in graduate education. This gave me the chance to venture into offices and labs across the campus to interview faculty members, students, and deans and get up to speed on important trends in higher education.

At one point, I looked around and realized that all of my mentors were women juggling an administrative career with research projects and/or teaching, and time with their families. One of them listened to me talk about my interest in becoming an administrator and suggested I look into a job in faculty development. It seemed to be a perfect fit for my eclectic CV. As graduation approached, I shared my interest in faculty development with my mentors and professors, who helped me identify appropriate positions and guided me in the process of networking among their peers at universities in the region.

During my final year of graduate school, I became pregnant. I now had a hard and fast deadline for those final revisions of my last dissertation chapter. The administrative job with the dean (and my husband's part-time teaching schedule) made it possible for me to keep it all balanced. My part-time editing and writing schedule could be adjusted around my maternity leave, my daughter's feeding times, my out-of-town job interviews, and my dissertation defense. This was all done with an ease I doubt I could have found had I been tied to an adjunct teaching position that I would have had to refashion and renew each semester according to the needs of my department.

It was also during this last year of school that my networking and advance planning began to pay off. I interviewed for three faculty-development positions, one at my home university and two at more prestigious institutions in the region. I was offered a position in the faculty-development center at the most prestigious of the three campuses in a city that my husband and I both love because of its cultural and political bent, its proximity to our family members, and its location near other colleges where he can find work. I began the job in the week following my defense last June. In my new position, my chief responsibilities are to coordinate several faculty grant programs and collaborate with my colleagues and faculty members on various teaching and technology projects. I'm immersed in thinking and talking about the rewards and challenges of teaching and learning. My salary hovers around $40,000 -- about what I would expect to be earning now had I landed a tenure-track job in the humanities.

I realize now that my graduate career was enriched by administrative work in many important ways beyond just providing me with a graduate assistantship that was flexible and convenient. When interviewing for full-time faculty-development positions, I had a wealth of experiences outside the classroom to call upon when discussing the state of academy. I could talk comfortably with deans and directors about issues outside of my discipline, such as the challenges of distance learning, the trend toward interdisciplinary collaboration, and the importance of teaching support for graduate students. I believe my commitment to teaching and learning beyond the confines of my own classroom and research field made me an attractive job candidate, and will continue to do so in the future if I decide to make another career move or return to teaching.

My husband has had his pick of adjunct jobs at several of the smaller colleges in the area while he finishes his dissertation and stays home part time with our 1-year-old daughter. Helping him realize his career dreams -- inside or outside the classroom -- is our next priority.