Professional selected for full time lecturer interview.

I am in a similar situation - I teach in a professional field, the terminal degree in my field is a Masters, and faculty are usually hired based on industry experience and portfolio. I teach at a large private institution with 8 other full-time faculty in my program area.

I can't speak directly to the interview process, but here are some things that you will want to discuss with them before signing on:

  1. What does the institution consider scholarship in your field? Is it limited to traditional output like journal articles, books, etc., or do they make allowance for certain kinds of professional output as scholarship? Unless you get clarity on this up front, you may find yourself locked out of advancement because of the kind of work you do. At our institution, we fought a long battle but ultimately got our work recognized as scholarship. Still not a lot of acceptance from the rest of the institution, but at least in terms of retention and advancement, we have some backing.

  2. What kind of expectation and accommodation is there for you to continue to do work in your professional field? Will they give you release time or scheduling flexibility to allow you to continue some kind of work? In my field, if I'm not actively engaged in new projects and working with new clients, I very quickly lose my value as an educator. I'm expected to bring real world skills into the classroom, and to do that I need to be actively engaged in professional work. To accommodate this, my institution gives me teaching load reductions, and if I need to go out of town on work it's given the same kind of priority that an academic conference would receive. The payoff is huge - the program retains relevance to our industry, and our students are able to tap into our pool of active relationships to secure internships.

  3. In many professional fields, academic programs have a very difficult time recruiting quality faculty because of the pay disparity. In my field average income in the industry is about 1.5-2x what can be made in academia. Professional programs may have flexibility to adjust salary ranges beyond the basic scale. It's OK to ask for more money. They probably expect you to.

Happy to talk more via PM if you have questions. Good luck with the interview!

/r/Professors Thread