Altac (Alternative Academic) Careers: General Altac Resources
Resources about Alternative Academic (Altac or Alt-ac) Careers and Resources for Developing Altac Careers
Created by Health Science Librarians
Web Resources
General Altac Web Resources
- Alt-Academy (#alt-academy) - For Humanities altacs From MediaCommons. A collection of edited blogs by Humanities altacs. Covers the subjects of dissertations, social identity, graduate education, post-graduate careers, labor relations, emerging roles, and professional qualifications.
- Career Exploration: Careers Beyond the Academy - Career Options for PhDs From UC-BERKELEY. A hub of resources for PhD students interested in careers beyond the academy.
- Careers Beyond Academia: Exploring Non-academic Careers From CUNY. How to successfully conduct a search for an alternative post-PhD career.
- Career Services and Industry Tip Guides. From MIT. Guides on networking, interviewing, cover letters, resume/CVs, internships, and industry outlooks.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Vitae Jobs, News & Advice, Groups, Syllabi Database. Offers membership in a growing community of academics; a free dossier service to manage your job search; connections for finding your next job or your next candidate; and aplace to spotlight your life’s work. From The Chronicle of Higher Education
- CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program From COUNCIL ON LIBRARY & INFORMATION RESOURCES. The CLIR program offers recent PhD graduates the chance to help develop research tools, resources, and services while exploring new career opportunities.
Career Preparation Resources
- The CV vs. the Resume: Which Should You Use? From SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY. Describes three key differences between a CV and a resume.
- Resume format for nonacademic positions, with example CVs From HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Describes three basic types of resume and when to use each.
Books / Book Chapters
Books in this list were selected because they apply to a broad variety of disciplines and career goals. Recent publications were favored.
Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate by
Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate is one of the first collections to explore PhD career versatility within higher education. The twenty-three contributors represent diverse disciplines, institution types, professional roles, and intersectional identities. Each thoughtful and personal essay explores firsthand what it means to remain in higher education, yet not in the traditional role of a professor. Topics include establishing new career paradigms, well-being and work-life balance, blended roles and identities, and professional work around advocacy and inclusion. Unifying the essays is the idea that career diversity is intertwined with other diversity discourse, yielding a broad-based but critical examination of careers in higher education administration. Though the doctoral landscape continues to change, a self-determined, values-driven attitude remains essential. This book offers powerful insight into cultural and structural barriers that inhibit institutional transformation and obscure the real range of PhD futures. Frank about both challenges and opportunities, these essays reveal how letting go of "track" thinking opens a constellation of possibilities and many paths to meaningful work and a fulfilling life.
Call Number: Also available in Print, Davis Library 6th floor. Call Number: LB2332.72 .H54 2024ISBN: 9781612498980Publication Date: 2024-03-15
Graduate Employability Across Contexts by
This book explores stakeholders' perspectives, their practices, and engagement with enacting the employability agenda in the context of a rapidly changing world. It explains the need for developing graduate employability under socioeconomic, cultural, and political pressure exposed to the higher education sector. Largely framed within Bourdieu's concepts of social field, habitus, and capital, it explores international stakeholders' perspectives and experiences with graduate employability agenda in different contexts, which serves as a point of reference for the adoption of such initiatives. Based on empirical evidence, the authors develop a new graduate employability framework seeing it as a lifelong process, denote the relationships between types of employability capital, and shed light on the consequences of different strategies to translate employability capital to employment and career outcomes. Overall, this book generates both theoretical and practical insights which help to advance employability programs, better prepare the future workforce, and anticipate turbulence in the labour markets.
ISBN: 9789811939587Publication Date: 2022-09-03
Going Alt-Ac by
A growing number of people completing or holding graduate degrees now seek non-faculty positions--also called alternative academic, or "alt-ac" positions--at different stages in their careers. While an increasing number of people with doctoral degrees are hunting for a diminishing pool of tenure-track faculty jobs, most degree-granting institutions do not adequately prepare their graduate students to enter the new reality of the alt-ac job market. Focusing on the range of potential alternative career choices, this highly practical book offers tools and prompts for readers who are:
• Considering whether to choose an alt-ac career path
• Seeking specific alt-ac positions
• Advising graduate students or mentoring recent professional graduates
• Encountering alt-ac career challenges
The authors offer case stories--their own and those of colleagues across North America in alt-ac roles--with concrete examples designed to help readers pursue, obtain, and excel in a wide variety of alt-ac positions.
