I am in my second year of my university job and one thing that has struck me over that time is how much of a university job graduate school does NOT prepare you for. Things like advising students, building schedules, recruitment, increasing enrollment, participating on committees, balancing workloads, there is a lot.
The other day I wrote a Twitter thread about how credentialing is one of these things you don't learn about in grad school. And while I think all of the things I mentioned above are important, and maybe I'll write about them later, I thought I'd spend some time talking about credentialing, because while the above things aren't taught in grad school I at least had some passing understanding they existed, or heard them mentioned. I never, not once, heard about credentialing.
So, what is credentialing?
Schools have to be accredited for their degrees to matter. The accreditation is done by regions, and involves a process usually every five years where schools prove how they're meeting certain standards. One part of this involves credentialing professors, ensuring that the professors are qualified to teach the classes they are teaching.
I always had the idea through grad school that if you were a medievalist or an early modernist or did 19th century American lit, those were the areas you taught in. I had some idea that was true of R1 universities, but that SLACs and community colleges and smaller schools that you did more, and there was more of an emphasis on teaching, but I didn't really understand how it worked.
The easiest way to get credentialed is to take 18 credits in an area. There are other ways, you can prove it through publishing or special certificates, but those can be tricky. Taking classes in the area is the easiest way, both for you to ensure it "counts" and for your department chair, credentialing committee to ensure there are no issues. At my school every semester you have to fill out and submit a Faculty Transcript Form that lists the classes you're teaching and then shows the "supporting graduate course" which must be 18 hours.
So for example, I have a PhD in English literature and most of my classes were in medieval and early modern English literature. This means, generally, I am credentialed to teach literature classes regardless of the specific topic, although obviously I teach the Brit Lit I survey, and the Shakespeare classes and not the American Novel because that's not my area. I generally use the following classes on my credentialing form:
- ENGL 551 Uppity Medieval Women
- LING 590 Old Norse Language and Literature
- ENGL 650 Anglo-Saxon
- ENGL 698 Independent Study: Old English
- ENGL 552 Renaissance
- ENGL 550 Middle English
- ENGL 551 Uppity Medieval Women
- ENGL 553 17th Century Literature
- ENGL 552 Renaissance Literature
- ENGL 660 19th Century American Gothic
- ENGL 551 Viking Women
- ENGL 550 Middle English heroes, saints, and lovers
It's clear from this listing what my qualifications are. I took lots of classes in poetry, and Southwest Film and Lit, and other topics, but they're not proof for the classes I teach, so I don't list them. Also, for my lit classes, I tend to only list my PhD coursework even though my MA is in English literature and my MS Ed was in Secondary Education, English, and I had English classes I could list. This is not a rule I'm following, it just seemed to make more sense.
But half of my schedule every semester, sometimes more, is GE classes. Which means I could be teaching Composition I and II, World Literature I but not generally II because that's out of my area of expertise. For World Literature, again, I can use my credits in literature classes to qualify me. But the Composition courses are a bit different. Under my form I list these classes:
- ENGL 537 Teaching Composition
- ENGL 7005 Writing Fiction
- EDD 602 Urban Education
- EDS 692 Advanced English
- EDE 650 Advanced Study in Reading
- ENGL 686 Teaching of Writing
- EDS 654 Reading in Content Areas
- ENGL 500 Introduction to professional study of English
- ENGL 511 Job seekers workshop
The titles of the courses matter because they signal the area of expertise. This is very important for schools and programs to consider. If the course title isn't clear, we go to the course descriptions, so them being detailed enough also matters. Some programs' course descriptions are not long or detailed enough to help with this, so that can be an issue. Likewise, the prefix matters. More interdisciplinary programs can be problematic. If you're hired for an English job, but your program maybe was labelled humanties (HUM) or interdisciplinary (IDS) or part of a philosophy department (PHIL) it's hard to use the courses to prove credentialing. I've noticed too with international applicates and degrees this may be more of an issue so you may need to do more work or explaining.
This is where your CV and cover letter can help. When you apply for a job the first thing the committee may look at is your transcripts to see if they can credential you for the job. It's an awful situation to be lucky enough to get a hire, hire them, then realize once they are there that there are credentialing issues. Then the professor either can't teach what they were hired for or has to take more classes in order to be credentialed, it's not a good situation, and in smaller schools, where everyone does more and there's less overlap, I imagine it's a much bigger issue than maybe it is at larger R1 schools. So let's say you're applying for an English job, a generalist position at a teaching focused school. First, for the love of all that is holy, please show some awareness of where you are applying and do NOT spend two huge paragraphs talking about your dissertation, and do NOT make that your first paragraph. Going on and on about your research shows a lack of awareness of your audience, and the place you supposedly researched to apply to. Instead, if you're applying to a teaching focused institution put your teaching paragraph first, focus on what students get out of your class. If you're hired for a generalist position then I would use your letter to emphasize the GE classes you taught or TAed. Likewise on your CV, same thing. Put your teaching first, list ALL the classes you've taught, especially if they fill a gap in your coursework for the job you're applying for.
For example, if you're a modernist for American literature and that's what your coursework is in you can be credentialed to teach American Lit. But if your CV lists that you TAed Composition for three years that helps the hiring committee see you can teach those classes, and at an institution where GE is half of what you'll be doing, that matters. A lot. If in addition to that you talk about in your cover letter how you engage students, work in GE classes, cool projects, that shows an awareness of where you're applying and means a lot.
If on the other hand you're a modernist for American literature and your cover letter is two huge paragraphs about your dissertation, a small paragraph about teaching graduate students (which the place you're applying to doesn't have) and no emphasis on teaching GE classes or surveys, and then your CV lists no teaching experience, then you're probably not a great fit for a generalist English position at a teaching focused school.
I know the job market in higher education has been a crap shoot for a long time. It is luck and a Magic 8 Ball as much as anything else. The global pandemic and economic recession has only made all of this worse for a lot/most fields. I would qualify all of the above as advice on how to improve the elusive "fit" but it's all still a crap shoot. Having been on a couple, few search committees at this point, I will say that it's true that the committee is looking for people to work with the next twenty, thirty years. So fit to job and department is important, but so is fit in that sense. You don't always get to make a decision based on that, but if you get a hire, it can be a real chance to build the department, support students, change a culture, do cool things.
Because so many PhD students are mentored by people who were last on the market years or even decades ago, even with all the advice out there, these tips for refining and tailoring your materials may not be something students get. Too many predatory folks complain about higher ed, then monetize people's pain and trauma selling academic snake oil. That's unethical, but honestly, just systematic of larger issues in higher ed. I'm not trying to solve all that, although in the past I've offered advice based on my experience with three years on the market, and eventually getting a great tenure track job at a small liberal arts HBCU.
I do think that if people are still in their programs, taking coursework, or maybe out but looking for ways to beef up resume for one more round on the job market, that keeping credentialing in mind can help. If you're a literature person making sure you have 18 credit hours in composition makes you more marketable. If you're a rhetoric and composition person having 18 credits hours in literature makes you a better "fit" than a rhet comp only person. Now, I'm speaking for smaller schools where the faculty does half GE, and tends to cover more things. I can't speak to other schools. But for a school like me, the more you can cover, the easier it is to credential you, the better it is.
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