How to Be a Spanish Professor
- 1). Get the appropriate degree. If you want to be a professor of Spanish throughout your career, you will be interested in getting tenure at a university. To be on a tenure track at most universities, you need a Ph.D. Tenure is typically granted to a member of the Spanish faculty at a university after six or seven years. Most universities require that to get tenure you have to have published articles in scholarly journals. And many universities require that you demonstrate service to the university or the community. Teaching ability is also a factor in decisions to grant or refuse tenure. With tenure comes job security.
- 2). Look for certifications that classify you as a fluent Spanish speaker and a writer. Since your goal is to become a professor of Spanish, not only do you need to demonstrate your scholarship, but you also need to prove your fluency in a foreign language. Certifications might require you to take tests that examine your proficiency in Spanish. A certification under your belt can help you exemplify your skills and knowledge as a Spanish speaker. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages is an organization that offers language tests to obtain certifications that you are fluent and capable of teaching a particular language.
- 3). DEvelop good research skills and get published. As a professor of Spanish at a big university, you probably will be required, at least for the first few years, to to research and write articles for academic journals regarding Spanish culture, history of the language or how the Spanish language impacts societies around the world. YAt a big university, your research record will count heavily in any decision on whether you get tenure.
- 4). Apply for assistant professor positions at universities and colleges. As someone who is just starting out, you will be considered a junior faculty member. In this stage of the professorship, you must demonstrate to tenured and senior faculty that you are a good teacher and an excellent scholar. As such, you should be exemplifying professionalism in the classroom so that you establish a good reputation among your tenured professors. It is also important for you to keep up with your scholarly research and publications, so that tenured faculty know that you are serious about your professorship.
- 5). Get a mentor. As a junior faculty member you can become adopted, so to speak, by a senior faculty member who will help orient you to the Spanish department, answer your questions, show you how to do certain things and advise you about certain departmental politics.
- 6). Establish good rapport with tenured and untenured faculty in the Spanish department. When it eventually comes time for you to apply for tenure, you will be relying on the decisions of others to grant you tenure, or deny it. Make sure you get along with everyone in your department and at the school. Keep your relationships genuine so that faculty members do not get an impression that you are only being nice because you want tenure later on.
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