GOT MY PPR!
I just got my PPR today, letter dated october 15, 2009! I'll be bringing my passport in person on Monday to get it stamped. From what I've read in the forums it takes about 3 working days. I did not expect it so fast especially with the Canadian thanksgiving last week and all hari raya (CHC isn't opened that day either) in between. They also advise not to make any travel plans until I actually get the visa.
Anyway tran, I did my medicals on September 10, 2009. They still had to wait for my Australian police clearance which they may have received around late September, so I think that you should get your PPR about 3-4 weeks after medicals.
Making plans to leave after my birthday on Nov 6, might as well collect all the ang pows from my relatives before I leave. haha.
My e-mail is mediajunkie@gmail.com, do let me know of your status. I'll probably look at the Calgary market too.
Anyway @abelkwh, my speciality is telecommunications. Assistant professors in the US make between US$35,000-US$60,000 a year base pay. The average offer I got was about US$45,000. Remember this is for 9 month appointment, not including summer. You can supplement your income by teaching summer courses for the 3 months, but at UM and MSU I had to fight hard with the graduate students for summer teaching jobs. That will provide another US$5000 a year, but summer teaching is pretty intense. A lot of professors supplement their income by doing consulting jobs and getting grants, but the chances of a fresh professor getting consulting work is pretty slim unless you have lots of industry connections. After you get tenure in 6-7 years, it gets to be about US$70,000. I would've made about twice that much if I were out in the industry after working for that long.
You can teach without a Ph.D. at community colleges. Community colleges have very minimal research requirements (maybe a conference paper or two a year at most), students tend to be more attentive and serious as many of them are older and more mature. You don't have sports departments and colleges wrangling with you (big pet peeve of mine, long story) about failing their star atheletes. You don't have to supervise graduate students, which is a big plus.
Sometimes universities will hire you for adjunct positions (i.e. non-tenure track) if you have tons of real-life work experience, a Masters degree, with a good teaching record. Private Liberal Arts colleges are also almost teaching-only, BUT they do require you to have a Ph.D. and have extremely high standards for their teachers. One liberal arts college I interviewed at had the dean sit in pop in for random inspections on the teachers. This is because their students pay $30-40,000 a year in tuition and expect a very high quality education.
It's almost impossible to find a job at a research I (like UM or MSU) or a research IIA institution (smaller universities with limited ph.d. programs) that will not ask you to do research. This is because they are funded primarily by grants. Every grant you apply the university can take 30-60% for "overhead". I got a $6 million grant from Microsoft and UM took over $3 million for overhead (electricity, photocopies, etc.). But of course Microsoft expected $6 million worth of research when I had less than $3 million. And none of the grant money supplemented my income either (I was able to charge about $2000 in travel expenses to the grant, but that was it), it all went to research equipment. I also feel that I'm older, and hence less idealistic and starting to get less creative about projects, so I'd rather just settle to just teaching. Salary isn't an issue because I'm single, as long as I have enough to pay the mortgage and feed myself.
