(Part I, Teaching Advantages)
As a reminder, I went straight from grad school at LargeU to a Visiting Ass. position at TempCollege (a small, liberal arts school) to PermaU (a small, liberal arts school). They are all many miles and time zones apart.
Today I will address the research advantages (for me, for my chosen career path) to doing a Visiting Ass position.
Research
Keep in mind that most (do any?) Visiting Ass. positions do not require any research to be done. In fact, some places will downright discourage it.
You can take a break. There's no tick-tock of the tenure clock. No one expects you to do any research. You can take the nine months to regroup and recharge. I had no idea how burned out I was on 15 hour lab days until I got away from LargeU. I let two weeks pass before I even so much as clicked on an ASAP article feed. Then something unexpected happened. I started reading articles on subjects far removed from my thesis work. And most unexpectedly of all, I was actually interested in them. Not interested in a "oh, neat experiment" way but interested in a "oh, I think that could be followed up with X" or "wow, I should really try that" way.
I don't know if my situation was unusual or not, but in grad school perhaps because of lack of time or perhaps because of research snobbery (or maybe a combo of both), I just didn't typically find research outside of my project all that inspiring. Sure, I would attend (nearly) every departmental seminar, and I even frequently attended those outside of my college. I found other people's work interesting. I just didn't picture myself venturing outside of my research comfort zone. With my head clear, I was able as a Visiting Ass. to broaden my literature horizons and really think about research topics that I found interesting. My career goals did not include working at an R1 or even very tippy top PUI (and if they had, certainly I would have done a post doc!), so I knew I had the freedom to start pursuing areas in which I wasn't necessarily an expert.
You probably don't have time anyway. The reality of the first year at a primarily undergraduate institution is that you are, with only a few rare instances, doing completely new preps for classes in which there is an extremely high expectation level. (Maybe the high expectation level will only come from yourself!) Having research thrown into the mix could push you over the edge. At both TempCollege and here at PermaU, undergrads put in only a handful (as in four) hours of work a week during the academic year. Anything more is likely not going to happen; summers are for research. Would I have gotten research done at TempCollege if I absolutely had to? Probably, but certainly my teaching would have suffered.
Or maybe you DO have time! If you are so inclined, by all means do research during your Visiting Ass. time. It looks very appealing to hiring committees. It is very important to find out if your Visiting Ass. institution is open to the idea of you doing research and if they will give you any financial support. Most places will be supportive if you don't require any major purchases. Can you do projects with what they already have? Perhaps you can wrap up some data analysis from grad school? Can you run calculations while you are in the classroom?
(Stay tuned for more posts on the advantages and disadvantages of a Visiting Ass. job.)
