I need some help with academia/university structure

I can answer only one of your questions based on years of involvement in the university science/medical research world. It would absolutely make sense for him to be teaching and doing research. He would also be spending a great deal of time writing papers for journals in his field and applying for grants to support his research.

Beyond that, he'll be involved in his faculty council and whatever sub-comittees he gets invited to serve on--because he could hardly be considered for tenure without his showing that he's making a meaningful contribution to the institution.

Then there's the quasi-manditory social smoozing, but that's another story...

Dragonwriter said:

Hi all,

I'm working on a new book in my urban fantasy series--sort of an "origin story" that covers my MC's move from England to the USA. He's a college professor who teaches Occult Studies, and secretly a powerful mage. He's considered kind of a "rock star" in his field, despite his relative youth (in this story he's 29), due to both his charismatic teaching style and the fact that, since he's a mage, he can encounter things and write papers about them that most people would never see. In the previous books, I've glossed over his University life (he's at Stanford) because it's only tangentially related to the story, but for this one, his adventures dealing with his new job are part of the plot. Problem is, my university experience is a bachelor's degree more than 25 years ago at a state school. I know next to nothing about the ins and outs of academia.

So, can anyone give me some tips and hints? Specific things I'd like to know are:

- At 29, what's the highest level my MC should have expected to achieve? From internet research, I'm thinking that there's no way he could be a full professor even as a prodigy. (Don't worry about what he'd be in England--the story takes place in the US). Would it be realistic for him to be an associate professor at this stage, and then I can work toward him making full professor as the series progresses?

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At 29 it would be suprising if he were anything except and Assistant Professor. Even Associates have to have some time in. It is possible that he would be an Associate, but he would have had to get his Ph.D. very quickly and gotten a position as and Assistant immediately, or even before getting the doctorate.

- How does a small department work? The way I have my fictional Occult Studies department set up, it's only got three professors (including my MC) and it's chronically underfunded. I'm assuming it would be included under a larger department (like maybe Cultural Anthropology) and would be a specialization of a degree. Is this believable?

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I would think that the department would be in the College of Arts & Science, rather than being associated with social sciences. There are small departments in some universities. Sometimes there is only one full time faculty member, and people from other departments teach most of the courses. But there are other ways to run small programs, so it could be in the Anthropology Department, if it studied the Occult, rather than taught the occult.

- What kind of structure does an academic department have? Would this small 3-person department have its own head, or again would the head be someone in the larger umbrella department? Would my MC have any administrative responsibilities?

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Every department and program has its own head person of some sort. A three person department wouldn't need much structure. There would be the chair, a secretary, and the faculty.

- How many courses would my MC be likely to have to teach during a given week?

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As many or as few as you want. Two or three courses is a typical load, and office hours are required, and in such a small department there would be committee meetings, which would require all three to meet..

- How do graduate students and TAs fit in? Would my MC likely have a dedicated grad student (or more than one) to help him out?

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TA's are assigned as needed. If he has three classes that have twenty-five students each, then he won't have any TA's. If there are labs, then there probably would be someone who oversaw the equipment. In so small a department there might be a grad student who would be a general assistant, and there might be a work-study person helping in the office.

- Would it make sense for him to be teaching students and doing research, or are those usually separate tracks?

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That would be expected. "Publish or perish. All faculty are expected to have their particular specialty in which they publish in professional journals as often as possible.

If you want underfunded, I'd go with another university besides Stanford, which is one of the richest in the U.S. (endowment of over 18 billion). Not that any department probably thinks they're funded enough, but a state university would be more believable.

Stanford also runs on a different schedule than most American universities, with quarters instead of semesters, so make sure you do your research on the school year.

On full professor age:

In 1993, [Noam Elkies] was made a full, tenured professor at the age of 26. This made him the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard...

Charles Fefferman achieved a full professorship at the University of Chicago at the age of 22. This made him the youngest full professor ever appointed in the United States.

