The Many Paths of the Would-Be Professoriate

The goal of one of the longest-running professional-development programs for graduate students and postdocs is baked right into its name.

Preparing Future Faculty, which started in 1993, was designed to introduce Ph.D. students and postdocs on campuses nationwide to the realities of being a professor. The program exposes them to what faculty life looks like at the kinds of colleges where they’re most likely to be hired. One of the first institutions in the program was Duke University.

Its participants, known as fellows, visit nearby institutions that are starkly different from Duke, including private liberal-arts colleges, a historically black college, a community college, a women’s college, and a sprawling land-grant institution, where they sit in on undergraduate classes and talk with faculty members, administrators, and students. Faculty mentors on those campuses talk frankly to them about the demands of academic life, and provide insider tips on conducting academic job searches, among other things.

In the end, not every fellow becomes a professor, but that outcome is not unexpected. “Ph.D.s can do many, many things with their degree,” says Hugh Crumley, the program’s director and assistant dean for academic affairs, who holds a doctorate from the University of Virginia. “And Duke has plenty of programs to help them figure out what that is.”

A Chronicle analysis of 12 cohorts of the Duke program, from 2004-5 to 2015-16, reveals what became of the vast majority of the fellows. Of the pool of almost 350 people, The Chronicle was able to track down 93 percent of them, and they ended up as follows:

• 47 percent are now academics, of whom 87 percent are tenured or on the tenure track.
• 26 percent have a job in the private sector, in government, or at a nonprofit organization.
• 5 percent hold nonteaching, nonresearch positions at a college or university.
• 4 percent work as university research scientists.
• 2.5 percent run their own businesses or work for themselves.
• 15.5 percent, usually the most recent participants, are doing postdocs or finishing up their Ph.D.s.

The paths that the program’s fellows took reflect many things: individuals’ choices and evolution, quirks of fate, and forces outside of their control, like the flagging academic job market or the hypercompetitive environment for federal research grants.

A few fellows shared their stories about why they had joined the program, what they had learned from it, and what shape their post-Ph.D. lives have taken:

Name: Jana Bennett

Occupation: associate professor of religious studies, University of Dayton, Ohio

Degree: theological ethics, 2005

Goal in graduate school: “I would say back then that I wanted to be a professor, but I was also thinking: If this Ph.D.-academia thing doesn’t work out, I don’t mind trying something else,” says Ms. Bennett.

A similar sense of pragmatism led her to apply to Preparing Future Faculty, where she hoped to pick up the skills needed to teach undergraduates. “I knew most of the jobs out there involved teaching undergraduates,” she says, “and I felt completely unprepared for that.”

What she learned from the program: “It was really helpful to have the space to learn about the academic world in a nonthreatening environment.”

The search: Ms. Bennett applied for about 30 jobs. Two were “definitely a stretch,” she says, but most were in her exact field. “The market was crazily amazing,” she says. Her dream job was at a liberal-arts institution, like Colorado College, which she attended as an undergraduate. Her professors there were role models, Ms. Bennett says. “I thought about going into doctoral work because of them.”

Where she landed: In the fall of 2005, Ms. Bennett began her first year as an assistant professor at Hampden-Sydney College, in Virginia. Despite its being “the liberal-arts college job that I always thought I wanted,” she didn’t stay at the teaching-focused institution. “I realized that I always loved research.”

In 2008 she moved to a tenure-track position at the University of Dayton, where the culture — while still teaching-oriented — allows her “just enough space” to pursue her scholarship.

Courtesy of Melissa Asllani

Name: Melissa Asllani

Occupation: senior scientist, LakePharma Inc.

Degree: biochemistry, 2013

Goal in graduate school: Ms. Asllani loved the education she received at her alma mater, Saint Anselm College, in New Hampshire. Her plan was to work at a liberal-arts college.

What she learned from the program: The best thing was being matched with a mentor at one of the program’s partner institutions. Her mentor, a professor at a technical college, allowed her to teach a couple of classes with him. “Getting in front of a classroom to teach and convey knowledge to people — seeing how other people do that — that’s a useful thing to know.”

