Academic references for postgrad funding

[Liebkuchen]

One month until I can resubmit my scholarship application for SWUFE! Woohoo!

I digress:

I've seen the postgrad scholarships on offer directly via the universities but they all talk about needing 2 references from "associate professors" or above. For a Brit, what's the equivalent? Is that just a regular lecturer or something higher? My old lecturers have retired alas.

As a Chinese language student in an international college at a uni, would I come across people of this standing?

Just curious as an MA is one way of prolonging a stay. Slightly jumping the gun I know...

[trevelyan]

Associate professors in the States are usually tenure track professors who still haven't got tenure.

[hackinger]

Hi,

the UK equivalent would be senior lecturer or reader.

In most countries an associate professor is a tenured professor without a chair.

Cheers

hackinger

[jbradfor]

I don't know what country this is from, but in the USA, my understanding is that "associate professors" are typically recently tenured.

One starts out as "assistant professor", and then after some years (5-6) one goes up for tenure. Typically, tenure is granted at the same time one is promoted from assistant to associate. After some more years (typically around 7), one eligible to become full professor (but, unlike the step from assistant -> associate, there is often no time period in which one must be promoted to full professor, and there is not tenure change involved).

This of course varies from university to university, but I think this is fairly common at most major research universities.

[amandagmu]

What jbradfor said. They're usually not looking for the person who was your Chinese 101 or Western Civ 100 professor at a big university and who may or may not remember you. Usually these applications want a professor who likely taught you an upper division/level class in one of your last years (at the undergrad level), someone who could comment more extensively on the way you think, your class participation, and more advanced work you have completed (senior research projects and papers, interpersonal skills and questions you raised during class or in office hours, etc). My guess is that this is why they said they want associate professor or above, although in this day and age, with the way the economy has been going, it is not always a guarantee that the most qualified professors end up teaching those higher level classes......

[Brandon263]

Actually, lecturer is fine. They have the same requirement for CSC postgrad scholarships, and I got mine with references from two lecturers (from a UK uni). My thinking is that lecturers are generally full time and quasi-tenured anyway, so they would be equivalent to associate professors in the US.

[Liebkuchen]

So, if its roughly equivalent to a UK lecturer/reader- do you get taught by people of this level at a Chinese Uni's international college on a long term course e.g. 1 year? Or are they more like foreign language teachers brought in to teach the evening language classes at a British uni? My mandarin teacher at uni wasn't a 'lecturer'- we'd have called her our teacher or tutor- working part time at the uni but certainly not a lecturer?

[Brandon263]

Anecdotally, yes, CSC-funded long-term language courses are generally taught by PhD-holding lecturers. However, some of my friends who are on CSC-funded terminal language courses, that is, not studying Chinese in preparation for a Chinese degree (预科汉语), are taught by masters'-holding teachers. But in either case, as long as it's a CSC-funded long-term language program, the teachers are generally full-time university employees who specialise in teaching foreigners.

Out of curiosity, were you reading for a degree in Mandarin at your uni, or were you taking it as an extra-curricular activity? At my uni, the part-time evening tutors were generally for people peripherally interested in learning Chinese, like me, while full-time linguistics professors taught those who were actually took Chinese full-time.

[Liebkuchen]

It was just an evening class in the "languages for all" programme. It was open to everyone in the community not just students- if i remember correctly, I think she was just a postgrad student studying something other than English or linguistics.

I don't know if the course is csc funded as I'm aiming to get in via a uni funded scholarship for language students (too old at 30 as an EU student for CSC- unless I get onto a postgrad course but don't have the academic referees back in the UK to apply directly as I graduated 10 years ago and my contacts have all run away...)

Thanks for all the help on this topic everyone! Much appreciated.