Freelancer to Professor: How to Land Your Dream Teaching Gig with Jenna Spinelle

Hey freelancer, have you ever considered teaching at a university?  

Our guest, Jenna Spinelle, is a freelance writer, podcaster, and instructor at Penn State University. She shares her inspiring journey from freelancer to professor and reveals how YOU can leverage your freelance skills to teach the next generation. Learn how to identify your unique teaching niche, approach universities with confidence, and  craft a winning pitch that will land you in the classroom.  

This episode is packed with actionable advice and will show you how your freelance experience can be your greatest asset in the world of academia.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to identify transferable skills from your freelance work that are valuable in the classroom
• Practical steps to take to approach a university about teaching a course
• What to expect when teaching a pre-existing course vs. developing a new one
• Tips for classroom management and establishing student trust
• The earning potential of adjunct faculty positions

About Jenna Spinelle

Jenna Spinelle is a writer and podcaster who tells stories that inspire hope and change in trying times. She hosts and produces the Democracy Works podcast and the narrative series When the People Decide, both productions of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. She teaches courses on news writing, podcasting, and the creator economy at Penn State’s Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. Her writing has appeared in outlets including Time magazine, Inside Higher Ed and Current, a trade publication covering public media.

Visit Jenna’s website.

Click here for full show notes.

Transcript

Jenna Spinelle: 0:00

As freelancers, we spend all day pitching ourselves, our ideas, our work. We have a lot of valuable skills that universities and colleges and the students at those places can benefit from. It's not that much of a leap to go from pitching an editor for a story you might want to write to pitching a department head for a class that you want to teach.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 0:24

Welcome to Talk Freelance To Me, the podcast for women freelance writers, 1099 independent contractors, and solopreneurs. I'm your host, Ashley Cisneros Mejia. For more than 20 years, I've worked as a journalist and freelance writer. Today, as a mom of three kids, I'm passionate about helping other women leverage the freedom that freelance offers. On Talk Freelance To Me, we're all about the business of freelancing. If you want to learn how to monetize your talents, make money on your own terms, and design a flexible work life that actually works for you. This show is for you before we get started. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite social media platforms, review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And don't forget to share this episode with a friend. Visit our website at talkfreelancetome. com for free resources. Join our email list to be the first to know about our latest offers. Thanks for tuning in and let's get into the episode. Today I'm so excited to introduce you to a new friend who knows all about higher education and leveraging your writing expertise to teach in a fantastic new way, the wonderful Jenna Spinelle. How are you today? I'm doing well, Ashley. Excited to be here. Likewise, I was thinking about how we met at Podfest. And I think you were talking to someone else. I think I was walking by and heard you say something about journalism and democracy and teacher. And I'm like, whoa, those are all my favorite things. And I think I may have just introduced myself. So Jenna. Thank you for talking to me then and being on the show

Jenna Spinelle: 2:03

today. Of course, yeah, and that's exactly how I remember it too, but I'm so glad that you interrupted and I think it turned into a nice three way conversation with the other woman I was talking with. Those kind of things that can only happen at conferences, right?

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 2:17

I think so. Freelance Fam, I'm going to go ahead and read you a little bit from Jenna's bio so you can get to know her more. Jenna Spinelle is a writer and podcaster who tells stories that inspire hope and change in trying times. She hosts and produces the Democracy Works podcast and the narrative series When the People Decide, both productions of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. Jenna teaches courses on news writing, podcasting, and the creator economy at Penn State's Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications. Her writing has appeared in outlets including Time Magazine, Inside Higher Ed, and Current, a trade publication covering public media. Jenna, you've achieved A lot. That's a slam in bio if I do say so myself. Thank you. There's a lot there. I love, again, Democracy Podcasting. You teach, you write, you've done so many cool things. Let's talk about that podcast first, and that podcast network that you helped create. How did that happen? Can you tell us more about that part of your journey?