The search: While applying for jobs during the 2012-13 academic year, Ms. Asllani says she encountered what she calls a “dramatic shift” in liberal-arts education. She remembers her Saint Anselm professors as “wonderful teachers” who did research, too — but mostly so they could guide undergraduates through that experience.

However, she found that many job ads from liberal-arts colleges heavily emphasized faculty-research expectations over pedagogy and teaching philosophy.

“It was actually a bit discouraging. Teaching is not enough anymore,” Ms. Asllani says. “They want you to publish papers. It’s challenging enough to do that at a large institution where you have a lot of resources and it’s a little easier to get grants. It’s difficult to compete for that money at a liberal-arts college.”

Where she landed: Ms. Asllani’s job search didn’t yield any tenure-track offers. She gave birth to a girl in February 2013 and took some time off.

When she resumed her job search, she expanded it to include nonacademic positions. Her husband, a Ph.D. scientist who also went to graduate school at Duke, thought she might like working in industry.

In April 2015, Ms. Asllani began working as a research scientist at a company that was later acquired by her current firm, LakePharma, a biologics contract-research organization that specializes in the production of proteins and antibodies for pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers.

“I enjoy being back on the bench,” says Ms. Asllani, whose husband also works at LakePharma. “I get to do different things every day.” She has also found a way to satisfy her desire to teach, by serving as a mentor to younger employees who come to the company right out of undergraduate programs. “I still get a chance to teach,” she says, “just not at an academic institution.”

Name: Ben Mudrak

Occupation: director of outreach and communication for Minerva at Research Square

Degree: molecular genetics and microbiology, 2010

Goal in graduate school: “I was enjoying my research, but I was thinking more about teaching and less about running a lab,” Mr. Mudrak says. “I was looking for ways to get exposed to what that would look like and Preparing Future Faculty seemed like a really good way to find out.”

What he learned from the program: “One of the things that stuck out to me — and I don’t know why this wasn’t obvious — was how much work people do at all the different types of higher-ed institutions,” Mr. Mudrak says. During visits to nearby campuses he noticed that professors were “working just as hard as my adviser was working at Duke,” even though their responsibilities were different. Mr. Mudrak also saw that he needed to gain some teaching experience. “I wasn’t even a TA at the time,” he says.

The search: Mr. Mudrak was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2010 to 2012, during which he also taught a few semesters of an introductory biology lab course at Elon University, where his mentor worked.

But he came to realize that his credentials might not be enough. It seemed likely, he says, that a visiting assistant-professor job was in his future. With a newborn daughter and a wife who had a nonacademic career in Durham, N.C., he says, “this was a chance for me to pivot.”

He liked being involved with science and research, but he didn’t want to have a lab. “How can I stay local,” he thought, and, if possible, “keep my connection to research and not stay chained to the bench?”

Where he landed: In 2012, Mr. Mudrak started working at Research Square/American Journal Experts, where he was hired to develop an author-education program to help international researchers publish their work more quickly. His most recent role at the company is as director of outreach and communication for Minerva, a new platform under the Research Square banner that aims to simplify the process of submitting manuscripts to journal editors.

“I knew when I stepped outside of doing research there was no going back. This is kind of the end of an era for me,” Mr. Mudrak says. “My anxiety about it wasn’t superstrong. I remain very happy with my decision to leave the bench.”

Duke Photography

Name: David McDonald

Occupation: associate director of graduate career services, Duke University

Degree: genetics, 2013

Goal in graduate school: To work as a faculty member at a Research 1 institution. “I just thought,” he says, “I’m going to do all this amazing research.”

But it wasn’t long before his interest turned to teaching. His Ph.D. program had a teaching requirement, and most of his fellow students worked as teaching assistants in graduate-level courses. Mr. McDonald took on that role for an undergraduate course instead. “I really wanted to get into teaching,” he says. “There was lots of active learning, and I found it a lot of fun getting to know the students.”

