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Diverse teaching experiences

• “Teaching at IUPUI provided contact with a more diverse student body (age, socio-economic, educational) than I had in my experience at IUB.”
• “FFTF was a great experience in teaching courses that I had not had the opportunity to teach in my department, with great mentorship from the faculty I worked with inside and outside of my department at the host institution.”
• “Designing my own courses was valuable, gave my increased confidence, and I have continued to use these skills throughout my career.”
• “Having had the experience of teaching non-traditional students is the part that has really stuck with me over the years. Also given the freedom to design my own service learning course that was connected to the community where I taught was an experience that I continue to draw on.”

Academic career exploration

• “My faculty mentor and other colleagues were *extremely* helpful. Some faculty members at IU were nice but they sometimes had no idea how smaller schools worked and thus did not provide the best suggestion for finding jobs in smaller schools.”
• “In general, FFTF acts as a first step into the life of a tenure-track professor; increased courseload, departmental expectations, continued research expectations. It is a tremendous window into the expectations of an assistant professor.”
• “I was put on committees, attended all meetings, essentially participated in all faculty responsibilities. These experiences were extremely helpful as I applied for future jobs. After my FFTF time, I had confidence and an understanding of what being faculty really entails.”

Career achievement

• “The opportunity to participate in faculty meetings and university governance gave me a huge edge when I was on the job market.”
• “When I interviewed for my current job, which is a regional comprehensive, I could make a convincing case that I understood and was ready for teaching. The experience also helped me feel comfortable with faculty as peers, which also boosted my confidence and helped make the case for my application.”
• “I was put on committees, attended all meetings, essentially participated in all faculty responsibilities. These experiences were extremely helpful as I applied for future jobs. After my FFTF time, I had confidence and an understanding of what being faculty really entails.”

I have accepted a tenure-track position as an assistant professor of elementary literacy education at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis for the fall. While they are a school that emphasizes research, they were also very interested in the varied experiences that the FFTF experience afforded me. The FFTF experience has helped me think through the notion of structuring my work life to balance and foster both my teaching and my research. I am moving into a position with a 3-3 teaching load, which no longer intimidates me due to my experience at IUPUC.

In the beginning of my FFTF experience, I thought I was in hell, but now I’m convinced that I will be an active, vibrant, productive, and happy academic (professor and researcher). I taught two courses per semester, managed a family, completed my dissertation, and wrote two articles chapters to be published in edited books.

What stands out the most about my host campus and particularly my host department is their genuine devotion to developing junior faculty as scholars and teacher. For all incoming FFTF’s, I would recommend that they take full advantage of every opportunity afforded them by their host campus, whether that be pedagogy workshops, attending the monthly faculty meetings, attending at least one college faculty meeting, working in their office on campus more than just a few days a week, observing faculty in the classroom, and asking faculty to observe them.

Even though the statistics for the number of applicants for a single position in German should make me feel hopeless, the fact that I was chosen for the FFTF because of my research area allows me to see the silver lining an otherwise very, very gray cloud. One of the most important factors for me was integrating myself into the academic community of the host campus. I actively collected all the different types of experiences that were offered to me.

During my year as a fellow, I went on the job market; and my FFTF experience certainly stood out on my cover letter. All of my phone interviews and campus interviews asked questions about my experiences, even though I was teaching courses that were not in my “field” of study. Nonetheless, the universities were extremely interested in my position as a fellow and were excited (by) the diversity of teaching experiences I was able to have during my time at IU. In the end, I accepted a position at a Tier One university; however, I will always miss many of the aspects of a regional campus.