7 Tips on Applying for Faculty Openings at Community Colleges (Chronicle of Higher Education)

[Daniel Crump]

Just read this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education from our own Leigh Anne Shaw (Skyline College).  

Kudos and thanks for this information to our colleagues applying for CCC positions.

Several of her tips made me think back to my days of applying for a full-time position---so many years ago and so many applications!.  I am retiring in May 2021 and hope that we will be able to fill the position with a full-time hire.

Getting the experience---I had years of experience at a large public library (Pasadena PL) and a special library (LA Times), which I felt were both enriching experiences, but no academic librarian experience.  So I volunteered one evening a week for a semester at a local community college (had the advantage of knowing a librarian there who had worked with me at Pasadena PL) and it helped me out enormously. 

Cover Letter---I think the first cover letter I wrote stated something like "I feel that I meet all the qualifications that you have requested and look forward to sharing my experiences with you."  NO.  When asking one college why I hadn't received a second-level interview, they said they didn't know that I met all the qualifications.  From then on, I determined that there would be at least one sentence in the cover letter for each of the specific qualifications that they listed.

Do your homework about the institution---Yes!  I discovered that looking at the accreditation self-report (dating myself) provided good information to bring up at the interview.  Remember that I was able to remark that it was interesting that one college that I interviewed at had a higher ratio of full-time students that the norm for the state and I was able to bring that up as one of the questions at the end of my interview.  Didn't get the job, but I think I piqued their interest.

Anyway, again, thanks to Leigh Anne for sharing these tips.

Dan

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Daniel J Crump

Librarian, American River College

[Allison Moore]

moo...@lasc.edu

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[Karolyn Hanna]

A quick note of thanks to Dan for his excellent response to Leigh Anne Shaw’s article in the recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education as well as a note of congratulations to Leigh Anne. 

I encourage any and all of you who are working with part-time faculty, that you would like to see become full-time faculty, or as mentors to graduate students, to share that article (along with Dan’s comments), with them. The practical suggestions may in fact help them become our faculty colleagues.

-Karolyn Hanna, faculty emeritus, Santa Barbara City College

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 12, 2020, at 1:14 PM, Allison Moore <alliso...@gmail.com> wrote:



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