Alia Sabur is [was?] the world's youngest professor. Indeed, New York-born Sabur was three days short of her 19th birthday in February [2008] when she was offered a professorship in the department of advanced technology fusion at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. [http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20080515155514179]

I did not read the other answers, this is just my take as someone who did go to teach in the US university system after getting a PhD elsewhere.

- In the US all lecturers are called professors. The professor title is not special. All the same I think he is likely to be an associate professor (which is in the US an associate lecturer, not tenured) rather than full unless you can come up with an actual rock star event that would make him able to negotiate for more. Like winning a major scholarship.
- If he is in a small and not prestigious department this is realistic but inconsistent with his "rock star" academic status unless he actually wanted to kill his career for some reason. To continue his great career he would want a department with standing and funding, and the ability to get more funding, and a healthy post-graduate program (so he can get them to make peer-reviewed research for him while he works on his book).
It would be within whatever parent discipline you want to give it. It would be more independent if it was endowed in some way, such as an endowed chair.
- The would be a head of department and over them a head of school and over them a dean. You guy would have to administer any courses he taught, any research group he headed, and graduate students he supervised, and probably other assigned tasks. If he is the rock star hire they probably have him as head of department unless: politics. That comes with huge piles of administration, budgets, meetings.
- If his status is from teaching he is basically 100% teaching. Except you don't get any status from teaching. If he has a research program he is probably 50/50. In reality that means you teach daily and teaching duties take up 75% of your time. Then you try and make the research happen in between and on your "free" time.
- Graduate students are not there to help you out unless you are choosing to exploit them. They are there to do their own research which you supervise. Because the professor is always busy teaching and doing administration, he farmed out the research he wants to do to the students to take on as their project. The then guides them in that process. TAs are there to help you teach, just the teaching part. They do light admin, organize labs, do marking etc. But giving them core responsibilities is a huge mistake as when things go wrong the prof is the one whose ass (an tenure) is on the line.
- Universities are meant to be the place where research informs teaching. Tenured faculty in a good university will be doing both. Associates may only be teaching but their career at that point is on a bad track because they won't be getting published and so won't be getting tenure.
IMHO unless this guy won a Rhodes scholarship or published a best seller he is probably only a rock star in his own very marginal discipline. If he is a rock star at overall discipline level or real world level he will probably be looking for a better post than what you seem to be describing?

p.s. I wrote a erotic romance novella about a non-rock star lecturer dealing with a shadow university, real university and paranormal happenings. Given what a difficult job pre-tenure academia is, in my take on this scenario he gradually destroyed his career and almost got his TA killed. But then that is more my angle on most things.

If you want this guy to get real world success IMHO give him a good ivy league PhD, friends in high places and at least one superstar achievement to make him a bit bullet proof for when things that go bump in the night cause him to do something generally considered extremely bad indeed (like not turning up for a lecture, having an inappropriately close relationship with grads/TAs, or making claims generally considered crazy like that any of these spooky things are real).

Conceivable to be a full prof at 29, but those examples are going to be vanishingly few. Also, teachers aren't likely to be noticed by big schools like Stanford, but researchers might. Has he brought in some megabucks through high-profile grants? Has his work caught the attention of everyone, including the press?

Most of the time, a researcher will have anywhere from one to three post-doctoral appointments (one to two years each) before getting on as faculty, especially at larger universities (At least in natural sciences, like me. Humanities and other fields might be different).

Your Occult Studies Department is unlikely to be a department, and would more probably be a specialization or an interdepartmental major. I comajored in Toxicology for my MS and PhD, which at my university was not a department: all the profs were housed in different departments (Vet Med, Animal Science, Chemistry, Environmental Science, etc). I also first had to be accepted into a department, then get accepted by the interdepartmental major. Not all people in Toxicology comajored, but many did.

But, if you make Occult Studies as a major or specialization rather than a department, you could make it totally dependent on grant funding, and make them as poor as you want them to be.

I think the other posters covered most of what I would say.

Dragonwriter said:

Interesting! So if my MC was a genuine prodigy in his field (which he is), it sounds like it's even conceivable that he could be a full prof by 29. I don't want him to be, though, because I want him to have room to grow as the series progresses. Associate prof is fine for now.

