Edward Ardeneaux and Rebecca Quoss-Moore just finished their year of working as Fulbright Teaching Fellows with the English Department’s Program in Rhetoric and Composition. Before they headed off to start the next stage of their careers, we checked in with them to see how their post-doc experiences have been so far. (Note that, as of this year, the Fulbright Teaching Fellowship program with the PRC has been discontinued as an employment opportunity for our recent doctoral graduates.)

When you were applying to be a Fulbright Teaching Fellow a year ago, what were your professional goals at that time?

E.:    My professional goals were to complete my dissertation and a book chapter (last summer), secure a position for a year, and make plans for future publication. The Fulbright Teaching Fellowship has allowed me to keep working on academic work, though as a teaching-focused fellowship, it does not leave much time for or put a focus on scholarship (as most post-docs do).

R.:    I was–and still am–seeking a tenure-track position as my ultimate professional goal, but I was already anticipating some shorter-term work between the degree and the long-term job.

Quoss-Moore Teaching Introduction to Shakespeare

What courses have you been allowed to teach over the past year? In that time, have you been able to take advantage of any other opportunities for professionalization (offered by the department) besides teaching?

E.:    I’ve taught Comp II, World Lit II, and Early American Short Fiction (a 4000-level course for English majors). The literature teaching opportunities have been helpful in expanding my knowledge of curriculum development. Unfortunately, I have not been able to take advantage of many opportunities for professionalization through the department, mostly because they took place at the same times I was teaching. I think, if the post-doc gets revived, that a more focused component should be such engagement.

R.:     In addition to Composition I and II, I taught the department’s 4000-level Introduction to Shakespeare course. That class has been a delight, from first design to final paper.

While mentoring the first-year graduate assistants is not, exactly, teaching, that experience may have been the most valuable. That mentor position not only gave me experience working with graduate students, it also gave me new perspectives on my own methods in composition classes.

Ardeneaux Mentoring First-Year Graduate TAs

How has the position of teaching fellow been different from your past role as a doctoral student?

E:     In short, my focus has been on teaching. With more students and more physical hours in the classroom, less focus has gone into scholarship. Of course, I needed a break after the dissertation, so a year of focusing on teaching instead of scholarship has been nice, though at the end of my time here a return to scholarship is my next step.

R:      One additional benefit to this position is that it opens up all of the University-level faculty training. I’ve attended several of the new faculty lunches and Cordes Chair events. There are just different resources available to faculty, and those resources are sometimes more useful than some of the University’s graduate resources (which are only sometimes aimed at graduate students who are teaching and rarely at those who have been teaching for seven years).

The mentoring experience definitely builds on some of the advice I would have already been able to offer in my last years as a graduate student, but it’s also a fundamentally different position. There’s a difference in the way I present my authority and position in the classroom, too.

I feel like I’ve learned a great deal about administration and department organization through the faculty meetings; my relationship to the department itself has changed.

Ardeneaux Asking a Question at This Year’s GSE Conference

What do you consider to be 2-3 of the main benefits of securing a post-doctoral fellowship right after graduation? How will this experience help you in the future, working in either academic (tenure-track) or even nonacademic positions?

E.: The first benefit is having a job, a paycheck, and some stability. Second, depending on the kind of postdoc, the focus on teaching or research can either extend graduate student life a half-step or offer a break, especially after completing a dissertation. Also, more experience helps, especially in the current market. A post-doc, finally, can help with making the final decision about which career path to take: academic, alt-ac, or post-ac.

R:   I think it’s more and more normal for job-seekers to hold a few shorter-term positions right out of graduate school. My sense, from conversations at conferences, etc., is that some kind of “extra” experience is becoming more and more desirable.

To that end, this position gave me a chance to teach more advanced courses than I had as a graduate assistant, as well as acquire really valuable experience mentoring new graduate students. Further, two of my articles went from accepted to published during this year, letting me get more established in my field as I continue my work and my job searching.

And finally, while I was lucky enough to manage fairly well as a graduate assistant, having benefits and an actual paycheck has made a big difference in the amount of mental energy I can spend on research and on my job search.

Quoss-Moore Mentoring First-Year Graduate TAs