The Hidden Curriculum of the Academic Job Market: From First-Generation Student to First-Generation Professor

• In Event: First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service

Abstract

As a first-generation South Asian American faculty member I provide an overview of my journey to the professoriate. Through autoethnographic method I detail my experiences while on the academic job market, something I was unprepared for as a first-generation doctoral student and early-career faculty member. In particular, I pay close attention to the research centered on the experiences of first-generation graduate school students of color and the hidden curriculum of the academic job search and selection process.

The hidden curriculum consists of the norms and practices that are often found outside of the formal curriculum of schooling and is a prevalent theme in first-generation scholarship and literature (Jehangir, 2010). The hidden curriculum is embedded in the multiple steps of obtaining a faculty position including the job call, application, interview, offer, negotiation, and acceptance. These steps can vary by discipline and institutional type but what is not discussed in the literature are the unspoken customs, protocols, and rules along the way.
Through autoethnography I highlight the eight steps of the academic market and trace the steps through my own journey transitioning from school to career. Similar to ethnography and its focus on the study of experience, an autoethnography refers to research and writing about personal lived experiences through cultural analysis and personal narrative (Boylorn, & Orbe, 2016). I pay particular attention to how I locate myself in the first-generation faculty community as well as engage in self-reflection as I move forward in my academic career.
My autoethnographic narrative focuses on how I searched for tenure-track faculty positions at two different stages of my career, one as a doctoral student and another as an Assistant Professor. During this process I utilized other first-generation academics of color and my family’s community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2009) to aid in my decision process. I specifically highlight how as a first-generation academic and daughter of immigrants it was my mother’s advice that helped me choose my current position.

I conclude with direct recommendations that universities can engage in to expose the hidden curriculum of the academic job market and better prepare their first-generation graduate students of color for the selection and hiring process of becoming a faculty member. I also call for further autoethnographies to be included in the faculty and first-generation student of color literature to increase the transparency of the hidden curriculum and provide direct experiential narratives that illuminate the hiring process.

Author

• Dimpal Jain, California State University Northridge