Jenna Spinelle: 3:25

Yeah, so my journey into podcasting started when I took my current role at the McCourtney Institute in 2018 unlike a lot of podcasters, I don't come from a radio background, so I did not work my way up through the NPR ranks or anything like that. In fact, I had never done an on air series before. Style interview before we recorded the first episode of democracy works. I can remember vividly sitting down in the booth and putting the headphones on and realizing, Oh, wow, I've never done this before. And so it's definitely been a learning process. That was about six years ago now. So I've learned a lot since then. And the Democracy Works was really an early adopter in the podcast space. There were not a lot of other shows like ours at the time, but there have been more that have come onto the scene since then. And so many, in fact, that in 2020, I had the idea to start a network to help everyone with cross promotion and collaboration and professional development. Among all of the shows in the network. And over the years, that network, which is called the democracy group has expanded to offer things like a media training to help folks who are doing pro democracy work, get their messages out there on podcasts and a fellowship for high school and college students to work under the mentorship of. The hosts and producers in the network to launch their own podcast as a way to get Gen Z's voice out there on these topics and democracy. So it is a lot in some ways, a lot of different things that I do, but it also feels like one big job in some ways. My husband likes to joke that I have a job being Jenna Spinelli, which is something that I'm very grateful for and definitely don't take for granted.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 5:18

That is really impressive and inspiring and so needed now. And I love how you're using these creative vehicles to reach other audiences, meeting people where they are to talk about really important topics like democracy, where it stands and. Just that we all have a role to play in keeping this experiment going in this country. That's really fascinating. And I know you write, you, you're a writer, and now you also teach. So what drew you into teaching? How did that happen?

Jenna Spinelle: 5:49

Yeah, so it was always in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do. And just to go back a little bit further, my first few jobs were in local news. And then ended up moving back to Penn state and state college because I got laid off from a job in local news as things started to head south. I'm sure it's a familiar story to some of your listeners. And so I was thinking, Oh, it would be nice to teach. And then had some conversations with the department head and the journalist department who was a former professor of mine. So we were still in touch. And then one day in July, he called me, I was sitting in the parking lot. At the gym that I went to at the time waiting to go into a class and he's, Hey, we had just had someone who had to back out of a section of news writing for the fall. Are you interested in teaching it? And so this was like maybe mid to late July. So class was classes would have started in about a month. So I was like, okay, sure. So it was just thrown into the fire kind of thing. But I'm very glad that I said yes to that. It's like the old saying in freelancing, never say no to an opportunity because you just never know where it's going to lead. And so getting my foot in the door led to be able to teach podcasting and to develop a class on the creator economy and to do some work developing online courses. It started off. Very suddenly and very simply, but has really grown over time.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 7:16

That is really cool. And I'm sure you've had to adapt just even technology has changed so much and AI tools now that can improve the podcasting workflow. Like I'm sure you've had to constantly adjust your materials and your decks to keep up with kind of this changing system of thing. That's interesting.

Jenna Spinelle: 7:35

Yeah. To some extent, I, maybe I'm a little old school in this way, but I want my students to learn. the hardest version of what's possible so they know how to do it that way rather than jumping right to the shortcut. When in elementary school you had to learn how to do math the long way by hand rather than just punching it all into your calculator when you and I were in school or your phone these days. I want my students to still edit by listening rather than just plugging everything in and having AI do it. So we talk about. new tools and processes for sure. But I'm also very wary of students cheating and don't want to give them any more ideas for how to do that than they're going to find on their own. So I keep it maybe a little more old school than some others might or than you might think.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 8:25

That's great. Talk about being able to understand the reasoning for things too. Like sometimes you really, like you talked about with the illustration of the math, like understanding this is why. A lot of these foundational things, they build on each other and so if you don't know the foundational principles, it's hard later on down the night line, you can get tripped up. So I think that's really cool. And speaking of this, you just gave a really cool webinar for the Association of Independence and Radio Air about this, about taking skills. And your freelance or your creative life and thinking how to tie it into a university curricula of sorts. Can you talk more about that, about what maybe some of the key takeaways were or how people could take advantage of that idea?

