What is the impact you want to have on the world?

Stanford recently had their PhD Visit Day, which was a very high-energy day in an otherwise low-energy Winter quarter. During the lunch hour, I was sitting off to the side and enjoying my meal 🍕, when a prospective student approached me and asked, “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. Which research group are you in?” 🤣💀

I’m honored that I still look young enough to be a graduate student and it was admittedly pretty funny to watch the student’s expression transition from enthusiasm to embarrassment; but to their credit, after we got introductions out of the way, they seemed genuinely curious as to why I chose to pursue a teaching-track job and how they can learn more about this career path. Naturally, I referred them to my website and this soon-to-be-existent blog post, and since then, I’ve had a few other students also ask me this, motivating me to actually sit down and write out a few thoughts.

Here we go…

What follows are some of the reasons I chose to go into a career in teaching, arranged roughly in decreasing order of importance (to me).

I strongly believe in the mission of high-quality education. I think education promotes a lot of good in society—from creating informed citizens to uplifting communities, from solving the biggest challenges to creating a just future—and having a job in support of this mission is the ideal impact I want to have. My family believes this as well, and even as immigrants my parents were able to provide a high-quality education for me in K–12, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. These experiences have given me countless opportunities that have transformed my life and it is meaningful to me to be able to give back to society, especially when so many students have not had the same experience. In fact, for the longest time in undergrad, I wanted to get a Master’s degree in Education (check out STEP!) and teach in high school after Stanford; or even go through Teach for America. While this goal was affirmed by my wonderful experience in EDUC 101, it was also around this time that I realized it’s possible to have a teaching-track faculty position at an University; and while one can teach anywhere, I thought the academic community was something that aligned with other interests of mine, such as being surrounded by the vibrancy of academic research and directly connecting students with post-graduation career paths. This was particularly noticeable at a large public university like UC Berkeley with connections to community colleges (~⅓ of the Berkeley undergrads are transfer students) and a direct impact on local communities.

I’ve been lucky to have excellent teachers! As alluded to in the previous paragraph, I was fortunate to have had excellent teachers throughout my educational career, which revealed to me the joy to be had in teaching. I am grateful for all my instructors and mentors in middle school (Dr. Moore, Mr. Thornton), high school (Dr. Good, Dr. Hahn), undergrad (Dr. Sher, Dr. Wolf, Prof. Reed), and PhD (Prof. Ceder, Prof. Wilkinson, Prof. Asta), who continue to inspire me to be the best instructor possible. Evident by the titles, most of these instructors had PhDs, even at the secondary level, so that was a consistent signal to me that it was possible to have a rigorous research-based training and still have a successful career in teaching. My main criterion for a good instructor is someone who knows their shit—and believe me, these people did—but I am equally grateful for their character, humor, rigor, warmth, presence, and dedication to the teaching profession. I channel elements of their pedagogy through my own and work to further inspire future generations of students at all levels.

I enjoy working with students. They say that teaching is the best way to learn, and I find that’s certainly true about the subject I’m teaching, but it also happens to be true in the sense that I always learn so much from my students! Their curiosity and energy are infectious, and I am lucky to be surrounded by so many talented students. In fact, when I do research, my mind has trouble staying focused on the task at hand, and it often wanders off and asks questions of “If another student were to work on this, how would I explain it to them?” or “How I can leverage this technique in the classroom or my teaching?” This natural inclination helped me realize that teaching is probably the best path for me. Moreover, I’m a fairly introverted person, and I tell people that I have an n = 4 rule for group interactions—that is, I’m an active participant in groups of 4 or smaller, but any larger and I will not speak up at all (still actively listening). In fact, in large group functions (meetings, socials, etc.), I will just sit there silently or break off and have a 1-1 conversation with someone next to me. But the classroom is one environment where this has never been a problem. When I am a student, I am usually one of the few who will speak up and ask/answer questions; and as an instructor, I am eagerly engaging students in conversation, in groups large and small. Given this anomaly, I also felt like there must be something unique in teaching for me. 😛

My performance is measured in ways that align with my values. In academia, like any job, your performance is regularly assessed to make sure you’re meeting program goals and various metrics. For a tenure-track faculty at an R1 university, that means publishing research in high-impact journals (like Nature and Science), mentoring PhD students, securing large research grants, publishing in high-impact journals, teaching classes, serving on committees, and… did I mention publishing? Now, let me be clear: I have immense respect for tenure-track faculty and their ability to juggle so much; however, I quickly realized that I did not really want my performance and success to be measured along those dimensions. Instead, I would prefer to be evaluated on the quality of my teaching (with room for feedback and growth) and ability to support students in their personal and professional growth. Now, while I have yet to undergo a formal performance review in any of these areas, what I have already felt in my short time here at Stanford are support from the Faculty and Staff and formative feedback from students that strongly resonate with my values.

