Career Preparation and Placement

Preparation for the Profession: Teaching and Scholarship

The English Department offers all graduate students a variety of teaching opportunities and professional preparation activities, all designed to provide students with important professional experience and to place them in a highly competitive position for entering the job market.

Scholarship

All students entering the dissertation phase of the program participate in area studies seminars in which faculty and graduate students discuss student projects and student writing in a workshop atmosphere. In the penultimate year of study, students enroll in a "Writing for the Profession" seminar, which concentrates on preparing papers for academic conferences, submitting essays for publication to academic journals, and developing strategies for entering the job market. Students take another seminar in the fall of the last year of study which concentrates on preparation for the job market, writing letters of application and teaching portfolios, preparing for interviews, and developing job talks.

Teaching

"Teaching Literature" is an integral component of the introductory course to Graduate Studies, required of all beginning students. Students learn to teach writing in a practicum, taken the semester before teaching composition, and in set of intensive orientation meetings, usually at the beginning of the second year. Graduate students in English typically teach upper-level literature courses early in their graduate careers, usually by the third year of graduate studies. Students also typically teach four semesters of First Year Writing. They never teach more than one class a semester and class enrollments are limited to seventeen students.

A pre-doctoral teaching fellowship enables students to teach literature at a neighboring university, such as the University of Illinois-Chicago. Post-doctoral teaching fellowships are also available.

Recent Placements

Within the past five years, 72% of our graduate students have been offered tenure-track positions; 10% of our graduates within the past five years hold adjunct positions, 8% hold post-doctoral fellowships, and 10% have non-academic jobs.  Graduates of the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame have accepted tenure-track positions at the following institutions:

  • Baylor University
  • Bowie State University
  • Brigham Young University
  • California State University, Chico
  • Eastern Carolina State University
  • University of Connecticut, Storrs
  • University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
  • Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Indiana State University
  • McDaniel College
  • Messiah College (Pennsylvania)
  • State University of New York, Albany
  • The Ohio State University, Columbus
  • The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  • St. Joseph’s College (New York)
  • Sienna College, Albany
  • University of Dallas
  • University of Texas, El Paso
  • Transylvania University
  • Villanova University

Graduates of the Department of English have recently accepted post-doctoral fellowships at:

  • American Antiquarian Society
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • Duke University
  • Northwestern University
  • University of Notre Dame