How Do You Become a College Professor?

So you want to be a professor! If you're looking for how to become a college professor, I wish I could say I'm offering you five easy steps, but... well, I'm at least offering you five steps. They just might be hard ones! This covers the big picture journey to becoming a professor... choosing a major and a field as a undergrad, finding out what research looks like in your discipline (e.g., getting research experience as while an undergraduate student or doing an honors thesis), applying for PhD programs and getting into a PhD program (or other terminal degrees like a law degree or an MFA - you might want to be a law professor or a dance professor!), deciding what kind of professor you want to be (community college? instructor? lecturer? liberal arts college? tenure track assistant professor?) and whether you want to do more teaching or more research, building your CV towards the kind of experience that's important for that kind of job (teaching a class, teaching assistantships, research publications, law reviews), and finally, hitting the academic job market and applying for professor jobs. If that sounds like a lot... it is! But also totally worth it if it's your dream.

Things that might help:
applying for PhD programs    • Applying for PhD Programs  
succeeding as a PhD student    • Advice for New PhD Students | How to ...  
how to write an academic CV    • How to Write an Academic CV + Example...  
inside a tenure track faculty job    • What is it like to be a college profe...  
tips for the academic job search (and sample materials)   / the-academic-job-search-its-not-you-it-s-them