Jenna Spinelle: 9:10

Sure. So I think the main focus of that webinar was just that as freelancers, we spend All day pitching ourselves, pitching our ideas, pitching our work. And we have a lot of valuable skills that universities and colleges and the students at those places can benefit from. So it's not that much of a leap to go from pitching an editor for a story you might want to write to pitching a department head for a class that you want to teach, whether it's something that's already offered or something that you want to propose. And the other thing that I've seen in my time at higher ed is that things for a variety of reasons, not necessarily all bad, but curricula tend to stagnate. Things don't really change. People fall into a rhythm of teaching the same classes semester after semester, year after year. And all of a sudden four or five years have gone by and you haven't updated your syllabus or your materials to reflect changes in technology, things that we were Discussing before. So as freelancers, we are, we have to keep up on all these changes. We have to keep ourselves current and knowledgeable about what's happening in the media and the industry more broadly. So why not bring that experience to students and use it as a nice. counterbalance to all of the things that full time faculty bring. Their expertise, their research, their years of instructional experience. I think it's a nice way to complement what a university offers and expose students to ideas and connections and potentially internship or job opportunities that they might not have known about otherwise.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 10:54

That's fantastic. And as you're talking about that, I think even just that skill of pitching yourself and pitching your ideas, I know we do it by necessity. And it's even in journalism, if you're just thinking about that slice of your expertise, you've done a lot of different things. We're constantly thinking of what's next, trying to anticipate trends and thinking, how do we take this idea, flesh it out and pitch it? And I think even young people That's a great skill to even learn how to do that, how to think critically, how to brainstorm, how to extrapolate, how to make connections. Because even if you're, if somebody chooses not to be a freelancer, but they work within a big organization, we're constantly having to pitch our ideas. We're constantly having to affirm to our bosses, for example, this is what I've done in the last quarter. This is how, this is what I think we should be doing next. And that's a great. And I think that I love that you're applying it in that way. That's really creative.

Jenna Spinelle: 11:53

Yeah, and it's definitely something that I've, to your point about being part of a large organization, like I've had to use some of that entrepreneurial skill set in my job, even launching Democracy Works or launching the podcast network. That wasn't something that anybody told me to go and do. It was something that I took the initiative to go and do. And so I don't know that I would have had quite that skill set or even the confidence to do those things if not for. The skills that I learned through freelancing and through my writing career.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 12:28

That's awesome. And so let's talk about that more. So say somebody has an idea and they're thinking this would be a good class as part of a department at a university. I feel like universities are very, maybe to me, just intimidating a little bit. And the fact that there, we have a lot of respect for these institutions, for all the knowledge of the professors that have gone to school for years and years. What are some practical strategies for approaching a university and pitching yourself? As an instructor, if you don't have a PhD or advanced degree.

