来源自chronicle
We've had several threads on this, including one just last week (although
since you are a newbie I should tell you the Fora search function is
benighted and you're better off using Google to search the Fora site).
;The upshot is that the question is designed to prove to the SC that you
have a plan--that you're not just flying blind out of graduate school.
;The tenure track is a rigorous--sometimes desperately rigorous--slog, and
those without plans typically go down flailing.
For the five-year plan, they want to know what you hope to accomplish before
tenure. Parts of a good answer would include (a) teaching X, Y, and Z
; (b) developing new courses in P, Q, and R (both of these will show you
have some familiarity with your target school's offerings); and (c)
completing a major research project (a book in some schools/fields, an
article in others, YMMV). If you are interviewing at a SLAC, bonus
points for briefly addressing how your research agenda relates to your
teaching, and vice versa.
For the ten-year plan, they're asking for longer-range career goals,
including post-tenure. These really vary from discipline to discipline
and school to school. Some good answers I've heard include (a)
establishing a center-for-the-study-of-whatever; (b) building some sort of
interdisciplinary program, capitalizing on the school's established
strengths (which you gain extra points for acknowledging, having done your
homework as a job candidate); (c) an ambitious, long-range research agenda (
that may embrace several book-length publications, assuming you're in a so-
called book field); and (d) university service. At my school (a SLAC)
bonus points for making some gesture in the direction of "community
involvement" that bridges the town-gown gap, or ways of involving students
extracurricularly in your field.
There isn't really a "wrong" answer to this question...unless you stall out
or blank. That counts as "wrong." (Or if you blurt out, in
answer to "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?," "At another, better
school!" Very wrong.)
You don't want to sound like a preening tool, of course. The more
thoughtful your answer is, and the more predicated it seems to be on your
knowledge of the department and school, the more you will impress your
interlocutors.
