Fall 2014 PFF Course

The fall 2014 PFF course has been a great experience for me and I am really glad that I enrolled myself in the program. The PFF sessions has been highly informative and it helped me in understanding the many facets and expectations set for a university faculty in the United States. In the early sessions of the PFF program, the complicated structure and organization of higher education in the United States was presented. I learned how the universities are classified based as per the basic classification provided in the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions for Higher Education. Being new to the US academic system, this session helped in identifying the pools of university relevant to me and my field of study. From the session I understood

This helped in expanding my views about academics as a whole and understand the issues related to teaching and research in higher education. I came to learn about the common problems for all those who want to have a career as a faculty of higher education. I came to know how networking with people in my field of study as well as out of my field is necessary to reach my research goals and how conversing with different people can help us to get new ideas and broaden the sphere of thinking. Interacting with a diverse group of researchers can motivate inter-disciplinary research. I am really inspired by all the speaker presentations in the PFF sessions and at the end of every session I felt I have something new to take with me that will help grow in my future career as faculty of higher education and research. The ideas and suggestions given by the speakers on strategies and techniques to improve academic productivity in research were highly inspiring. The speakers shared their personal experiences in overcoming the challenges in the different facets of their academic career and I could relate some of those in my field of study as

For the type-I university, the search committee is expecting candidates with outstanding research background with ability to attract research funding. On the other hand, for the type-II university, the search committee is expecting candidates who have a commitment to excellence in teaching both at undergraduate and graduate level. Although teaching excellence is required for both type-I and type-II universities, for type-I university stress is given to excellence in research activity. After reviewing the CVs of the recently hired Assistant Professors of the type-I universities, it can be concluded that all of them have high research activity in terms of peer reviewed journal publications and conference proceedings. The teaching experience of most of the recently hired Assistant Professor before faculty recruitment is not extensive in my field of study. The type-I university job description includes the ability to do research in multi-disciplinary fields and teach courses at both graduate and undergraduate