Jenna Spinelle: 13:01

Yeah, so it is a common misconception that you always need an advanced degree to teach at the university level. Now, in some places, yes, that absolutely is the case, but it has been my experience that particularly in Journalism in media, in those kinds of fields, they tend to be more professionally focused and department heads and the folks in charge of hiring value, professional experience, just as much, if not more than an advanced degree. So the first thing I would say is don't let that hold you back. I only have a bachelor's degree and I've been teaching for 10 years, but you can definitely still get your foot in the door, so to speak, and build from there. The other thing I would do is just think about what skills you have, what you enjoy doing the most, what you might enjoy teaching the most. A lot of us probably do a lot of different things. Maybe we write, and we edit, and we have a podcast, and we do videos, and we do social media. And so the university curricula tend to be a little bit more fragmented than the real world. So think about which of those buckets you're strongest in, what you, what gets you the most fired up to talk to other people about, and that those are the areas that I would focus on looking for courses that might match that, those particular skills. And then it's just a matter of choosing what university you would want to teach at, and this could be anything from community college or a technical school all the way up to a four year public institution like the one I'm at Penn state and just seeing what's in their course catalog, just Google the name of your school and course catalog, and you can take a look through the journalism listings, the media studies listings, the communications listings. I would even look through like English or creative writing sometimes, especially things like podcasting. Get shoved into these weird places in curricula because it takes a long time to get a new course approved. So if a faculty member wants to start offering a course, they'll just make it fit within an existing course. And so that's how you end up. I have a colleague at SUNY who teaches podcasting, but it's technically listed as an English writing course. And so it's just, Because it would have taken three years to get the course approved, and she still intends to do that, but she didn't want to wait that long, and there was a lot of demand from students to take the course, so that's just where I think it ended up. Do a very thorough search of the course listings, and also think about if you want to teach online. A lot of universities have online education arms. That cater to adult students, people in the military, anybody who's not able to physically be on campus. So if you are okay, teaching in an online format, or maybe you prefer teaching remotely, either on zoom or completely asynchronously, where you write up all the content or record videos and the students work through it at their own pace, just thinking about what is going to work best for you and for your schedule and for your preferences. And then the last piece of this, once you have some of those ideas together, I would look up the department head or department chair for whatever department is offering the course that you're interested in. So let's say you want, you find a course at the University of Wisconsin in their journalism department. That you think, Oh, this is a class on, on freelancing, on, on freelance writing. This would be perfect for you, Ashley. You want to go to Wisconsin and get out of the Florida heat for a little while. And so you would look up whoever the head of the journalism department is there. And send them a pitch email, much like you would pitch an editor. This is me. This is my background. Here's my resume. This is why I think I'm a good fit for this course. And let me, please add me to your roster of freelancers. Would love to talk to you more. We can also look and see if they have any job postings. Sometimes, Universities will post adjunct positions, but sometimes it's just filled through word of mouth. So if there is a job posting, definitely apply for it and reference that in your email to the department head. But otherwise, just reach out and just like you would an editor, if you don't hear back right away. Follow up. These folks are very busy. Just their middle managers, just like editors are oftentimes, or just like other folks, you might be pitching other clients you might have, so you might need to follow up a few times, especially we're recording this at the end of the semester, we're coming up to finals week. So things are crazy. As we head into the summer, things are tend to be a little bit quieter. So that might be a better time for that initial reach out rather than the height of,

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 17:50

When you talk about adjunct faculty and professors, I know those are different from other types of professors. How much do they get paid? Are we allowed to ask?

Jenna Spinelle: 18:02

Yeah, you are absolutely allowed to ask and I'm very happy to share. I think like a lot. Of industries. Academia is becoming better about pay transparency. Thanks in part to a lot of collaborative efforts from people in the field. But I can tell you that from what I, my experience and what I've seen that adjunct pay ranges from about 2000 per course, all the way up to five or 6, 000 the course, and maybe higher than that. That's the highest that I've seen. And so to think about that, you are, that is for one. three credit course that runs about 15 or 16 weeks. So if you're teaching in person, it's probably about three or four hours of instructional time, actually time in the classroom, and then your time to commute to and from the classroom, probably another three or four hours of class prep, figuring out what you're going to talk about in those lecture classes, planning assignments for students. And then the final part is. grading, which is another, I'd say three or four hours a week, depending on how you structure your class. And as you're thinking about it, it's important to, you have control over your syllabus, unless you are teaching a very, Rigid prescribed curriculum. You can move things around. So if you know that you have a big project for a client that's due on a given week, or you're going to be out of town at a conference or on a reporting trip, maybe it's not the best idea to schedule a big assignment for your students due at that same time. So you don't have time for that. A bunch of grading on top of those other things. So just keep those things in mind. And then all of those hourly ranges I mentioned, it adds up to maybe 15 to 20 hours a week. Do you divide that out by what they're offering you and calculate your hourly rate and think about if it's worth it for you and what other areas of your business are you going to have to give up to take this on just like you would weigh any new client I would recommend weighing a potential teaching offer the same way.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 20:16

That's very helpful, Jenna. Thank you. So you mentioned in your case, someone pinged you at the last minute a month before and said, Hey, can you step in for this news writing class? Can you talk about the preparation involved in, in, getting ready to teach the class for an existing class versus a brand new one? Like you mentioned with the freelance example, how, what are the challenges or the opportunities in both of those situations?

