Speaker 1: Hey guys, what's up? It's Olivia. Welcome back to my channel, Olivia's Grad School Vlogs, where I like to share my experience as a MediaFX grad student here at Penn State. I'm definitely going to need to change the name and intro to this channel soon because since I've last seen you, I've defended my dissertation, graduated, and I have gotten a job offer. The sign on the name changes later, but today what I want to talk to you about is what campus visits are like. Campus visits are the second round of interviews for academic professor positions. I have had two of them now. They were similar, they were different, but since I've done two now, I wanted to share what those experiences were like. So in this video, I'm first going to talk about what to expect with a campus visit, how are you spending your time each day, which, spoiler alert, it is meetings and presentations. Secondly, I'll talk about the logistics of it, how are you getting to these places, when are you eating, who's paying for what, etc. And then finally, I'll just talk to you about different tips and things I've learned from this process, and these tips are from both me and my peers who just went through a whole year of applying for jobs. As always, I'm speaking on my own experience. I just got my PhD in mass communications. Mass communications can cover things like public relations, advertising, journalism, media production, or what I do, which is media effects, the social science side of things. Of course, you're going to want to talk to your peers, your colleagues, your mentors to learn how your field does things, but I'm just speaking to my own experience. So your campus visit might be one jam-packed day, or it might take place over the course of two days. My most recent campus visit was a 13-hour jam-packed day that started at 9 30 in the morning, and I had one 30-minute break to myself where I went back to the hotel and showered before dinner. My campus visit that I had back in February was over the course of two days. The first day was like a 9 to 4 30, the second day was 10 to 3. As I mentioned a moment ago, these days are full of both meetings and presentations, so let's talk about the meetings. Your meetings are going to be anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes, and you're going to meet with a variety of people involved with the school, the college, the department, etc. At both schools, I met with someone from academic affairs, I met with the department head, I met with the search committee. At the first school that I went to, I also met with the dean of the school, and I met with a couple of faculty who run like faculty development workshops. And at the most recent campus I visited, I met with someone from human resources who told me about the benefits of the position. Now, it's really important once you get your itinerary, which could be anywhere from two days before the visit to two weeks before the visit, it's important you see who you're meeting with and you look up these people ahead of time. Things that you're looking for, well you want to see if it says what their role is, right? So if you're like, what's an academic affairs provost? Maybe his website will tell you what the academic affairs provost does. But here you can also pick up on little nuggets like, are they a PhD or do they come from the professional world? You can see if there's anything in common, like are you from a similar area, do you root for similar sports teams, etc. Now, when you look these people up, you also want to come up with questions for them. If you follow me on my new Instagram, you'll know that I've said that Zoom interviews are when the committee asks questions about you, and in the on-campus interview is when you're expected to ask everyone you meet questions all day long. I'm going to attach the link to a PDF that I find is really, really helpful. My advisor has shared theirs with me, which lets you know what kinds of questions to ask different people. For example, the questions that you ask the dean of a school are going to be much broader, big picture than what you're going to ask maybe your department head. The campus visit is also when it's appropriate to ask about tenure procedures. So at the first campus I went to, that's what the academic affairs provost talked to me the entire time. He just sat me down, I didn't have to ask any questions, it was great. He was like, I'm gonna tell you about tenure. I said, awesome. In conclusion, lots of meetings the first day with a lot of different people. Make sure you come with questions prepared, and if you're really stuck on like what questions to ask someone, you can always fall back on what do you like about this institution, what do you like about the students at this institution, how are the students here different than other students you've worked with. So you can also always throw in like those broad questions too. Another large component of the on-campus interview is your presentations. You might be asked to do one or two presentations. One is a research talk, also sometimes called job talk or scholarly talk, and then a teaching demo. My friends who applied for R1 positions only had to give a research talk, not a teaching demo. If you hear licking, it's because my dog is sitting on the couch right there and she just won't stop licking right now. Anyway, my friends at R1 institutions gave only research talks. At one institution I gave both a research talk and a teaching demo, and then the most recent place I gave only a teaching demo. Research talk is a 45 minute presentation where you're basically talking about three different research projects that you've worked on. You typically start with a couple of slides introducing yourself and your background, broadly laying out the areas that you research in. You'll talk about two studies that you've completed, and then the last study you talk about is typically your dissertation. This takes the bulk of the 45 minute presentation to cover, but then what my friends and I have done is we spend the last five minutes or so talking about teaching and how our teaching experiences at Penn State have prepared us to teach certain courses at whatever institution we are interviewing at. Now be prepared for anything with the research talk. I was prepared for me talking for like 45 minutes straight and then answering questions, but when I got to the job interview they were like constantly stopping me within the presentation to ask me questions. So just go with the flow if that happens, just do whatever the search committee wants you to do. The other kind of presentation you might have to present is the teaching demo. Now the parameters for a teaching demo are far and wide. I have known of people who have been told, hey you're going to teach this class, here's the topic for the day, and here's the assigned reading, make a presentation on it. For me personally it's been a lot more flexible. So for the first institution I went to they said, hey you're going to be teaching a 200 level marketing class, there's 300 students, just teach on whatever you want. And then two days before the interview they said, oh hey we changed it around, you're teaching a 400 level entrepreneurship class with 12 students. So yeah, things are going to be changed around even after you like perfectly make them. For the most recent campus visit I did they were actually already out of school, so they just said create a teaching demo on whatever you want and we'll see who shows up. And it ended up being the search committee, professor from English, the admin assistant who was like