Dr. Moustapha Fall, Associate Teaching Professor of French & Francophone Studies at the University of Victoria (UVic), shares about his career in academia after completing a PhD at UBC.
“Beyond providing me with a bright future in my academic career, FHIS could not have bestowed a greater gift upon me than the qualities of compassion, humility and self-sacrifice.”
Career
What do you like about your current job?
My responsibilities as an Associate Teaching Professor include 70% teaching, 20% scholarly activities and 10% service to my respective unit and to the university at large. In some cases, it also involves the supervision and training of Teaching Assistants.
I love all aspects of this job, but being in the classroom with students has been one of the highlights of my teaching career. The amount of time I spend in the classroom to engage in intellectual discussions and de-construct knowledge with students with higher order thinking mechanisms has provided me a lot of intellectual joy and a tremendous opportunity to not only teach to transform, but to also learn to be transformed in the process. The various cultural backgrounds, world perspectives and different learning styles I encountered in the classroom keep me motivated and always remind me of the fact that the ac(r)t of teaching can be a fun and exciting process of self-discovery rather than merely a painful transmission of knowledge.
It was very nice and humbling to receive a teaching excellence award after students nominated me in April 2024. When I received this award, I was very moved and at a loss for words to express what I really felt at that time. It was moving to see one of the six students who wrote letters to nominate me for the award attend the ceremony. I personally think most of the credit should go to those students, and the award committee members, for having gone beyond racial and cultural considerations to focus exclusively on teaching performance in the classroom. I have also recently been nominated for the Campus Kudos – Global Edition award in recognition of my exceptional contributions to Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation, fostering diversity, and classroom leadership.
I hope these awards inspire more students to nominate BIPoC faculty members who have a strong teaching record, and that it encourages more institutions to look into why some BIPoC faculty members are still struggling to receive these types of awards despite being strong teachers in their respective areas.
What challenges did you face in launching your career?
One of the challenges I have been facing lies in understanding the dichotomy between research and teaching. I believe that the dichotomy between teaching and research that some institutions create is a mistake, because teaching and research are complementary. As someone who has an active research agenda and a strong teaching record, the UVic university system may struggle to pin me down to one area because I can fit in either category, and I am not alone in this.
One of the ways I am trying to overcome that “double yolk” is to focus on teaching during the Fall and Spring Sessions and to maintain a full research agenda during the Summer Sessions. My summers give me the opportunity to work with several universities in Latin America and Africa to conduct research on African leadership and inclusive pedagogies and the impact that colonial language legacies have on language education among language minority communities. I have been doing quite well in maintaining both an active research agenda while teaching seven courses a year, in addition to various other services to my department and the university.
What was your first job after graduation and what other jobs did you have before your current position?
I was fortunate enough to land my first teaching position at the University of Southern Illinois right after graduating with my PhD in 2014. Although it was a one-year term position, I managed to return to Canada to hold another limited-term position at the University of Calgary in 2015, before I finally got a full-time teaching position at the Department of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Victoria (UVic), which is now amalgamated under the new School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics (SLLC).
Since then, my career has been progressing very well and has opened up academic horizons by allowing new opportunities for research and teaching collaborations. In that respect, I recently became a new participating faculty member in Cultural, Social and Political Thought. In addition, I founded of the Inclusive Pedagogical Cluster and have co-created with Professor Helene Cazes le Cercle Philologique de Victoria. I am President of the University of Victoria Association of Black Professors & Academics.
What advice would you give to students and alumni interested in breaking into your industry?
Never engage in academia if you do not have a strong passion for conducting research and teaching. If so, it can be a very painful, stressful and challenging process, simply because both research and teaching require a lot of energy, passion and patience.
Some people find academia to be a lonely, stressful, energy-draining environment that feels like an uphill battle, completely out of touch with the lived realities of our respective communities. Others find it to be a fun and exciting environment where one discovers a lot about people’s research interests, and where one meets interesting, dynamic, intelligent and loving people.
Ultimately, what I have learned over the years is that academia, like any other career path, is simply what you make of it. Yet, if you ever decide to pursue a career in academia, or if are already in academia, always be aware of this: if academia ever makes you feel like you’re not good or smart enough . . . it’s not you, it’s academia.
Graduate Student Experience
Why did you pursue a PhD in French Studies at UBC?
I have always been interested in studying the underlying mechanisms that govern first language learning and second language acquisition. After seeing the close relationship between mother tongue literacy and second language learning through the writing of my high school students, I became more curious about the concept of cross-linguistic transfer and the idea of interdependence between first language literacy and second language learning. Before I came to North America and joined UBC, I was nurtured in a fertile teaching environment in Senegal where I developed a love for acquiring knowledge and sharing it with everyone.
I decided to join UBC thanks to conversations with a former high school student that I used to teach, who attended UBC after graduating. Following our conversations and additional research, I applied to the French PhD program in 2009 and was awarded a full four-year scholarship, which covered my tuition and gave me a great opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant (TA) throughout the program.
What contributed to your academic success?
What I metaphorically call the “teaching-research fire” was lit by my parents, albeit with limited financial means, who always pushed me to pursue what I love to do. After I left the parental cocoon, several people have added logs to that “teaching-research fire,” providing me with the tools to question my own limits and fears to maximize my human potential.
With respect to the “research fire”, I had the opportunity to be co-supervised by two great individuals at UBC (Professor Gloria Onyeoziri and Dr. Samuel Navarro). They added more logs to my “research fire” by helping me discover endless possibilities of potential greatness when I often doubted my abilities to flourish and prosper throughout my PhD program. For instance, Professor Onyeoziri not only went beyond her supervising duties to provide me with immensurable moral and financial support, but she also taught me compassion, humility and sacrifice for others. Beyond providing me with a bright future in my academic career, FHIS could not have bestowed a greater gift upon me than the qualities of compassion, humility and self-sacrifice. These great human qualities have since been guiding principles governing my personal and professional career.
With respect to the “teaching fire”, the opportunity to be a TA during my PhD allowed me to be very active in teaching committees and to participate in teaching workshops with other professors, who added more logs to my “teaching fire”. Thanks to the various professors who took the time to evaluate my teaching and provide me with great teaching tools in the classroom, I have been able to look at the ac(r)t of teaching from various angles and perspectives. I thank these professors for adding more logs to the “teaching fire” with rigor, grace and compassion: Dr. Brianna Orr Álvarez, Dr. Sylvia Bascou-Vallarino, Dr. Alessandra Santos, Dr. Robert A Miller, Dr. Anne Scott, Dr. Stephanie Spacciante, Dr. Juliet Obrien, and Dr. Maria Carbonetti.
What were some of your most meaningful experiences?
Nothing was more meaningful than the amount of time I shared with my graduate student peers in the PhD program. In our best moments, we travelled together to national conferences, and had long TA gatherings in which we would ponder over our respective teaching duties, share our doctoral research projects and seek ways to complete our program successfully. In our gloomiest moments, we found both comfort and resilience in one another, drawing from this perfect union of graduate students from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
