From Field to Faculty: Lessons Learned

  My name is Doug Branch and I am currently an assistant professor at Union College in Barbourville, KY.  I am a certified athletic trainer with over 15 years of experience.  After the birth of my two children, I decided I wanted to be home more and have a more consistent schedule.  I felt moving to the academic side of athletic training would be a better move for me and my family.  In the past, I had done some adjunct teaching and really enjoyed the students and teaching them the trade I had done for over 10 years.  An opportunity presented itself to teach full-time and to be able to be at home with my wife and young family.

 I applied for the new position, interviewed, and was offered the position.  My wife and I were very excited because this was the beginning of a new chapter in our lives and gave me the freedom to be home at night and weekends.  I quickly learned that this position was going to be more difficult than expected.  The original plan was for me to work part-time for the college as an instructor and part-time for the local hospital.  This position swiftly turned into me working two full-time jobs and being pulled in two directions.  To make things even worse, the athletic training program was up for re-accreditation the following year and I was in charge of collecting paperwork for the programs portfolio.  I had no experience with this process but was told I would be guided through the processes with instructions on what needed to be done for accreditation.  In my opinion, I was not properly guided through this process.  The entire year was not a good experience.  I felt that I had no mentor in regards to my teaching and felt that I was told to “sink or swim.”  At the end of the year my contract was not renewed but was fortunate enough to go back to my old job.  

The reason I am telling this story is because I would like to give some recommendations to people who want to transition from the clinical field to an academic position.  I am currently in a position that I really enjoy and I am surrounded by people that want to help me become a better educator.  I have some great mentors and currently serve as a mentor for new faculty members.  I have included some recommendations for people who think they would like to transition setting.  I currently starting my second year of full-time teaching and have learned new teaching techniques that I have incorporated into my class.  I am in no way the best instructor on campus, but I believed that I have improved and strive to become better a better educator.

My first recommendation would be to request a mentor or see if the educational institution offers mentors for new faculty members.  It is not uncommon for new teachers at any level of education to feel isolated from their fellow faculty member.  Socialization and acclimatization to a new teaching environment should be encouraged by the mentoring process (Womack-Wynne et al., 2011).  Having a mentor will give the new faculty member a person to ask questions about professional culture of the school.  Mentors can benefit from this process as well and is believed the may experience professional and personal growth in the time they participated in mentor training and mentoring activities (Womack-Wynne et al., 2011).

Secondly, recommendation that I would have would be to use your “practice knowledge” in the classroom.  Use the knowledge that you have gained throughout your years of practice to your advantage.  The ability to relate information to their personal and professional lives enabled students to understand how they could retain and apply new information (Hill, 2014).  Students value a teacher with clinical experience and can provide current information in the classroom.  Students have said to me on many occasions that they learn from my clinical stories just as much as they learn from my lectures.

Have you ever had an academic position that did not turn out the way you thought it might?  How would you handle the situation different next time?

Doug Branch

References

Hill, Lilian H. (2014). Graduate Students' Perspectives on Effective Teaching. Adult Learning, 25(2), 57-65. doi: 10.1177/1045159514522433

Womack-Wynne, Carly, Dees, Elizabeth, Leech, Donald, LaPlant, James, Brockmeier, Lantry, & Gibson, Nicole. (2011). Teacher's Perceptions of the First-Year Experience and Mentoring. International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 6(4).