Assistant Professor Application Essay

Explain why you are interested in the RA position and what skills you possess that make you a good candidate for the position.

For the fall of 2017, I would like to attend Calvin College. A lot of positive aspects of the school sparked my interest during the campus tour and the University Club event. I would like to major in Elementary Education and double minor in journalism and Chinese. Also, I plan to take part in the string orchestra at Calvin College. There, I want to seek a higher degree of education and go beyond the standard four-year bachelor’s degree. This is because recent studies have shown that teachers leave and search for another career within the first five years due to various reasons, and, as a result, there continues to be a shortage of qualified people in the field. By seeking a higher level of education, I believe it will enable me to be more successful as a future teacher of young adolescents.

Throughout my professional career in higher education, I have grown a strong interest in serving non-traditional and community college students. This unique population thrives when they have access to student support services and transformative educational opportunities. I have the desire to be in a position where I am able to dictate how these students are serviced and, or how accessible educational opportunities are to them. I received my Bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University in Family and Community Service with aspirations of being a social worker, but shortly after leaving the institution I gained employment in Thomasville City School system. There I had the chance to mentor and teach transferable life skills and soon realized

I seek to join Teach For America because I strongly believe in education equity and in the power of empowering students to reach their full potential. I was born and raised in East Los Angeles, an underserved community, where I witnessed how education inequity played a critical role in the life opportunity and academic success of the youth in my community. At age 13, I began losing friends and classmates due to drugs, alcohol, gang violence, and delinquency. Afraid and stressed about the social injustices in my community, I began to lose interest in school. Fortunately, Mr. Bravo, my 8th grade history teacher, came into my life during this pivotal moment. Mr. Bravo helped me cope with my losses by providing check-ins during lunch and after school. Mr. Bravo empowered me to be a better student and most importantly helped me understand that I could be a social agent of change.

For the past five years, I’ve been lucky enough to be mentored by Dr. Loretta Harvey, who is the epitome of a student centered educator. When I was a sophmore in the education program, she alone noticed the trouble I had contacting my education advisor and vowed to keep me out of the proverbial “crack” I was about to slip into. Since that day, she has made it her mission to help me succeed. This is not a small accomplishment as I’m a soon to be language arts educator, and, being a science methods saint, she knows little about the content requirements. Most individuals in her position would have shrugged this responsibility. This only adds an underscore to her level of dedication as she’s had to expand her horizons and make connections with others on my behalf. As I write this letter, I’m weeks from my bachelors degree in English education; this would be a feat impossible without the continued guidance of Dr. Harvey.

I am applying for the Student Assistant position in the Undergraduate Admissions office because I am passionate about Simmons College and meeting new people! In my past experiences, I loved my jobs concerning customer service and helping people. I have worked in both a communications department and a customer service department, and as a receptionist. Being able to spend part of my day assisting people with their questions and helping my coworkers made me excited to go to work. I also found comfort in completing tasks, and would gladly take on even the most thought to be “tedious” projects. I would love to be able to combine my passion for Simmons and helping people.

It is with pleasure that I recommend my former professor, Dr. Nicholas Bourke, for Associate Professor of School of Education at Auburn University in Montgomery (AUM). I have had the privilege of taking graduate courses with Dr. Bourke. He is a true educator and role model, a treasure at AUM’s School of Education. The things I have learned in his classes as well as the professional development courses he has offered have been extremely valuable to me as an educator. He is passionate about his work and I am certain that his passion as well as his extensive knowledge will serve to motivate his future students, as he has motivated me.

Dr. John Lucy is an Associate Professor of Education at Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville. Equally important, he heads up the college’s Institutional Effectiveness Committee. In 2010, he graduated from the University of North Florida with a doctorate in educational administration and a minor in public administration. According to Dr. Lucy, a previous associate and mentor encouraged him to stop pursuing a second graduate degree and obtain a doctorate; she explained its advantages and value.

I have included my resume and the Adjunct Instructor Application and ordered my transcripts to be mailed to you from my Masters Program. At this time I have not taught in a school enivornment, but I am a quick learner and think that I can bring valueable aspect to online and in school learning due to I have ulitized both aspects in acquiring my degrees as an adult learner. I have also in my past and current roles been a trainer and auditor for my current employer. My aspiration is to teach and help other obtain their goals when it applies to higher learning. I would like to thank you in advance for your consideration of myself as a Instructor within your

After graduating, I served as an instructional assistant and afterschool program teacher for the Elk Grove Unified School District. In these roles, I helped integrate students with disabilities and behavioral issues into the classroom and managed a class of more than 20 students at a Title 1 school. My academic background allowed me to be more aware of how collective memory affects development and learning, allowing me to apply a more holistic approach towards student mentorship and evaluation. Furthermore, I served as a Crocker Art Museum volunteer in their Education department, where I was able to combine my interests in art history, education, and community

I am writing to apply for the position of Assistant Professor of Socio-Cultural Foundations of Education at Miami University, which I found at the Chronicle of Higher Education. I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Wyoming in the College of Education, where I am nearing completion of my dissertation investigating international students’ English language issues, perceived discrimination, and intent to persist at the university. I expect to defend my dissertation in October of 2016. I was intrigued by the posting since the position focuses on teacher preparation as well as international and comparative education. This would allow me to continue teaching pre-service teachers while also focusing on my research agenda of international and comparative education, thus allowing me to continue my passion for each. Moreover, Oxford seems like a perfect fit since it offers excellent research and teaching opportunities, a small town atmosphere, and big city life nearby. These features will allow my wife, children, and me to flourish. I am interested in obtaining a faculty position at Miami University where I can continue my teaching, service, and research, while also helping to produce extraordinary student and scholarly outcomes as outlined in the 2020 plan for the university.

I am writing to outline my knowledge and experience, that I believe make me the ideal candidate for the role of Research Assistant in the evaluation of the swim-with humpback whale trial. I am truly passionate about wildlife science and ensuring the health of the marine ecosystem. I find this research project particularly exciting, as I have always had an interest in human-wildlife interactions, and as a keen traveller, I love to learn about effective ecotourism. When researching in Cancun, and recently travelling in the Philippines, I have noticed wildlife tours, such as swimming with whale sharks are lacking control of tourist numbers and amount of interaction, the type of issues that would need to be addressed by the Department of Parks and Wildlife. I think my travel experience would be a useful asset to the research team.

I walked into this class having the mindset that this class was going to focus on how to incorporate drawing and painting into the classroom. I was apprehensive about having to take a class on how to integrate art across content areas. Reflecting on the course, art has become to mean much more to than visual arts. Art can mean writing poems like the where I am from poems, incorporating movement for the kinesthetic learners and incorporating singing. This course opened up my eyes on how movement can be used in the classroom to enhance learning, how sounds can add into the learning process to make the learning fun, and how teaching with visuals can make the learning more meaningful.

I am pleased to support Carrie Graham’s application for your tenure-track faculty position in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. I have had the pleasure of working with Ms. Graham since 2010 as her major advisor and course instructor in her doctoral studies in the Adult Learning concentration of our Department of Educational Leadership’s Learning, Leadership, & Education Policy PhD program. Our program prepares academics and education leaders who have a strong theoretical foundation and empirically validated set of skills for studying, leading, designing, and managing learning systems for a variety of learners in a variety of contexts.

I am writing this letter to apply for the teaching assistantship at Eastern Washington University. During my time in the Army I discovered a love for teaching and am currently continuing that passion through substitute teaching at the high school level. The assistantship position would allow me to build on my four years of teaching experience, learn new teaching methodologies, and prepare me to teach at the college level upon my completion of my M.F.A.