Decoding the Academic Job Market

When professor jobs are scarce and most academic jobs are temporary, what do you do if you still want to work on a campus? Can you make the leap to admin? How do you make the leap?

Dr. Jacquelyn Ardam joins us to explain the hidden curriculum of the academic job market. She shares what helped her pivot roles from visiting professor to campus administrator, how research and writing are still a meaningful part of her life, and why she is happier now running a campus research center than she was in her previous jobs.

Our guest is: Dr. Jacquelyn Ardam, who is the Director of the Undergraduate Research Center for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at UCLA. She has founded several undergraduate research programs and co-directs UCLA’s Mellon Mays University Fellowship program. Jacquelyn holds a PhD in English from UCLA and is a specialist in modern and contemporary poetry. She has written about art, literature, culture, and higher education for peer-reviewed journals and public venues, and is the author of Avidly Reads Poetry.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

• Chasing Chickens: When Life After Higher Education Doesn't Go the Way You Planned
• Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education
• The American Association of University Professors
• Leaving Academia
• Learning from Rejection and Failure

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us here to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

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