The challenge for him then? Finding a way to fashion a career out of research and teaching. “I saw Preparing Future Faculty as a good way to start exploring how to do that.”

What he learned from the program: The chance to see “the real continuum of research and teaching that exists, and how much people are spending on those two activities,” Mr. McDonald says, helped inspire him while his desire to become a professor at a research institution waned.

The search: Mr. McDonald sought out what he calls a nontraditional postdoc — one that allowed for both research and teaching. He accepted a postdoc at North Carolina Central University, a historically black college, that called for fellows to spend a quarter of their time teaching and revamping certain parts of the biology curriculum. That’s where he had a moment of clarity.

“I thought that places other than Research 1s would have a better balance, but I didn’t find that to be true,” says Mr. McDonald. “Everybody here is just as stressed out. I realized that the things I was looking for in a career might not be available” in a faculty job.

Where he landed: Mr. McDonald ditched the academic job market altogether. Instead, he logged on to Indeed.com and typed in different search terms — such as “mentorship” and “biology” and “teaching” — to see “what was out there,” he says. He began to identify roles in higher-education administration, science outreach, and a few jobs at Duke.

A job connecting undergraduate students to research experiences didn’t pan out for him, but then he found one that would allow him to help graduate students figure out what post-Ph.D. employment to pursue. Mr. McDonald was hired as assistant director of Duke’s graduate career services in January 2015 and was recently promoted to his current position. “In this job, I can always tell students, ‘I’ve been in your shoes,’” Mr. McDonald says.

He realizes now that while in graduate school, he wasn’t completely honest with himself. “I had a lot of the same trepidations and fears that a lot of people have: What if I don’t want to do research forever? What would I do if I weren’t a faculty member? You don’t really explore that,” Mr. McDonald says. “If you’d told me years ago that I would be in higher-ed administration, I’d have told you you were crazy.”

Name: Lane Destro

Occupation: child-welfare data analyst, North Carolina Division of Social Services

Degree: sociology, 2012

Goal in graduate school: Ms. Destro taught a freshman writing course, and saw combining that experience with her participation in the Preparing Future Faculty program as a great way to learn about the career she thought she wanted. She also hoped it would give her a competitive edge on the job market. “I thought when I sent my CV out for teaching tenure-track positions that it would make a difference,” Ms. Destro says.

What she learned from the program: She discovered what life is like outside of a Research 1 institution. “You can find out, Here’s what the job requires at other places,” Ms. Destro says, “even though that’s not being emphasized in your professional training.”

The search: Ms. Destro set out to land a tenure-track job, and started her job search in the fall of 2011.

Where she landed: Everything seemed to go according to plan. She started as an assistant professor of sociology at Roanoke College, in Virginia, in the fall of 2012. “It was what I envisioned when I thought about being a professor at a teaching-centric university,” she says.

But it wasn’t long before Ms. Destro, who has studied the impact of poverty on various populations, felt the desire to do applied research in her area of specialty full time. “It was a gradual process for me, but I discovered something that I had forgotten during graduate school: I wanted to help people,” says Ms. Destro, who did consulting work for nonprofit organizations while a faculty member. “Teaching wasn’t going to allow me to make enough room for that.”

Last year Ms. Destro left Roanoke, where she says she was part of a “phenomenal department,” and applied for jobs at a wide range of state, local, and nonprofit entities.

Since January she’s been working as a child-welfare data analyst for the North Carolina Division of Social Services. It’s a job that also allows her to remain as a mentor for some of her former students, two of whom are in a master’s program in sociology at the University of Richmond.

“I was lucky to get a tenure-track position and lucky to get a job where we had tons of resources,” Ms. Destro says. “I enjoyed teaching, but I thought about what my life would be like for the next 10 or 20 years, and that’s not where I saw myself.”

Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.

Correction (10/17/2017, 10:30 a.m.): This article originally said incorrectly that Hugh Crumley had earned his Ph.D. at Duke. He earned it at the University of Virginia. The text has been corrected.