Demystifying, Reimagining, and Modeling Career Paths Within and Outside Music Academia

The past seven years of my career look like the most idealized career path in music academia: in the 2016–2017 job cycle, I applied to twenty-five tenure-track (TT) positions and accepted a job offer at what is possibly the most compatible institution (for me), a school of music within an R1 university that happens to have the most complete and significant archive in my area of research, Cuban studies. Upon arriving at this institution, I focused my energies into writing a monograph, the type of publication that would (almost) guarantee a successful application for tenure and promotion. But if you had asked me eight to ten years ago how certain I was that my career would unfold in this way, I would have answered with something to the effect of “well, you never know what the job market is going to be like, and I'd be happy to pursue and continue working in ‘alt-ac’ positions.” In what follows I share my nonlinear path within and around academia in the hopes that graduate students, early career scholars, and advisors may draw some insights on the resources and options they might have available when considering various career paths.Like most PhD students (currently and at the time), the academic culture around me celebrated landing a TT position, in particular at an R1 university. Yet, by the time I was finishing my PhD (2016), this culture had somewhat shifted to celebrate the achievements of alumni who forged career paths beyond TT lines. It was, after all, in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, when many programs canceled TT searches and substituted TT lines for other ranks (such as lecturers, professors of practice, and adjuncts), that recent PhD graduates (and current students) faced a new reality regarding the academic job market that made the guarantee of landing a TT position the stuff of fairytales.1 Alumni of my program had found success in radio production and broadcasting, academic press editing, librarianship positions, and more, and the school of music would at times organize panels and conversations featuring them as exemplary alumni who could share their experiences in these types of career paths.Due to my financial situation, I found myself working in various “alt-ac” jobs while working on my dissertation. My fellowship only covered tuition, health insurance, and a stipend during the first four years of my degree, after which point I had to take out student loans and find other ways to supplement my income. In my first postfellowship year, I had a one-year graduate assistantship as editorial assistant for the Journal of Musicology and began part-time hourly work in a media digitization lab. A year later, I added another part-time hourly position at Indiana University's Latin American Music Center (LAMC) and began teaching as an adjunct for the general music program. In my position at the LAMC, I was assigned to fulfill a variety of needs, including web content management, graphic design, event production, and marketing and publicity as well as editing, conference planning, album production, community outreach, and project management. I did not start my position at the LAMC with all of the skills I would need to work on these projects, but the director of the LAMC at the time, Venezuelan choral conductor Carmen Helena Téllez, supported my acquisition of these skills by making the training sessions (offered at no cost by the information technology offices of the main library of our campus) part of my paid hourly work. By the end of these training sessions, I received a “desktop publishing certificate,” which I credit for equipping me with the basic graphic design and editing skills I have applied in various positions (from research assistant to program specialist), and which I continue to use today as a professor.2Working in these part-time positions meant that I had a limited amount of time to work on my dissertation. At one point, my advisor asked me what it would take for me to finish writing it, to which I responded “a dissertation fellowship.” That year (2014) I received such a fellowship, and I made significant progress on my document, submitting it to my committee in the spring of 2016. The plan was to defend my dissertation, graduate, and go on the job market in the fall of 2016. But that summer, a full-time “alt-ac” job opportunity arose, program specialist for the Society of Ethnomusicology (SEM), a position for which I was uniquely qualified thanks to my training in ethnomusicology, my participation in SEM, and my previous work at the LAMC. Fully aware that I was also a new mother with an almost-one-year-old son, my advisor, Halina Goldberg, supported me in my decision to apply for the position, as she also encouraged me to apply for TT positions over that coming year. When I interviewed with SEM's then-executive director, Stephen Stuempfle, I was honest about my intentions to go on the academic job market that fall. He was concerned at the prospect of having to do another search within a year if I landed a TT position; I explained that I understood his trepidations and that I was worried (in fact, quite scared) at the prospect of being unemployed at the end of the next academic year if I wasn't considered for the SEM program specialist position. In the end, he took a risk and offered me the job, and I promised to be up-front about any upcoming campus interviews and possible job offers so he would have ample time to hire and train a new program specialist in the event of my departure. I had three campus interviews and two job offers by the end of the spring of 2017.I was incredibly fortunate to land a TT position within months of finishing my PhD. I also gained additional skills while serving as program specialist for SEM, including metadata entry, database management, and basic accounting and bookkeeping. I share this detailed account of how I came to work in these positions and the skills I employed to convey how my particular situation—the need for funding, the type of institution I was at, the opportunities at this university, and the support of key individuals—led me through an “alt-ac” path that now informs how I advise graduate students who are considering career paths beyond the traditional TT academic appointments.At my current institution, we do not have a PhD program but have a master of music program. Not all of our graduates apply to PhD programs; we don't pressure students to make that choice, but we support them through their PhD application process if that is the path on which they wish to embark.3 For students who decide to pursue a PhD degree, I set realistic and clear expectations about the academic job market, showing them the previous years’ music studies jobs wikis, where students can see how many job openings were listed in a given year and information such as the program from which the successful applicants graduated and if they already held academic positions. In such a conversation I also share my experience on the job market over a two-year period, having submitted fifteen applications the first year and twenty-five the second year, being