Mind the Gap: Transitioning from Doctoral Graduates to Early Career Faculty

Abstract

Aim/Purpose: Graduate programs aim to prepare students for future professional roles, yet doctoral graduates often earn faculty positions at institutions that differ from those in which they were socialized. Navigating this “preparation gap” can produce feelings of uncertainty, tension, and, ultimately, dissonance. This collaborative autoethnographic study explores the gap as it was experienced by two early career faculty in a U.S. context. Background: The landscape of academia is rapidly changing, meaning graduate programs cannot prepare each graduate student for every potential professional role offered to them. Therefore, as doctoral graduates emerge from their respective graduate programs, an inevitable gap in preparation exists. This gap in preparation mirrors a gap in the graduate socialization literature, which is limited in describing how early career faculty are socialized into their first positions. Methodology: The paper discusses a year-long collaborative autoethnographic study conducted by two tenure-track early career faculty in Education & Arts fields at universities in the U.S. The study employs Clancy’s (2010) theory of Perpetual Identity Constructing as a theoretical framework to examine the perceived dissonance produced during the transition from doctoral graduates to early career faculty. Contribution: This collaborative autoethnographic account of two early career, tenure-track faculty members’ transition from doctoral graduate to assistant professors expands the literature on doctoral socialization, academic identities, and the potential of qualitative modes of inquiry. Specifically, it recognizes that doctoral graduates experience dissonance and undergo identity construction during the first year. Findings: Our findings revealed three categories repeated in our collaborative autoethnographic data that potentially serve as a window to illuminate the complexity of the dissonance across the gap: support, connection, and control. Each category includes varying levels of dissonance with the self, department, institution, and fields of which we were part. Using Perpetual Identity Constructing theory, each category was examined through the three-stages of academic identity construction. Recommendations for Practitioners: The study has implications for practitioners, specifically those who help to prepare doctoral students for positions at teaching-intensive universities. We recommend doctoral granting institutions expand formal and informal socialization programming to enhance students’ awareness and preparation for the contexts and tensions they may encounter. Recommendation for Researchers: Additional fine-grained studies, like ours, are warranted to further illuminate the complex interaction between the gap in socialization and the academic identity construction process as early career faculty. Impact on Society: Awareness that deconstruction and reconstruction of identity continues beyond doctoral socialization could better prepare future faculty for the perpetual identity work across a career; it has the potential to produce better adjusted early career faculty who improve student outcomes and conduct research that impacts society. Future Research: Based on the findings of this study, future areas of research should further investigate the experiences of early career faculty, in particular their socialization experiences during the transition from candidacy to first career positions.

Rhetorical Questions and Ruminations

“…As new doctoral graduates, we felt established as scholars, yet we needed to prove ourselves again in our new contexts. We were prepared to learn a new context and adapt to the workplace norms, but we were not prepared for the emotional and professional work associated with co-constructing our academic identities in these new spaces (McCormick & Willcox, 2019). This laborious process led to a growing sense of depersonalization.…”

“…In a previous collaborative autoethnographic study, we explored the presence of conflict, or what we termed dissonance, in our transition from doctoral student to early career faculty at comprehensive, teaching institutions in the United States (McCormick & Willcox, 2019). Due to the rapidly changing landscape of academia (Helm et al, 2012;Jaschik, 2016), doctoral students cannot be prepared for every professional position offered to them, which indicates a gap in preparation.…”

International Students who Became U.S. Counseling Psychology Faculty Members: A Collaborative Autoethnography

“…Although the literature on international students who became counseling psychology faculty is limited in the number of publications and scope of analysis, there is significant literature on the paths to, and the experiences in academia of individuals from groups who are underrepresented among tenured faculty, including women (e.g., Basow, 2018; Niemann et al, 2020), first-generation individuals, and some U.S. ethnic minorities (e.g., Espino et al, 2010; Gay, 2004; Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 2008; McCormick & Wilcox, 2020; Turner et al, 2011). This literature highlights the shared and unique challenges these individuals experience, based on the specific dimensions (e.g., sex, ethnicity, culture, social class) of their underrepresentation in academia, and the social meanings and implications of those dimensions in terms of being a professor.…”