Thanks!

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You would have to explain how his achievements in any way compare to those of the existing prodigies. I have trouble conceiving it. I thin associate prof is possible as a stretch if you give him a major achievement to merit it.

Right now my issue is what makes this guy a rock star, because even the most gifted teachers in the academic system are treated pretty much like crap unless they have some other source of prestige. Day-to-day teaching is one of the least respected aspects of what professors do. That is why is they kill each other to get funding and students to do research to get published.

Dragonwriter said:

Hmm...I'll have to think about this, because as I said, I really want him to be a rock star--otherwise Stanford wouldn't have recruited him out of the small school in England he was teaching at. If he devoted all his time to study from the time he was 18 (he's got enough money he didn't need to work--he still doesn't. He teaches because loves to) would it be plausible that he could be an associate professor?

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Make him an Associate professor, if you want. If he's a "rockstar", then maybe they recruited as such. For that matter, if he's that great, then they could have made him a full professor as part of the deal.

Would your thought change if I told you that he's not teaching how to do magic, but teaching about magic? Real magic is secret and known only to a relatively small number of people. What he's teaching is the history of magic, the way it's perceived in popular culture, the different kinds of rituals performed by different cultures over time, etc.

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Yes, that's what I wrote. Just think of Conjure Wife.

So are you saying that if there are three professors in the department, one would be chair, one secretary, and the other one would be the "membership"? Or would the head be someone different, like an administrative-type person?

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No, I am saying that all of the structure in a department that small would be the chairman and the department's secretary, as in the person who files, contacts people, reminds them , etc. The three faculty members would have to make up a number of different committees also.

Ah, good. So it sounds like he would have a reasonable amount of free time to pursue his magical activities (many of which count as "research") outside of teaching and administrivia.

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It is a common misunderstanding that university faculty have lots of free time. His office hours would have to be more than the amount of class time, and he would have to serve on at least one committee, and in such a small department he might have to spend quite a lot of time on committees. Between meetings he would have to do his research. If he played things right, then he probably could have a full day every week for that in addition to stray minutes here and there.

There wouldn't be any lab. I'm looking for another character to insert into the story, since my MC is alone a lot of the time (new to the country, new to the job, hasn't really made any friends yet). A grad student to talk to would be a good thing.

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Or he might get along well with another department member, or the secretary might be a beautiful twenty-eight year old college dropout who was looking for a professor who wanted company.

Awesome, thanks! I want to set him up as publishing papers that involve research that "mundanes" would have a very difficult time doing, while still hiding his status as a true mage.

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That's what faculty at Miskatonic do all the time.

Yeah, as for free time... not so much. I left academia so I could have a 9-5 job and not have to work so hard and also to have less stress. As an associate professor I worked dawn to dusk six days a week.

Even just the scheduled hours (lectures, meetings, scheduled office hours to speak to undergraduate students) will typically be 4-5 loosely scattered hours per day on average and they amount to much less than half of the actual job--in my case about a third.

I still suggest giving a specific reason why people in his field are impressed by this guy. Academics are typically only impressed by certain things, mainly research and research-based publications, specifically discovering something really new and cool or a new and cool appraoch to an old problem that lead to a paradigm shift.

At 29, what's the highest level my MC should have expected to achieve? From internet research, I'm thinking that there's no way he could be a full professor even as a prodigy. (Don't worry about what he'd be in England--the story takes place in the US). Would it be realistic for him to be an associate professor at this stage, and then I can work toward him making full professor as the series progresses?

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At 29, he could be a full-time professor. He might even be tenured. The prodigy factor would come into play AND his reputation/publication record.

When I think prodigy, I think maybe:

Age 16 - began BA. Finished in 3 years.
Age 19 - began MA. Finished in 2 years.
Age 21 - began PHD. Finished in 4 years.
Age 25 - accepted post-doc. Took that for 2 years.
Age 27 - accepted full-time position at university. (Not tenure, but perhaps tenure track)

Consider that in order to get a full time faculty position, he will have had to been published and given conference presentations. (Let's say 5-6 publications and 8-10 conferences.) Much of his publication work could come from master's thesis and dissertation, maybe the post doc and other research.