I have a comparative advantage in teaching vs. research. Yes, gotta throw in some Econ (ty David Ricardo)! Now, I think there is a common (and dangerous, imo) misconception that “those who can’t do, teach.” (no thanks, George Bernard Shaw) And I have to say, that’s BS, because teaching engineering is as challenging as practicing engineering! So it’s clear to me that a productive society needs both, and while I will humbly say that I am a decent-but-not-astounding researcher, I will also boldly claim that I am far above average at teaching and mentoring. So in terms of economic efficiency and output, and if we are all united in working toward the same goal (i.e., bettering society), it is more advantageous for me to focus on teaching instead of splitting my time with research.

The teaching community is extremely friendly. I’ve already shared a few of my wonderful teachers, but I’ve also found incredible mentors at other universities (i.e., established MSE instructors) who have been more than willing to respond to my cold emails and offer me resources and opportunities. It is through these warm and kind interactions with esteemed educators such as Raj Kumar (Northwestern, and my predecessor at Stanford!), Matt Sherburne (UC Berkeley), Susan Gentry (UC Davis), Alison Polasik (Campbell), Nicole Adelstein (SFSU), and others that I’ve come to realize how supportive everyone is. This is certainly true of my colleague and co-conspirator, Haoxue Yan. So in addition to having wonderful departmental and personal support, I knew I wanted to join a professional community where there would be a lot of mutual support and championing each other’s growth. As one of them told me, “If you share ideas and resources with research faculty, you run the risk of getting scooped. But with teaching faculty, what’s there to scoop?” 😂❤

Challenges

If you found the above reasons informative and insightful, then I’m glad to hear it! That being said, I also don’t want to mislead you into thinking that a teaching-track career is all fun and games. There are, like any job, some drawbacks and challenges, such as the following:

  • The workload. This various a lot depending on your role and department needs. To their credit, Stanford MSE has made my workload very manageable, particularly on the teaching front. I have what could be described as a 1-1-1 teaching load, or one class a term; but it’s not uncommon to have a 2-2 teaching load, or even 3-3 in the Cal State system (3 classes per semester!), so you had better really love your job. There’s also a lot of other tasks in advising, program management, and other service that kinda gets lumped in, so you might find yourself being asked to do a lot more than what’s explicitly written in an offer letter. Of course, I expected this and am happy to pick up these tasks, or else I wouldn’t have signed up for the job.

  • The prestige (mostly, privileges). Most teaching-track faculty positions at R1 schools are not tenure-track, and since they usually don’t involve research, they’re not the focus of the University. So you might find it difficult to get the attention of higher administration if you have certain needs or if you’re looking for funding sources. This is where the community is important and you’ll have to find support between Lecturers in other departments and ideally the support of your departmental faculty. There are times where you’ll even need a tenure-track faculty member’s approval/partnership to be eligible for a program, grant, etc., so if it’s not part of the department’s culture, you can easily get frustrated and run into a lot of dead ends.

  • The pay (and employment terms). Similarly to the previous point, teaching-track faculty often have a lower salary and less permanent job security than tenure-track faculty. Depending on where you’re at in life (e.g., starting a family?), this can be a significant barrier and pay (relative to the amount of work) is one of the biggest reasons people leave the role. Now, it’s far from poverty level (I started in 2024 making slightly under $100k) and quite manageable if you temper your expectations (or have a partner’s salary), but it’s something to be aware of. Also contracts for such positions are slowly shifting to multi-year appointments, and I hope this trend continues so instructors can feel some sense of stability. After all, the association between academia and tenure is so entrenched one might easily forget that virtually all other jobs these days (even in software engineering!) are at-will employment.

  • The scrutiny. As alluded to in a few places above, people make not look very highly upon a teaching-track faculty position. Long story short, it wasn’t until recently did my family adopt a fully supportive position on my career goals, and for a long time prior to that they encouraged me to pursue a tenure-track faculty position. Similarly, you may get certain questions or looks from people in society, but don’t let that faze you!

How can you get started?

