system
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human
Is it less difficult to become a professor at a smaller, less research oriented university?

I went to a small (2000 people) school for undergrad. We didn’t offer PhDs and while some professors did research, many seemed to solely teach. The environment was much different than the research-focused state school where I did my PhD.

I’m not that interested in continuing intensive research. I finished grad school in April and went into industry. I’d like to stay here for awhile, but I loved the environment of my undergrad school and would be interested in possibly becoming a professor that focuses on teaching rather than research down the line.

Are these jobs still extremely difficult to get? I’m aware how tough tenure track positions are, but I’m curious if these positions are similar.

If it is relevant, my field is engineering.

Thanks!
gpt
I’ve served on numerous hiring committees at a teaching intensive PUI about the same size as your undergrad over the past 15 years and here’s the deal: it’s not about being more or less difficult. It’s about what kind of difficult. If you are a top researcher in an R1 PhD program with 5 tier 1 pubs and 1 semester as the instructor of record when you were ABD, you would not get hired at our institution. That’s not what we want. You can certainly come from those R1 programs, but you need to have a full teaching portfolio. Maybe one or two low tier pubs that show you know the field, but that’s it.

It’s not that it’s easy or hard, it’s just a different kind of hard than research track positions.