In an increasingly tenuous academic job market, an applicant to a community college should heed this golden rule: Know the culture. And then tailor your application and interview to it.

While this advice rings sound for any job to which one might apply, it is especially crucial for community colleges, where the best candidates know how to apply their research to best serve – especially through teaching – the often diverse student body that attends these schools.

Michael Boecherer, Academic Chair and Professor of English, Suffolk County Community College

“Teaching is your primary function, followed by service, followed by research,” said Michael Boecherer (Stony Brook PhD ’07), Academic Chair and Professor of English at Suffolk County Community College, who shared his expertise at the event Community Colleges: Careers & Opportunities, held Feb. 24, 2021. Boecherer was joined by Meghan Fox (Stony Brook PhD ’14), Associate Professor of English and Director of Recruitment for the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Liberal Arts Option at LaGuardia Community College; and Stephen Pallas, an English PhD Candidate at Stony Brook University who also works as an adjunct. Pallas will soon begin a full-time marketing position with a startup company that specializes in using artificial intelligence for business solutions.

The flipped hierarchy of the community college career might surprise graduate students, who are often trained to prioritize research over other responsibilities. But that career does not necessitate abandoning research altogether. Fox said that, while her scholarship in modernism and queer studies feels tangential to her teaching, she nevertheless remains an active researcher.

For the community college professor, a central concern becomes how they might best draw from their research in the classroom. While they might not teach a class precisely on their specialty, these interests will likely resurface – for example, composition courses often provide instructors with a degree of flexibility. Community college instructors also often have the opportunity to teach a broad range of courses, and the panelists stressed that applicants should always demonstrate flexibility concerning what courses they are willing to teach.

Meghan Fox, Associate Professor of English, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

Advanced graduate certificates might bolster one’s teaching opportunities. Fox said her WGSS certificate allows her to teach women’s studies courses at LaGuardia, and Pallas said that his writing and rhetoric certificate likely helped him secure his adjunct work.

Adjuncting, according to the panelists, is often a necessary step toward securing a stable community college position. Pallas, who has been an adjunct since 2014, said that it was not too difficult to find part-time teaching; he added that, while adjunct work often gets a bad rap, his experience has been rewarding.

Graduate students might consider becoming adjuncts while still in pursuit of their degrees. It is also important for them to secure course evaluations from their professors as early in their graduate careers as possible. Those teaching asynchronous courses may obtain evaluations by giving their committee members appropriate Blackboard permissions.

Stephen Pallas, doctoral student in Stony Brook’s English Department

The panelists advised applicants and interviewees to demonstrate knowledge of the colleges where they seek employment. What is the school’s mission statement? What is the campus climate? Who are the students? What do the professors research and teach? How, if Boecherer were to hand you a course description in an interview (as he often does), would you propose to teach the class? The successful applicant will highlight their teaching and will avoid focusing the conversation on their research. They will also know how to frame the hoped-for position not as a stopping point on their way to an R1 institution, but as an end in itself.

Because the successful applicant will also know that, while the Academy reserves its highest esteem for R1 institutions, community colleges – which often host diverse students, many of whom attend such schools for the promise of upward mobility – might just be the rewarding academic culture they aspire to join.