Life at a Small Undergraduate Church-connected Liberal Arts College
By Charles D. Gielker
[Dr. Charles Gielker is now in his thirtieth year of teaching physics to young people at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. In the process of seeking a new faculty member for their department of physics, he developed the following document to share with prospective employees his personal view of what it is like to teach in a small Baptist-related liberal arts college. The statement so beautifully encapsulates the kind of profound sense of Christian calling, the high quality of Christian dedication, and the faithful pursuit of professional excellence that often characterizes our school teachers, private and public, that I secured his permission to share this brief piece with readers of Christian Ethics Today. Dr. Gielker and I first became friends as fellow members of the Immanuel Baptist Church in Nashville while he was earning his Ph.D. degree in Physics at Vanderbilt University. We salute him, and a host of others like him, for showing us all what Christian vocation is all about.]
Teaching and Courseload
You will be expected to teach three classes of 4-semester-hours` credit each semester. Generally, these will be three different courses, at different levels from first-year to senior, and will require three separate preparations.
There are no graduate assistants or TA`s. You will be responsible for all classroom activities, and for constructing, administering, grading, and reviewing three or four exams in each course each semester. You will also be responsible for lab sections in most courses, although an upper-division major student may be available to assist during labs.
Because class size is small (25 or less), you will be expected to learn the names of your students and in some cases provide for their special needs, e.g. learning disabilities, make-ups due to absences for official college activities, etc.
Ancillary Duties
After the first year, you will be assigned ten to fifteen student advisees. You will typically meet with them individually two or three times each semester to help them plan their course schedules and resolve problems.
Also after the first year, you will be expected to volunteer for service on various faculty committees, which may meet several times during each semester.
You will be expected to attend faculty meetings and forums, which occur approximately once each week.
To help assure a continuing supply of majors, you may be requested to assist in recruiting students, e.g. by writing letters to or calling prospective majors for your department.
Research and Professional
Department budgets are small and for "instructional purposes." Research expenditures must come from other sources, e.g. gifts designated by alumni or successful grant applications.
There can be a relatively high risk of professional isolation. In a small department (2 or 3 faculty) there are few colleagues to talk to. Professional meeting attendance is problematical: during the school year because of the need to provide for your classes while you are absent and, even in the summer (assuming you are not teaching summer session), because the funds available from the college for "professional development" are seldom enough to cover more than half of the actual expenses.
Life Style Expectations
Teaching in such an environment has never been and cannot be reduced to a 9-to-5, 40-hour-per-week "job." It is truly a "vocation:" it will demand everything you can give.
Faculty are expected to exhibit an exemplary life-style. If you are the cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking, loose-living type, you would likely feel terribly out of place in a setting where you are expected to be an active member of a local church and to attend chapel once a week on campus. (If these expectations strike you as strange, it might help to do a little research on Baptists.)
Compensation(s)
Monetary compensation, though much less than you would make in industry or at a large university, will be competitive with that of comparable small private undergraduate colleges. The benefit package is excellent, the cost of living is lower than in most other parts of the U.S., and the Midwest is a wonderful place to raise a family.
The greatest return on investing your life in such a setting is undoubtedly the satisfaction of seeing that you have made a difference in the lives of your students. I am completing my 30th year of teaching physics at William Jewell and my colleague Dr. Philpot has taught in the department for 36 years. Our students have gone forth to get PhD`s from Cal Tech to Cambridge and we know where most of them are and what they are doing today. The shared joy of their success is more than any amount of money could buy.
