Word on the street is that anthropology faces major challenges today. Departments are closing. Student enrollments are down, especially for undergraduates. Even the very value of the subject is scorned in some circles.

Now there is a new positive force for anthropology. The workbook, Teaching Tools for Anthropology Careers: Resources for Instructors and Departments, has arrived. Produced by the Anthropology Career Readiness Network (ACRN) with multiple editors, it is the companion for Career Tools for Anthropology, a workbook for students and mid-career anthropologists to guide them into successful work outside academia. The student workbook focuses on why study anthropology and how to find meaningful employment. Tools for Instructors explores what instructors can offer to prepare students for practicing careers—and what measures departments can take to overcome setbacks within the academic community and beyond.

A review of Career Tools has already appeared on the World of Work blogosphere. The review here focuses on the current volume addressing educators and instructors. But before I move into my thoughts on the new book, I would like to emphasize that Teaching Tools for Anthropology Careers can also greatly benefit students. It can help them:

  • understand the crisis better
  • defend the importance of anthropology in a university’s curriculum
  • support or lead efforts to publicize the worth of anthropology to their institution and academia in general
  • suggest the kinds of courses they would like to study
  • critique courses already offered
  • aid departmental networking, and
  • further contacts with potential employers in multiple domains within their community.

The Preface of the Teaching Tools book states, “If you are teaching anthropology and would like to learn about how to make your curriculum more career-oriented, then this book is for you” (9). To quote from its opening statement, “This book offers 37 [peer-reviewed] tools that provide straightforward guidance about career readiness for programs and individual instructors. The tools are intended to complement and enhance your current departmental offerings” (p. 9).

This book organizes its tools into three groups, Moving Your Department Ahead; Building Career Readiness into Your Courses; and Securing Anthropology’s Future. Each group stands alone, so that a busy instructor can follow any section independently, or, indeed, select individual tools for appraising and learning.

Will using ACRN’s new book for instructors inspire the teaching of career readiness and help advance the future of anthropology?

Along with a diagram called the Curriculum Ready Curriculum or Curriculum Wheel, which shows how elements of career readiness can extend from the “hub” of core anthropology, the book highlights four powerful catalysts for raising awareness of anthropology’s value, which include: Communication, Networking, Collaboration, and Problem Solving. The authors state that Interweaving these into anthropology courses enables students to get “repeated exposure to and practice with them” (p. 15–16).

Examples of Teaching Tools in the book include mention of an especially important and invaluable service, the Departmental Advisory Initiative (DAI). During a DAI, ACRN facilitators guide departments to create their own career readiness plan and address any shortcomings. These are a few of the tools provided:

  • Using SWOT [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats] to Prepare for Change (p. 63)
  • Exploring Your Ecosystem to Expand Connections (p. 70), and
  • Analyzing Stakeholders to Build Support (p. 74).

Additional tools address strategies to increase an anthropology department’s students:

  • Your Career Ready Coursework Checklist (p. 143)
  • Improving Anthropology’s Visibility on Campus (p. 103), and
  • Boosting Anthropology Enrollments (p. 117).

Some tools offer suggestions on specific proactive initiatives such as:

  • Launching and Sustaining a Community Advisory Board (p. 112)
  • Building Department-Alumni Connections (p. 110) and
  • Making Connections with Local Organizations (p. 196).

There is much more in the book, but finally, here are some tools that present practical guidelines for implementing or improving career readiness coursework such as:

  • A Career Ready Curriculum (p. 136)
  • Your Career Ready Coursework Checklist (p. 143), and
  • A Better ANTH 101 (p. 148).

Additionally, there are sections on Addressing Missing Elements in Training; Adopting Components of Successful Applied Programs; and Addressing Challenges Posed by Applied Programs (p. 24–28).

Peer reviewers praise this workbook as an “invaluable resource,” providing “clear, practical, and innovative tools,” and “a comprehensive resource.” My only criticism is that some of the print is quite small, so may require enlarging on a copier or using a magnifying glass.

Both Barnes and Noble and Amazon offer the softcover Teaching Tools for Anthropology Careers: Resources for Instructors and Departments at $25, with a small delivery fee. Even anthropologists committed to academia can use this workbook as a resource for students seeking careers beyond a university’s walls.

Some of the book’s contents are available on the ACRN website but are perhaps better referenced here for you. You can find everything in one easy-to-use, light-weight format, and portable to classrooms and other locations without a device. Plus, in the book you can write your own thoughts and assessments in its pages for your own reference.

Practicing anthropologists at all levels of experience can welcome the material offered in Teaching Tools for Anthropology Careers: Resources for Instructors and Departments. Optimism about the future of anthropology springs from its pages.

The post Will using ACRN’s new book for instructors inspire the teaching of career readiness and help advance the future of anthropology? appeared first on The Anthropology Career Readiness Network.