It depends on if he had the stamina to do the above without much of a break. If he's going abroad to conduct anthropological studies, then expand the above timeline. That will suck time away being "in the field."

How does a small department work? The way I have my fictional Occult Studies department set up, it's only got three professors (including my MC) and it's chronically underfunded. I'm assuming it would be included under a larger department (like maybe Cultural Anthropology) and would be a specialization of a degree. Is this believable?

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I think it would be under another department. Cultural anthropology seems a good fit. Depends on the university, I guess. Could be religious studies, humanities (in general), sociology. It might even be a "mini department" that gets shifted around a lot. "Well, anthropology doesn't want them anymore, send them to religious studies where they'll never see funding anyway..." haha.

Insofar as "how a small department works," can you elaborate on that question? In what ways?

What kind of structure does an academic department have? Would this small 3-person department have its own head, or again would the head be someone in the larger umbrella department? Would my MC have any administrative responsibilities?

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I'd think the department "head" would be the MAJOR program head. Let me show you how it works at our university English department:

THE DEAN OF ENGLISH - big kahuna.
THE DIRECTOR OF POETRY - a position that rotates. One year, Smith gets it. One year, Jones gets it, One year, Anderson gets it. Then it goes back to Smith.
THE DIRECTOR OF FICTION - same as poetry above. Rotating between 2-3 faculty.
THE DIRECTOR OF RHETORIC/COMP - Same as poetry
THE DIRECTOR OF LITERATURE - Same as poetry
THE DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH LEARNING - (small sub-group. Has one "Director" that pretty much stays the same)

These "Directors" answer to the DEAN. The directors are in charge of administrative tasks for the faculty in THEIR sub-section. Poetry guy sees that Smith, Jones and Anderson each get the same number of incoming advisees. They might look at budget stuff (though usually, the whole department has one accountant for that). They will have some hiring power. They will still teach courses, but may only teach one class as opposed to two. Etc. Etc.

In my English department, the directors have butt heads with the dean in the past. Usually over budget cuts and whatnot. Or administrative task delegation.

*Note: There was often drama or "politicking" among different sub-departments/directors. During my stay, the director of poetry and the director of fiction did NOT get along well. Very weird intrigue, power-play crap happening.

How many courses would my MC be likely to have to teach during a given week?

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Full time, non-tenure? Probably 4-5 (will have board/committee/advisee work)
Full time, tenure? Maybe 2 (but are expected to publish and speak at conventions and sit on MA/PHD committees, take on advisees, sit on boards and whatnot.)
Director? 1 class

(This is just my university)

How do graduate students and TAs fit in? Would my MC likely have a dedicated grad student (or more than one) to help him out?

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At my university, SOME Master's students are offered GTAs. They get their school and health insurance paid for plus $2000/month stipend. They teach no more than 2 classes.

Some are not offered GTAs, but might be a TA. This means they teach for credit (not for pay). I was a TA for two classes. For one, the instructor asked me to TA for her. For another class, I approached the instructor and said, "I really want to TA for this class, because I want to learn from you how to teach." And he accepted.

Some universities will consider TAs and GTAs the same.

Some universities will require a TA or GTA to co-teach with a full-time professor (to gain experience).

As a GTA, I took on a full class. They give you a pretty streamlined course curriculum to follow. You lecture and grade papers. In English, this was freshman comp, sometimes intro to literature or beginning creative writing.

As a TA for ONE class, the professor would lecture Monday and Wednesday. I would do something called a "recitation" on Friday with the students--which included activities, writing exercises and whatnot.

As a TA for ANOTHER class, I essentially took half the classroom as my own. It was a workshop class and there were 24 students. The teacher took 12 and I took 12 and we would workshop fiction stories. So, that was far more responsibility.

