The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career

Is a career as a professor the right choice for you? If you are a graduate student, how can you clear the hurdles successfully and position yourself for academic employment? What’s the best way to prepare for a job interview, and how can you maximize your chances of landing a job that suits you? What happens if you don’t receive an offer? How does the tenure process work, and how do faculty members cope with the multiple and conflicting day-to-day demands?

With a perpetually tight job market in the traditional academic fields, the road to an academic career for many aspiring scholars will often be a rocky and frustrating one. Where can they turn for good, frank answers to their questions? Here, three distinguished scholars—with more than 75 years of combined experience—talk openly about what’s good and what’s not so good about academia, as a place to work and a way of life.

Written as an informal conversation among colleagues, the book is packed with inside information—about finding a mentor, avoiding pitfalls when writing a dissertation, negotiating the job listings, and much more. The three authors’ distinctive opinions and strategies offer the reader multiple perspectives on typical problems. With rare candor and insight, they talk about such tough issues as departmental politics, dual-career marriages, and sexual harassment. Rounding out the discussion are short essays that offer the “inside track” on financing graduate education, publishing the first book, and leaving academia for the corporate world.

This helpful guide is for anyone who has ever wondered what the fascinating and challenging world of academia might hold in store.

Part I – Becoming a Scholar

• Deciding on an Academic Career
• Entering Graduate School
• The Mentor
• Writing a Dissertation
• Landing an Academic Job
  Part II – The Academic Profession
• The Life of the Assistant Professor
• Teaching and Research
• Tenure
• Competition in the University System and Outside Offers
• The Personal Side of Academic Life

Author Biography

John A. Goldsmith is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in, and former chair of, the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. John Komlos is a professor of economics, chair of the Institute of Economic History, and a former chair of the economics department at the University of Munich.

Penny Schine Gold is a professor of history at Knox college and past chair of the Women’s Studies Program.