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Your Next Career Might be in Higher Education

12/20/2019

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Delivering an experiential learning seminar at the University of Science in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 2018.
If you are like me and have had a great multi-decade career in professional roles, and you are not ready to settle into a quiet retirement, then consider teaching. Although I have not explored teaching in K-12 programs recently, that could be an option. A few years ago, I applied to Teach for America, went through hours of interviews, to the very last one-on-one interview, and then was not selected. I suspect age is the reason. I decided not to bother with K-12 after that, as I already had a couple years of higher education teaching experience in China, Vietnam, and the U.S.A. Stick with me here and I'll share an excellent resource at the end of this post.

My point here is that you should have better chance in higher education. This is especially so if you have years of senior leadership experience in your field, had at least a Master's degree, and want to help the next generation by teaching what you know, and sharing your experiences. My secondary point is that ageism is real. I've experienced it first-hand. In one instance, sitting in a final face-to-face interview for a government agency, I was told a couple times that, and I quote, "You are over experienced for this position." The fact that I drove 10 hours to attend the interview, was interested in the position, and had all of the skills required to do the job, meant nothing. 

In another instance, after another 10 hour drive to the final face-to-face interview, the exact words, which I heard three times from the hiring manager, were, "This is a developmental position." Once again, I was fully qualified, interested, and could have been a perfect candidate for the role. But that hiring manager, and the previous one, clearly wanted someone younger in their positions. Neither of these were teaching positions.

Age is less of an issue for adjunct instructors in higher education. In some cases, the experience you have had will help you get the position. Adjuncts are underpaid, but if you aren't in it for the money, the satisfaction of helping a new generation of professionals develop more than offsets the low pay. It is possible that an adjunct role could lead you to a full-time position. What you might find difficult, as I have, and where ageism may come into play, is when or if you apply for tenure track positions. While I haven't had the blatant comments like the ones above, I perceive the difficulty in getting hired into a tenure-track position due to my age as real, and I've basically stopped trying. 

I like and enjoy my contract teaching roles. They have taken me to China, Singapore, Vietnam. I've taught for three schools in Buffalo, NY. Currently, I'm halfway through a one-year contract with the University of North Carolina in Asheville, a beautiful - and quirky - mountain city. If your professional career is over - if you aren't ready to settle too much - and if you like helping younger people develop -consider teaching in higher education. Here is a website with tips for older people who want to teach. It addresses the ageism issue directly in its recommendations.

From the Higher Education Recruitment Consortion:


https://www.hercjobs.org/higher-education-job-search-tips-for-older-employees/
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Monopoly as experiential learning

3/26/2018

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1880 Saigon Monopoly

In 2012, I brought four Monopoly games to Vietnam to use for leadership activities in my classes. The students played in teams, four teams per game. Each team selected a leader. Each leader had to use a difference leadership style; autocratic, consensus, laissez-faire, and democratic (i.e., voting on all decisions). The students later wrote about what it was like in their leadership style teams and what they thought about their experiences. At that time, I was warned that I could get in trouble having a Monopoly game in Vietnam.

Last year, I walked into a Ginko (made in Vietnam) store near my Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) hotel and to my surprise they had a Monopoly game on display at the front of the store - 1880 Saigon Monopoly. I returned later in the afternoon to purchase the beautifully designed game you see above.

The image below is a group of Keuka College business students playing during class to learn about leadership styles in 2013.
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Starting to teach and to study

7/2/2017

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​My current Ph.D. research is deeply personal. I spent a year, from January 1969 until January 1970, in Pleiku, Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Pleiku is in the Central Highlands, less than 50 miles from the Cambodian border. At the time, it sat squarely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major supply route for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) into the South, in support of NVA troops and the Vietcong. For about two decades, I had wanted to return. I saw the devastation we created during the war – to the countryside and to the lives of the people. I wanted to see how the Vietnamese were doing. In early 2012, I had an opportunity to travel to Hanoi, Vietnam, to teach business classes for seven weeks for Keuka College. I took that opportunity I have been teaching annually in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) since 2012. Finally, I had the opportunity to see Vietnam 40 years after the war, and to give something back to a new generation of Vietnamese business students.

Prior to starting to teach in 2012, I had spent 37 years in business. For most of those years, I was a senior marketing and sales executive, in Fortune 500 and global companies. Teach college business courses came naturally. I had mentored subordinates throughout my career. I had given dozens of business workshops, both in my salaried executive career, and as a consultant from 2001 through 2012.

My instinct, starting with the first Keuka College course I taught, which was a business leadership class, was to incorporate projects for the students that would enable them to apply what they were studying in lectures and in their textbook. After a year of teaching in Vietnam, I realized that I needed to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of teaching and learning, resulting in my enrollment in fall 2013 in the Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning Ph.D. program within the Graduate School of Business, State University of New York University at Buffalo. I was – and remain – driven to understand the variety of experiential or active learning processes through my Ph.D. studies and subsequent research.

The image below is a screen shot of a Google map showing the route to Cambodia from Pleiku, Vietnam.
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    Paul McAfee

    My experiential learning Activities blog includes examples from my international teaching experiences. The Research blog includes studies I have read and comments on others' research, as well as my own.

    Read about examples from my teaching college business courses in China, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam, relating to both experiential learning and project-based learning.

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