Jenna Spinelle: 20:46

Yeah, so I think across the board, there's a lot less preparation than you might think. I was just thrown in there in the classroom. I got a few syllabi I met with a few people who had taught the class before, and I think had I started. A little had I known a little earlier, I would have had a chance to shadow some other instructors. I've had people shadow me over the years, new adjuncts coming on board, but it's a lot. There's really, at least at my institution, maybe other universities are different, but there's not a lot of formal training that you go through on this is how to teach a college class. So you have to Figure it out as you go. And I think when I started teaching, I was in my mid twenties and I thought, Oh, I'm going to be the cool young professor. First of all, I've never felt so old. I think I was like 26 at the time. And I felt so old when I stepped into the classroom and then you have to be, I think, a lot more strict than you would be, then you might want to be like people who know me personally would be surprised, I think, to learn how strict I am in the classroom, just because. A lot of students, unfortunately, if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile, right? They will lie. They will cheat. They will. I've said to my news writing students, y'all, if you spent as much time just doing the assignment as you do trying to figure out how to get out of doing it, you would all have As. That's just the world we live in. We could go off on a whole different tangent about why that is. But That's just the reality we live in. Maybe it's there are more or less degrees of it, depending on what school you're at, but I think that this mentality of students are going to try to do as little work as possible and try to get out of doing as much work is prevalent across higher ed. If you read the our professor subreddit echoes of this all over the place, and so I think just knowing that ahead of time. It's better to start off, I think, being more strict and more rigid and back it off over time if you find that you can build trust with your students and they're not going to walk all over you than to have to start from a place of they're going to walk all over you and there's not really much you can do about it. When I, my first semester or two, I thought. Oh, I don't have to take attendance. We're all adults here, right? This isn't fifth grade, but then after a couple weeks into the semester of a class of 20, I would have maybe half, maybe 10 show up on any given day. And so I just was playing catch up all the time, trying to keep everybody at the same pace in the course. I'm like, okay, I can't do this anymore. It's a lot more work for me. So I have to start taking attendance and that's just where we are. So I don't say that. To discourage anybody. There's a lot to like about working with students and how getting that perspective of what the kids these days are into can be valuable to you and your career, but just know that there are some drawbacks that come with it and just be prepared for that as you're getting ready to walk into the classroom.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 23:47

That's great advice. My goodness. I don't know if I have what it takes. I think I might have these Gen Z kids running all over me, but that's so interesting. That's great. Great tips. It makes a lot of sense. So Jenna, you do a ton of things. Like you mentioned, you've taken, you're an entrepreneur at this big institution and creating this innovation, creating the podcast or the network, even though no one asks you to do that, you're teaching, you're writing. That's a theme that I feel like a lot of. The folks in our community share is they're doing all the things and I don't know if it's a function of the freelance life or it's a function of just being in a creative space. And you have all of these ways that we can manifest our creativity or share our messaging. How do you manage it? How do you juggle these demands? And I'm sure there's competing deadlines sometimes. What tips do you have for making it all work?

Jenna Spinelle: 24:45

Yeah. I'm a big. Okay. planner. I like to work ahead on things as much as possible so I have everything ready to go and if something comes up at the last minute I can roll with it. So as much as I can prep newsletter content and social media content and podcast interviews and all of those things just trying to work ahead and have that content in the bank also just helps things feel less stressful. I think knowing that you have that backup there if something would go wrong. I also have become a lot better about delegating. I do have two folks who work with me on the podcast network and some other projects for them, the McCourtney Institute. I really have, especially in the last year or two, delegated a lot more to them, which has freed me up to do more higher level things and to focus. More on some of that entrepreneurial spirit that you can lose if you're just down in the mud day to day grinding stuff out. So I'm grateful to have. And I try to also just stay up on what's happening, what other people are doing. I draw inspiration from podcasts like yours and what other creatives are doing and other what people are doing outside of higher education, higher ed can be very insular and everybody's copying what everybody else at every other school is doing. I think one of the ways that I can bring a unique value is by Looking at, okay, what are people in other parts of media doing? What are people in other industries doing and trying to bring those fresh ideas back to the work that I do and to my classes as well, of course.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 26:25

