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And Gladly Teach is a brief yet comprehensive guide to preparing for and securing a faculty position at a college or university written by a team of authors led by A. Truman Schwartz of Macalester College. As the preface states, “The secret of a richly rewarding career is simply to maximize the overlap integral between the wave function that represents what you must do and the wave function for what you want to do.” In this spirit, the book discusses the spectrum of academic institutions that employ chemists from community colleges to research universities and the full range of faculty life: teaching, research, and service. There are chapters on preparing for an academic career, searching for a job, then keeping the job you find. I was particularly impressed with the chapter on the job search that gives thoughtful practical advice on the entire process—from writing a good cover letter to making a decision about which job to accept. The sections on what to expect in an interview will be helpful to the anxious job seeker. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography organized by topic.
An important feature of And Gladly Teach is a collection of personal essays, primarily by young faculty members in the first few years of their careers who relate their own experiences. New to the second edition are several essays from members of under-represented groups (women, African-Americans, and persons with disabilities) concerning the challenges that they faced in finding and succeeding in an academic position. These new essays are complemented by an expansion of the text to include a more extensive discussion of diversity issues and the addition of appropriate references to the bibliography.
Any undergraduate or graduate student in chemistry who is thinking about an academic career will find And Gladly Teach to be valuable. Since it begins by discussing how to prepare for an academic career, it is appropriate for a junior or senior seminar for chemistry majors, and is definitely something that graduate students should read early in their careers and then use as a resource during their job search and the early part of their careers. Those of us who teach and mentor students will also benefit from reading this delightfully written little book.
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