Call Number: e-bookISBN: 9781620368336Publication Date: 2020-01-13
Putting the Humanities PhD to Work by
In Putting the Humanities PhD to Work Katina L. Rogers grounds practical career advice in a nuanced consideration of the current landscape of the academic workforce. Drawing on surveys, interviews, and personal experience, Rogers explores the evolving rhetoric and practices regarding career preparation and how those changes intersect with admissions practices, scholarly reward structures, and academic labor practices--especially the increasing reliance on contingent labor. Rogers invites readers to consider how graduate training can lead to meaningful and significant careers beyond the academy. She provides graduate students with context and analysis to inform the ways they discern their own potential career paths while taking an activist perspective that moves toward individual success and systemic change. For those in positions to make decisions in humanities departments or programs, Rogers outlines the circumstances and pressures that students face and gives examples of programmatic reform that address career matters in structural ways. Throughout, Rogers highlights the important possibility that different kinds of careers offer engaging, fulfilling, and even unexpected pathways for students who seek them out.
Call Number: e-book and print copy at Davis (HD6278.U5 R64 2020)ISBN: 9781478012207Publication Date: 2020-07-17
The Freelance Academic by
Higher education has changed--and we have to change with it. The Freelance Academic will show you how. When Katie Pryal started her career in higher education, she did everything right--she thought. With a law degree, a doctorate, and a federal clerkship, how could her career go off track? But this is higher ed in the new millennium. "Off track" is the new normal. So, slowly, she made her own career, one she dubbed "the freelance academic" in a long-running column in The Chronicle of Higher Education of the same name. Five years after leaving academia, Pryal has created a living for herself. In The Freelance Academic, she tells her story and provides accurate (and sometimes blistering) critique of how higher ed has pushed its workforce to the margins. Best of all, she gives plain, practical advice for how to make the career you want, one that uses your strengths, and your creativity, to thrive. "With candor and vulnerability, Pryal shares her own experiences and hard-fought wisdom to make a compelling case for a rewarding professional life beyond the walls of traditional academia." -Amy Impellizzeri, award-winning novelist and author of Lawyer Interrupted: Successfully Transitioning from the Practice of Law--and Back Again
Call Number: Print: Law Library — 1st Floor Collection (1st floor) Call Number LB1778.2 .P79 2019ISBN: 9781947834354Publication Date: 2019-06-03
Chasing chickens : when life after higher education doesn't go the way you planned by Call Number: Available at UNC Greensboro. UNC users can request via ILL.ISBN: 9780700627936Publication Date: 2019-05-08
Succeeding outside the academy : career paths beyond the humanities, social sciences, and STEM by Call Number: LB2331.72 .S85 2018ISBN: 9780700626878Publication Date: 2018-10-17
Identity-trajectories of early career researchers : unpacking the post-PhD experience by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781349952861Publication Date: 2017-12-29
Behind the Academic Curtain: How to find success and happiness with a PhD by Call Number: LB1778.2 .F87 2013 (Davis Library)ISBN: 022606607XPublication Date: 2013
The Academic Job Search Handbook, 4th edition (Print only) by
For more than 25 years, The Handbook has assisted job seekers in all academic disciplines in their search for positions. Addresses hot topics in the competitive job market of today. The chapter on alternatives to academic jobs has been expanded, and sample resumes from individuals seeking non-faculty positions are included. Includes information on Internet search methods and useful websites.
Call Number: LB2331.72 .H45 2008 (multiple copies at Davis Library)ISBN: 0812220161Publication Date: 2008-06-30 (5th edition published 2016))
Building a Research Career by Call Number: Available at NCCU, NCSU. UNC users can request via ILL.ISBN: 9781597562270Publication Date: 2010
Career Opportunities in the Nonprofit Sector by Call Number: HD2769.2.U6 B87 2006 (SILS; UL libraries)ISBN: 0816060037Publication Date: 2006
Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance (15th ed.) by Call Number: HF5381 .E52 2011 v.1,2,3,4,5 (Davis Library)ISBN: 0816083134Publication Date: 2010
PhD [alternative] Career Clinic by Call Number: HF5382.7 .C475 2011 (Davis Library)ISBN: 0975507214Publication Date: 2011
Understanding the Work and Career Paths of Midlevel Administrators by Call Number: Available at Duke, NCSU. UNC users can request via ILL.ISBN: 0787954357Publication Date: 2000
Journal & Online Articles
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