That's awesome. Pulling from those different places, that's sure to keep things fresh and with the time. So that's fantastic. You talked a little bit about misconceptions that folks might have. The fact that you don't need this PhD, for example, to teach and some advice about starting strict enough to keep the young folks in line. Are there emerging trends in academia that freelancers should be aware of or prepare for if they're thinking about a class that they could pitch?

Jenna Spinelle: 26:57

Yeah, I think that there is definitely more of a focus on professional skills and things like podcasting, right? Like I converted a podcasting class that I taught in the classroom. into an online version so we could offer it to more students because there's more demand for it. So things like that. I think classes on video creation or on social media, anything to do with a creator economy is very hot. Anything entrepreneurship. I also think that. Other schools. If I, I said during my webinar, if I had more time, I would probably pitch a class on content creation to a trade or technical school, right? I remember being at a podcast conference and having a conversation with somebody that had an HVAC podcast, right? Because people in that industry need information too, right? And somebody needs to be the one to create it. And it's also, there's ways that podcasts are lead magnets. for businesses. I don't have to tell you about this. And so just thinking about all of the different fields that need these Creation and content skills outside of media and journalism and PR and marketing. I think these skills are very broadly applicable. So I would just encourage folks to think outside the box in that way about what other audiences might need. They're those skill sets. And then you're the only one that's going to be pitching the technical school about a content creation class as opposed to competing with a dozen other people, maybe who want to teach journalism or whatever at a four year university. So think about how you can create unique opportunities for yourself.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 28:42

That's really impressive. I love that. What's next for you? I know you, you have a lot going on. So I think with what you have, it sounds like a lot, but are there new projects that you're working on, things that you're excited about for this next summer and into the next school year? Yeah.

Jenna Spinelle: 28:59

As I mentioned, I've been doing a lot of work recently developing online courses, which is something I found that I really enjoyed, like writing out, taking basically my lectures and converting them into written modules in our learning management system really plays into my writing skills and a lot of my organizational skills as well. So I'll be teaching a fully online version of podcasting in the fall, and I'm excited to see how that goes, how students respond to learning in that. Format as opposed to in the classroom. I'm also excited. The democracy group network has a student podcast fellowship that I mentioned earlier. We have six amazing young women as part of the cohort this year, who will be launching their podcasts. So I can't wait to hear what they come up with. We'll be having a commencement ceremony for them online as well. And so it's really rewarding to get to walk them through the process of starting their own show. So I'm looking forward to that as well.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 29:59

That's really exciting, Jenna. Those are great projects. So I know people are going to hear this and have more questions. I want to talk to you more about putting some of this into practice and thinking about pitching a class. Where can folks find you online if they want to connect?

Jenna Spinelle: 30:16

Sure. My website is jennaspinelle. com J E N A S P I N E L L E. You can also find me on LinkedIn at J Spinelle.

Ashley Cisneros Mejia: 30:28

Fantastic. Jenna, thank you so much for being on the show today for sharing some of your journey with us and a lot of really practical tips that we can put into play for ourselves for the rest of 2024. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And with that, we've come to the end of another episode. Please make sure you hit subscribe and give me a 5 star review on Apple. Check out the show notes and grab my free Niches Get Riches freelance writing worksheet to brainstorm the best niches for your writing business. Until next time, this is Ashley Cisneros Mejia. Don't forget, we all get this Don't constrain yourself to a box that you were never meant to fit in. It is your right to profit from your own creative gifts. Our music was composed by Donna Raphael of World Instrumentals. Talk Freelance to Me is a product of Fenix Creative Studio.