A few days ago, during December vacations, I was busy working on an urgent family business consultancy assignment, when my 8-year old son asked: “Dad, why are you working on in your break? Didn’t you say your lectures are over?” I was about to explain, but realized that many also believe professors teach only! So, I decided to list (probably just some of) what professors typically do (without order!) — Perhaps this list could save the career (or life :)) of someone aspiring be a professor.
Teaching
- Deliver course lectures
- Design new courses and academic programs
- Prepare material for new courses
- Update material for existing courses
- Design homework, quizzes, course projects, exams
- Grade students’ work and exams
- Hold office hours
- Design and deliver executive education programs for industry
Supervising/advising graduate students
- Follow-up with their progress regularly, brainstorming, guiding on next steps,
motivating, giving feedback, etc. - Mentor new students
- Calm students down after rejection notifications
- Act as a Psychiatrist to students
- Revise their theses and dissertations
Research
- Revise, edit, and write journal and conference papers
- Present conference papers
- Review papers as guest editors of journals or as chairs of conference tracks or SIGs
- Help with writing response letters to journals and sometimes conferences
- Write and submit grant proposals for funding
- Write progress reports for projects to submit to funding agencies
- Read recent papers to keep up to date
- Learn new topics in new areas
- Collaborate with other researchers
- Hunt for (industrial) collaborators
- Maintain research group meetings
- Manage research projects in terms of interviewing, hiring, expenses, forms, etc.
Other duties and services
- Reply to emails/messages from course students, supervised students, colleagues, collaborators, students/professors/etc. from other universities
- Supervise senior/graduation projects
- Serve as a member of a number of committees at department/college/university levels
- Consult and advise industry on impactful projects and assignments
- Serve as committee member for other graduate students’ MSc and PhD degrees and give feedback on their theses & dissertations
- Write recommendation letters for students and collaborators
- Review papers in conferences and journals
- Give public talks about research work locally and in external institutes and conferences
- Give workshops related to expertise and skills
- Maintain a profile on Web and social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)
- Write self evaluation reports
- Write promotion applications
- Manage and ignore jealous and political individuals within and outside the department
- Advise own and other universities on important policy and administrative matters
If you really want to be an academic professor, read the list above carefully and think twice!
(Adapted and edited)
South Asian Academy of Management 