First Person

Changing Course

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By Patrick Callahan

Thanks in part to writing this column, I think I may have finally remembered what I always wanted out of an academic career.

I want to have close interactions with students and for those interactions to be valued by my department. I want my research to be applied, interdisciplinary, and timely. And I would like to have a life outside of my job.

The problem is, as I've come to realize over the past few months, that if those are the things I want, I haven't been directing my job search in the right place at all.

I entered a Ph.D. program in the geological sciences with one goal in mind: building the right qualifications to find a faculty position at a liberal-arts college. I grew up in a college town; I spent four of the best years of my life at a liberal-arts college; and I have always been passionate about teaching and learning.

Most of my professors there were mentors who exemplified all the things I wanted to be: articulate, engaging, and balanced. So after a couple of years working in industry, I chose a well-respected university for my Ph.D., thinking it would help stack the odds in my favor in landing that perfect liberal-arts position.

But without really realizing it, I got a bit derailed after I entered my doctoral program. It seemed like I was doing everything right: I became immersed in my dissertation project and started building up some new analytical techniques and interesting data sets. Based on sound advice from my adviser, I started publishing papers. My work seemed to pass easily through the review process, and before I knew it people were citing my work and inviting me to give talks at national meetings. I finished my Ph.D. in less than five years, began a postdoctoral position at a university in the West, and started interviewing for faculty positions.

Gradually, all of that positive reinforcement from the academic world -- rather than my own passion for the work I was doing -- pulled me further and further into a research-oriented lifestyle.

Clearly I must have looked good on paper: I started getting calls from search-committee chairs at big universities asking me to apply for their tenure-track positions. I usually responded with a cover letter and CV carefully tailored to each position (except for positions in cities I considered unlivable, in which case I didn't apply at all).

But after I beat out most of my competition and got interviews, my excitement quickly subsided.

I learned that none of the departments at which I interviewed cared about teaching; I found that my research was appealing to search committees only if it was esoteric enough that no one else was doing it; and I discovered that most of the faculty members were overworked and underpaid but somehow didn't seem to care.

In interviews, I found my mind wandering, asking myself practical questions like "How am I going to finance my graduate students?" and "How can I afford to live here on an assistant professor's salary?" And the biggest problem: I struggled to remain excited about my own research, let alone the things that faculty members in the department were pursuing.

Clearly my lack of enthusiasm showed: After half a dozen interviews spread over a few years, I still had not received an offer.

But in this hiring season, everything might be coming to a head. My latest academic interview went well. Really well. And I think there's a good chance I will get an offer.

The upside: The department seems keen on the idea of applied, interdisciplinary research, which probably helped buoy my enthusiasm during the interview process. But the university, as with all of the research institutions I've visited, still pays only lip service to the notion that teaching matters. Research and publications are what get you tenure, and preparing your lectures is supposed to be squeezed in somewhere between 9 p.m. and midnight. (You can spend time with your family once you've made associate professor.)

That is not what I want out of life. Were I to get an offer and accept it, I would look at the job as yet another detour on the road to the position I really want at a liberal-arts college.

So here's where I might need to gamble my future. There's no question that my teaching portfolio has taken a hit during the past few years while I've been focused on my research. And accepting a job at any university where I can start to rebuild my teaching credentials might be just what I need as a springboard into a liberal-arts position.

But if I do get an offer, I'm virtually certain I would take it only with plans to leave, and I would be hesitant to build a research group knowing that I would end up leaving my students hanging after a couple years.

Meanwhile, in accepting the offer, I would be asking my wife to leave her job, and we would have to sell our home and buy another -- none of which is likely to benefit our bottom line.

Turning down an offer has risks of its own: As a postdoc, my grant support to finance my research runs out in 18 months or so, after which time it's unclear where my paychecks will come from. My salary is far from spectacular. And given the nature of the academic job market, it's certainly not clear that a better job offer will come up next year anyway.

But at the same time, I've learned that my current department needs people to teach classes in the fall, so it looks like I could continue my postdoc while building my teaching credentials, too.

And in case the perfect teaching position doesn't pan out next year, I've submitted an application to join an environmental research and consulting firm downtown, and I'm working on an application for a government postdoc that would also push me further into applied research. Both of those positions seem to have all the benefits of an applied-research position without any of the pressures of tenure. (Why didn't I think of applying at those places sooner?)

I've always been pretty risk-averse. The only time I ever gambled in Vegas, I won $30 playing roulette and walked away with the money and a free drink rather than going for more. If I had two options with clearly defined risk-reward equations, there's no question I would settle for the one with the lowest risk.

But right now, the correct path to take to my "perfect" job seems unclear. Should I go for the "springboard" faculty position, with a steady paycheck to sustain me until the right job comes along? Or should I stay where I am, avoiding the turmoil of moving but risking that the money will run out?

I don't know. What I do know, at long last, is that the jobs I've been applying for are not the jobs I want. And I've also realized that I've probably got some work to do before I have the right credentials to get the one that I do want.

This grand experiment in the world of academic research has been a great ride, but it's time to take a turn. The remaining questions are which turn I will take and where it will lead me.