scheduling this whole thing, and a former student who just graduated. So kind of a little hodgepodge group. Now when you're prepping your teaching demo, please ask the search chair as much information as you want to know, right? You need to know if it's lower division or upper division. Are these people in this major or is it a gen ed class? What is the technology situation like? You know, can I do kahoot or clicker questions or do we need to avoid that altogether? So please feel free to ask those questions because you're going to need to know that in order to best tailor your teaching demonstration. Of course, make sure you have these presentations saved to multiple places, so have it on your email, save it to the cloud, and I always take a flash drive with me as well. Okay, so those are the kinds of meetings and presentations that you should expect when going on a campus visit. So now let's talk about the logistics of it. So typically how a campus visit works is when the campus is interested in you, someone's going to reach out and they're going to schedule travel plans for you to get to that place. So for me, both times I had to fly to the institution. In both of those circumstances, the school paid for this. I did not have to pay for the plane tickets. School will also set up a hotel for you at that place that they should also be paying for up front. In terms of transportation, how are you getting to the airport, how are you getting to your hotel, that is going to depend on the school. So for example, when I flew to Boston, they had me take a Lyft or an Uber to the hotel and then they reimbursed me afterwards. But at the place I just went to, they had different members of the search committee who signed up to basically shuttle me places. In both circumstances, I drove my car to the airport and just left it there for a few days. The first school did reimburse this, the second school did not reimburse this. Schools are also going to differ on how they do food and reimbursement for that. So with the first school, there were no meals scheduled on my itinerary. We started late enough to where they wanted me to go get breakfast somewhere. I ended early enough where I would go get dinner and then they would give me like a little break during the day, like 30 minutes if I wanted to run and go grab something. And then they gave me per diem for Boston for those days. So I paid for everything up front and then a couple weeks later I got, I think it was like 200 or something dollars in reimbursement. That is like my Lyft and Uber and then also the food that I ate during those, well, I guess three days because travel day and then two days there and then traveled that evening. The second school that I just went to, they did schedule in lunch and dinner on my very long itinerary day. For breakfast, the hotel had breakfast and then I was not reimbursed for the food that I ate on the travel days. Campus visits are going to cost you something out of pocket. I've definitely heard horror stories with the logistics when it comes to traveling to campus visits. I had one friend who, the school wouldn't pay for you to get a hotel if you were within however many hundred miles, but it was like three and a half hours away and she wasn't going to drive, you know, start driving at like 4 a.m. to like get there on time. So she ended up driving there the night before, paid for a hotel herself, interviewing, and then coming back. Unfortunately, the same girl just had so much horrible luck with the whole job market experience. There were times where she had to pay for a rental car up front because where she flew into the school like wasn't near the airport. They said they would schedule the rental car and they didn't, so she ended up having to pay for it and dealing with reimbursement. So again, depending on the school or situation, there's going to be varying levels of how much you have to pay for up front, but hopefully for those things they should reimburse you. Okay, now just talking about like general tips and things I've learned from these campus visits. For one, make sure you're wearing something comfortable. I personally refuse to wear heels in any part of my life, but especially not a campus visit where you are probably going to be doing a walking tour of the campus at some point. You're going to be standing, you're going to be sitting, you're going to be walking all over the place, so make sure you have comfortable shoes and a comfortable outfit. Next, you might have to advocate for yourself a little bit. Some schools are going to be really great about saying, oh hey, we have a few minutes, you want to take a bathroom break? Oh hey, do you need water? Other schools, not so much. You're going to need to say, hey, while we're walking to this next place, could I use the restroom real quick? Oh hey, are there like, is there a water fountain or a water bottle that I can get? Also, if a school offers you, you know, a bathroom break, even if you don't need to use the restroom, go ahead and just take the moment to be by yourself because, like I said, my most recent campus visit was 13 hours. That's a long time to be on and in front of people, so just having those couple moments where you can let your face relax and not be smiling, not be engaged, that will help get you throughout this day. Just like the Zoom interview, after you get back on your campus visit, you should be sending thank you emails to everyone that you met with or anyone who attended a talk that you gave. Now, what happens next after the campus visit? So, it depends on how the school is doing it. So, typically, what the school will do is they'll say, okay, here are our top three applicants. We're going to bring them in. One's coming in the first half of this week, second half of the next week, and then the third one will come the first half of the next week, and then they'll tell you, okay, yeah, once we see everyone, we'll we'll get back to you kind of a thing. If they don't get back to you when they said they would, probably means they offered the position to someone else and they're going through negotiations and seeing if they accepted it before they let you down. Of course, there could be times where an emergency situation comes up and they haven't offered it to anyone, but from what I've noticed from my peers' experience and from my experience, if they say, oh yeah, we're going to send out decisions the end of next week, if you don't hear anything by the end of next week, they probably offered it to somebody else first. Doesn't mean that that person's not going to turn it down and then you won't be offered the job, but just keep that in mind. For the most recent school that I went to, I was the only one they were looking at. They've been trying to fill this position for a while, and so I heard back one week after. Some of my friends who have gone to schools, they've gotten their offer within like 48 hours of visiting there. Other places, it's been a couple weeks. Each school is different on their timeline. Just listen to what the search chair says. Alrighty, well that is my experience on what campus interviews are like when you're interviewing for assistant professor positions at universities. If you have any questions, please leave it in the comments below. What have your job interview experiences been like? Have you ever heard of a 13-hour job interview before? Anyways, expect some more videos from me. I'm going to work on making them and being more consistent. Okay, hope you guys have a wonderful day. Keep dreaming out loud. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.