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Monday, August 27, 2001
Contact: Peter Bailley
news@knox.edu
309-341-7715
Even though they have twenty years of educational experience under their belts, new college professors often find the beginning of their academic careers as stressful as the first day of school when they were students.
Now, thanks to a recently published book by Knox College professor Penny Gold and colleagues at the University of Chicago and the University of Munich, new college professors get help calming their first-job jitters, and students interested in working in higher education gain 300 pages of sage career advice.
The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career: A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School Through Tenure "is the single best guide to academe I have ever read," writes Peter Coclanis of the University of North Carolina in an advance review. Gold and her co-authors — John A. Goldsmith and John Komlos — "are knowledgeable, savvy, and successful academic guides," writes economist Bernard Saffran in an advance review.
Experts say that such a book is sorely needed. "Many students contemplating an academic career have little idea of how it works as a profession," writes Saffran, a faculty member at Swarthmore College.
"Being a professor is very different from being a student, but you don't know that until you get there," Gold says. "You're in an environment that you think is going to be familiar, and it's not. The job is so different from your training, and there aren't a lot of how-to books."
Gold is professor of history and chair of the History Department and of the Gender and Women's Studies Program at Knox (Photo at right). Goldsmith is Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Komlos is professor of economics and chair of the Institute of Economic History at the University of Munich.
Download 300 dpi photo of Penny Gold
"Most college professors are trained at large research universities, but most college professors do not work at that kind of institution," Gold says. "Research is an important component of teaching at Knox, but you don't spend 90% of your time on research, and your training has not prepared you for that."
The book covers deciding on an academic career, choosing a graduate school, succeeding in graduate studies, landing an academic job, and managing the early stages of a career as a college or university professor. It is written as an informal conversation between three colleagues who take turns discussing the topic at hand — each comment is labeled with its particular author.
"Our voices are distinct from each other and not always in agreement," Gold says. "We did not try to smooth out the disharmonies because they are, in fact, illustrative of the differences of opinion you will find in the academy. It's always a good idea to seek advice from more than one person, and here you have three of us conveniently in one package."
The authors will conduct a speaking tour this fall to discuss the book at Stanford University, University of California- Berkeley, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University.
The book began several years ago as separate projects by Goldsmith and Komlos, who were brought together by Geoff Huck, an editor at The University of Chicago Press. Gold was invited to join the team after Huck saw an essay about academic careers that she wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Gold is also editor of Success/Survival Guide for Knox College Faculty, a printed and on-line publication designed specifically for new faculty at Knox.
Related Pages
Book review in the Chronicle of Higher Education
Chapter-length excerpt from the University of Chicago Press
Penny Gold Faculty Profile
The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career (and other books by Penny Gold) - Amazon.com
Founded in 1837, Knox is an independent, four-year, liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with 1,220 students from 47 states and 41 nations. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.
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