As for undergrad/grad students helping a teacher out--very likely. Sometimes informally, sometimes formally. Sometimes for credit or pay, sometimes not. A go-getter student will offer to help and network because it's smart. Or because he/she loves the subject matter and wants to soak up knowledge like a sponge.

Would it make sense for him to be teaching students and doing research, or are those usually separate tracks?

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Both, yes. I would say he's expected to do both by the department, which can be a bit overwhelming to say the least.

My adviser, for example, teachers two classes (she is tenure), and is running TWO research studies. I am not teaching this year, but am a GRA (Graduate Research Assistant). So, I fulfill my GRA hours by helping her with research and writing and whatnot.

If this is more of a SCIENCE department, you'll likely have some GRAs and GTAs. You might even have a hybrid. A student who teaches one class (GTA) and then does a half-time GRA position. (Usually comes out to 20 hours/week)

If this is more the scholarly, reading, theory type classes with no big research agendas, then it might be more GTA-centric. UNLESS the professor gets some kind of grant money or funding for research. Then, he might take on some GRAs if the funding covers that.

Other universities will differ on all of these! But, I still hope this was helpful.

Unimportant said:

If he got his degrees in England and was 'normal' (ie very good in his field and relatively lucky), I would expect:
Bachelors with honours age 18 - 22
Masters age 22 - 24
PhD age 24 - 28
Postdoc age 28 - 31
Then off to the US for an Assistant Professor position at age 31. If all goes well for him, he could hope to get promoted to Associate Professor within 7 years.

If he got his degrees in England and was a genius, the fastest I could imagine him going would be:
Started university at 17, finished four year bachelors with honours at 20 (
Went straight into a PhD at 20, finished at 23 (with publications that took the world by storm)
Off to the US for an Assistant Professor position at age 23
Got massive amounts of funding and found the equivalent of the cure for cancer by age 27
Got promoted to Associate Professor by age 28

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Many UK BAs are still 3 years and you don't need a Masters to go straight to PhD if you get a good enough grade BA. It is possible to do enough original work to write up your PhD thesis in 2 years though most funding is for 3. If he got headhunted straight out of his PhD then he could be a lecturer in the US by 23/4

The Cambridge course on Archeology and Anthropology, for example, is 3 years
http://www.archanth.cam.ac.uk/ProspectiveStudents/arch-anth-course.html

Yes you can do a 3 year bachelors, but in most cases would still need an honors year to get into a PhD which will take about 4 years. So Unless something odd happens, coming out the other end about 26.

veinglory said:

Yes you can do a 3 year bachelors, but in most cases would still need an honors year to get into a PhD which will take about 4 years. So Unless something odd happens, coming out the other end about 26.

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It may be a difference in understanding, but my UK 3 year degree is an honours degree, but there I'd expect to complete a Masters degree on top of the bachelors degree before doing a PhD.

Dragonwriter said:

I thought of another question: since my book deals with my MC starting his new position, what sort of orientation or other info would he be likely to get? Would there be a formal orientation with other new faculty, or would someone just take him around and introduce him to the fellow faculty in his department, show him where his office is, etc.?

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https://facultydevelopment.stanford.edu/professional-development/new-faculty-orientation
There is additional related material on the website.

I assume there would be quite a lot of paperwork involved too, especially since he's coming from the UK. He ended up accepting the job rather suddenly (they had been pursuing him for a while but hired someone else when he turned them down, but the other hire became seriously ill and had to drop out, and personal matters on my MC's part made him accept the job on very short notice). I'm thinking they might be trying him out as a visiting professor for a year, with a promise to re-evaluate his status if mutually desirable.

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If he's a rockstar, then they probably will put him in tenure track right off. But anything is possible.

Cath said:

It may be a difference in understanding, but my UK 3 year degree is an honours degree, but there I'd expect to complete a Masters degree on top of the bachelors degree before doing a PhD.

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I mean a one year honors program, not a degree "with honors". An honors year is essentially a compressed masters without research. I also did the full masters but in the social sciences at least doing only an honors years is another option.