http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/Art_History_2011-2012

Anna

Second, I’d like to ask us to think more broadly about what professional development might entail for us. Not just jobs, but also writing/publishing, working with or in our communities as volunteers, mentoring, conference-ing, and “service” in many forms, etc. Many of these things do not have immediate professional, i.e financial rewards, yet we are expected to perform them with little or no understanding of how to go about them in a fruitful way that does not completely drain our time and resources.

Thirdly, how can we access and make use of the work in this area that is already being done elsewhere in the university? UVA has two programs that I can think of off the top of my head that address professional development in a general way for us. One is the TRC’s “Tomorrow’s Professor Today” program. TPT deals with developing publishing and teaching portfolios. The other is/was the GSAS Career Services office which assisted with developing interviewing skills, preparing materials for the job search, etc. Unfortunately, when I checked this fall, this office was closed! I bring this up because the majority of this kind of work in our department falls on the PhD students advisor and other faculty, where in other, larger dept’s at UVA, they have built out and tested programs to prepare their candidates for the job market, whatever it may be. This seems very burdensome for the faculty, and results in uneven preparation. Is there some way we can look at and/or use what is already in place in the GSAS?

Lastly, I would suggest that this class or seminar be workshop-based. There should be a minimum of reading other people’s essays on various professional topics and an emphasis of bringing one’s own work/cv/article/proposal. It would be useful if the guest speakers that Justin mentioned could be corralled into actually looking at CVs and giving feedback rather than just speaking about their own experience. In other words, the more actionable rather than academic this workshop could be, the better.

And I just have to say, that was the MOST depressing story ever!