Teaching experience

It’s very important to gain some teaching experience while pursuing your PhD if you’re hoping for an academic career. Teaching experience at ANU will normally take the form of tutoring for an undergraduate course.

Unfortunately it is not possible to guarantee tutoring work; and if you get some, it should be regarded as a brief opportunity for teacher training rather than a reliable source of income.

If you are interested, study the list of undergraduate courses and leave a copy of your CV with Jeremy Shearmur, giving details of which courses you are competent to teach. Or you can email an expression of your interest, and your CV, to Jeremy Shearmur, jeremy.shearmur AT anu.edu.au. You could also approach a course lecturer directly and let her or him know that you are interested in tutoring her/his course.

If you do secure tutoring work, you should enrol in the Graduate Teaching Program. This is an organisation funded by the Graduate School that runs a series ofweekly seminars during the semester you are teaching in. This comes highly recommended by past participants. There is only a very limited number of places and they tend to fill up quickly; so investigate this well in advance. The Graduate Teaching Program also has a "Sponsor-a-tutor" scheme. This allows the GTP, rather than the Philosophy Department, to pay your wages.

To get on both the GTP seminar series and Sponsor-a-tutor scheme, you must be nominated by the head of the department for whom you will be tutoring.