Now, if you’re like me and the previous section doesn’t deter you but rather motivates you further, terrific! It can be daunting to get started, because all students note how they don’t really have role models who have pursued a teaching-track faculty career. This blog post is my attempt at leveling the playing field, and here are some specific pointers that you may find useful:

  • Just start! Teaching is a skill, and like other skills, it requires practice to build competency; and in order to practice, that requires actually starting. You can talk to others and read all about different strategies and curricula, but until you put yourself into a classroom, you won’t know what will land or resonate with you. Practice will inform your unique pedagogy and approach, and I encourage you to look for opportunities to practice teaching with feedback.

  • That being said, start small. Don’t jump into a huge project as your first attempt, or at least carve out a small section of it that you can take responsibility for. In high school I volunteered to assist with other teachers’ classes (a self-created TA position), and in undergrad I got heavily involved with Stanford Splash. One nice characteristic of these opportunities was that I got multiple chances to practice with feedback, whether it was the next class session or the next Splash program. This is important when starting out because you’ll rarely get everything right the first time (I still don’t!) and it’s important to have an opportunity for redemption and learn from your mistakes. Rapid feedback and iteration leads to deeper learning.

  • Chat with role models. Please reach out to us! I’ve learned so much from talking to other educators and obtained so many answers, not just to questions I had, but also to questions I didn’t even know I had. Pretty much every department at every school has one (or more) teaching-track faculty, so I encourage you to look us up on department websites. We’re often not in the “Faculty” category, but rather there may be a special “Lecturer” page or simply “Staff” (at Stanford, Lecturers are technically Academic Staff). You might also look in academic sources if you’re more curious about what it is we actually do. You can try looking at the speaker lists of materials education conferences, ASEE awards lists, Google Scholar, or other sources. Once you’ve found our contact info, shoot us an email and I think most of us would be happy to chat with you.

  • Join a community. Teaching can be isolating and a struggle if it’s you working alone. Luckily, there are plenty of communities that share your interests. There are definitely student orgs and programs (Splash and SPREES were two during my time) that are targeted for those interested in teaching. I would also reach out to Faculty in your department to chat about your ideas, hear their perspectives, and see if there’s an opportunity to work on a project together.

  • Take a look at job postings! See what the roles and responsibilities are, and what they ask for to see what you need to be qualified. If this is a career path that you’re interested in, then you might as well optimize your time making sure you’re preparing in the right ways. Part of what compelled me to eventually send in an application was that I realized I had already met and sometimes exceeded what was asked for in job postings. You should also realize there are different types of teaching-track faculty, for example:

    • Tenure-track teaching faculty. These are rare at R1 schools, with the exception of the UC system, where they’re called Lecturers with (Potential) Security of Employment. They undergo promotions analogous to Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors and have all the benefits of tenure, including Academic Senate membership, i.e., voting rights. The main emphasis is on teaching, but a little bit on research, often in the area of scholarship of teaching. These are much more common at R2 schools and liberal arts colleges.

    • Lecturers, whose primary (if not only) responsibility is teaching and advising. These are non-tenure-track and common at R1 schools, and do have some promotional tracks, just without the formal benefits of tenure-track faculty. The responsibilities can vary quite a bit, and it’s not uncommon to teach 2–3 courses every term.

    • Community College professors. It’s less clear to me what these roles and responsibilities entail, but I can say that professors at CCs are highly dedicated and they get very close interactions with students. Class sizes are small and students come from very diverse backgrounds, so you will definitely have a rewarding experience. I will admit that me hanging around research universities has obscured these schools from my view, but CCs do a tremendous job uplifting individuals who take non-traditional paths and it is my hope that I can establish more partnerships and pipelines with these cohorts.

  • Finally, to come full circle with the statement at the top of this page, please thoughtfully consider the impact you wish to have on the world. For me, the answer was clearly in expanding access to quality education and supporting students in their growth. I encourage you to think broadly and think 5–10 years into the future. “World” here is quite broadly defined, and if you’d like to clarify it to be your “local community,” “city,” “field of study” or something else to focus your work, please do! I also want to point out that I really do mean you, not “your research” or “your work.” How do you personally want to contribute to society? Why does someone want to hire you instead of an AI agent who can do the same job? If your desired impact aligns with many of the things I’ve mentioned above, then I strongly encourage you to consider a career in teaching!

There’s a lot here to sift through, and probably even more unsaid. If you have questions or want to chat, please reach out!