invited to a handful of short Zoom interviews and only three campus interviews. Thanks to data collected by Danielle Fossler-Lussier and Stacy M. Hartman (which they shared in a session of the 2023 American Musicological Society annual meeting), I also include in this conversation some basic statistics regarding the employment trends of 2008–2022 doctoral graduates in music studies, specifically that only 23.3% of individuals have “firm commitments of academic employment at graduation.”4Once a year I lead a presentation and discussion on applied/public/“alt-ac” work in our department's weekly Friday Forum. In the spring of 2023, I collected some of the resources I share in these sessions into a blog post, “Public/Applied/‘Non-Academic’ (Ethno-)Musicology,” which I now share with students and colleagues when they inquire about this topic.5 This post has generated further discussions with colleagues at other universities, some of whom have shared it with their students and have invited me to join their seminars over video calls to further discuss my experiences. Broadly speaking, I encourage students to take advantage of any opportunities that might arise in their programs and universities that would allow them to broaden their knowledge and skill sets, such as helping produce concerts, albums, or festivals; designing marketing and publicity materials; managing websites and social media accounts; and finding job opportunities in the library system to work with metadata entry and management or preservation of archival materials. I also advise my faculty colleagues to design course assessments that replicate real-life applied work, such as curatorial projects or grant applications. As part of my department's Friday Forum, the musicology faculty has invited the directors of our music library to discuss with our students their journey from musicology to music librarianship. I also continue to share with students other examples of colleagues who are doing this type of work, and I keep a list of colleagues who similarly work in the nonacademic sector with the hope of inviting them to our Friday Forum so they can share their stories and have conversations with our students. Without these examples, which were not provided or modeled for me as a graduate student, it is nearly impossible to imagine a career outside of academia. Additionally, networking and finding employment outside of academia is far more dependent on making specific connections over coffee or lunch or through mutual contacts, getting recommendations not based on an advisor–mentee relationship but on the basis of a peer-to-peer recommendation. For this reason, I continue to expand my network of professional contacts through LinkedIn and work with local organizations (such as the New World Symphony and the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation) to help students explore opportunities outside of academic institutions.I give students suggestions on how they can gain certain skills while in graduate school, such as taking workshops or completing training to obtain professional certificates. I also design assignments that will build these skills and prepare them for these kinds of jobs, such as podcasts, grant applications, website creation and content management, and poster session presentations (graphic design). When outlining learning objectives for my courses, I include active verbs that students can then include in their resumes under a listing of their “skills.” I am overt with them about my rationale for their projects and how they can apply these skills beyond the course and use the assignment guidelines in their job application materials.Over the years, some students have taken these skills and applied them outside of the classroom in innovative ways. I closely advised a French horn student, Caiti Beth McKinney, through her doctor of musical arts (DMA) document writing process, serving as the chair of her committee. Although she was not a “card-carrying” musicologist, her interest in exploring the intersection of orchestral horn repertory and gender led her to ask questions of a musicological sort. Since finishing her DMA, she has created a database of music for brass by women composers, launched her own podcast, and become a full-time member of the Boulanger Initiative.6 Guillermo Ospina, another DMA student in instrumental performance for whose doctoral document committee I served as chair, organized a marimba de chonta workshop with a visiting ensemble from Colombia, combining research, performance, and community-building. These are just two of several examples of students who have applied knowledge and skills gained through musicological studies in their performance activities and other projects that lie beyond academia.For those nearing the end of their PhD, I offer support and advice for their journey on the academic job market after meeting them at conferences and maintain communications via email and remote video calls. I have helped students and colleagues prepare their job materials by providing feedback on their cover letters and sharing a folder stored in a cloud service that contains resources that include sample cover letters; diversity, equity, and inclusion statements; statements of teaching philosophy; research statements; and CVs. At Frost, I have led online workshops on preparing cover letters, turning seminar papers or degree document chapters into articles, writing conference paper abstracts, and navigating academic conferences. In the fall of 2024 and spring of 2026, I facilitated a “boot camp” on academic career development for graduate students at the Frost School of Music. Over the course of twelve weeks, students were assigned to view and complete the activities of the “Core Curriculum” of the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development (viewing one webinar per week) and met for weekly group sessions where we discussed the concepts covered in the webinar and how to adapt them to music academia. The students who participated in the program found relief and support in knowing they were not alone in facing the challenges of graduate school work and academic life, and they voiced appreciation for the time we spent discussing various issues, such as expanding their network of mentors and dealing with stress and time management at this stage of their careers. Through a variety of formats—a twelve-week group program, blog posts, Friday Forum, one-on-one meetings, and individual feedback—I attempt to demystify possible paths within and outside academia. I hope to provide some guidance for advanced doctoral students as well as newly minted PhDs as they contemplate what career path will best fit their personal and career goals. I also aspire to model for my colleagues how to guide and mentor graduate students who show interest in nonacademic positions, especially in our current economic and professional circumstances; it is our duty to prepare our graduates for an unpredictable job market, and to do so, we should lean on each other's strengths and expertise, rely on our professional communities, and foster a supportive environment in which all students can explore various career paths.