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how do you become a tuba professor? what are the steps you have to take, degrees you need etc...? i'm getting ready to head off to grad school and i'm weighing the difference between going into public schools or trying to become a college tuba instructor. what advice can those of you who have already done this give me?

A doctorate is pretty much required these days, schools may consider you if you are ADB but actively working on your dissertation.
There are two outstanding teachers at my former school that only have master's degrees, and they are not able to get on any kind of tenure track because of that. Their unique field has very few doctoral programs in the country, and none nearby. Unfortunately, there has long been rumours of some eggheads in administration who want to replace these gifted people simply because of the lack of letters after their name. Most of the others in the music department have achieved a "terminal" degree within the last decade to avoid this. Now, adjunct teaching is a whole other story, but from what I understand the pay is not worth it unless you already have a good performing gig.

I post this because I am seriously considering the same thing at this moment.
My wife just began pursuing a doctorate in "Counseling Education and Supervision" which will actually be a doctorate of education - the same thing Bill Cosby has. She will be able to teach psychology related classes at the university level and supervise other professional counselors once she attains this degree. As an optional part of the degree, she will do an internship very similar to student teaching. If nothing else, she should be able to hawk puddin' pops.

"My wife graduated from the University of Maryland, child psychology major, with a B plus average. That means if you ask her a question about a child's behavior she will give you at least a 'B' answer. I graduated from Temple University, physical education major with a child psychology minor. Which means if you ask me a question about a child's behavior I will tell you to tell the child to take a lap." -- Bill Cosby
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Joe Baker, who has to get back to work... before the monsters come out....

I submit that it be may well to be 'Jack of many trades' if you want to get your foot in the door as a full time prof.

For a full gig, you'll always have a large field of not only doctors, but doctoral equivalent professionals. You could try another route; that is, also get experience in another musical field, say conducting, and the look for a college that has a bunch of tubas, but not enough for a full-time tuba teacher. Such a college may be looking for an orchestra conductor, and may be intrigued enough to get rid of an adjunct. Not that you'll have anything against adjuncts, but if you want a full-time gig, you'll be getting somebody's job...

Then you'll build up experience, and I've know several people that have gotten instrumental gigs with the proviso that you get a doctorate within a certain time. And YOU may not have to pay for it.

I may see this in quite an oldfashioned light but...

to me a professor is someone who passes on the vast amount of skill and experience gathered from study as well as from actually working in the trade they teach. In many cases he/she will be working on developing that trade itself to gather further knowledge in the process. At the university I studied mechanical engineering, there is the "Hertz auditorium", being the actual place where Hertz carried out experiments to gain knowledge on electromagnetic waves.

In music, most tuba professors I´ve met so far (which is four, and most of these for just some minutes) were great musicians performing in orchestras as their main gig and working at the local conservatory / school of music / university... as a part time instructor. Gradually, this might have turned the other way over time, the orchestral gig becoming the part time activity in the long run.

Considering that a tuba professor should be preparing a student to become a pro musician (or a pro band teacher in HS) I can´t see anything wrong in that approach. As a student of music I´d feel safer in their hands if I knew they have worn the shoes themselves that I´d like to put on in the future.

First off - we go off track as soon as we accept the phrase "tuba professor".

Ain't no such animal.

There are tuba instructors, and tuba practicioners, and those who do both. Neither are (alone) the job description for a "professor", as generally understood in any half-way respectable college or university.

The extra dimension to a professor's job description is working to advance the field - creating and spreading new knowledge. Plus, there's a significant administrative component (running the department, the school, and the college). "tuba" is too narrow to be considered a "field" - so I prefer to think of a "music professor" who happens to mostly play the tuba.

Tenure is for folk whose job description calls for independent thought and speech - the basic idea is that you hire people to express opinions and you EXPECT them to be controversial....so part of the bargain is that (after a suitable probationary period) you can't fire them because they say things you don't like.

Performers peddle a particular skill, and (almost by definition) when the person doing the hiring doesn't like what he hears....the job is over.

Instructors are in a more gray-area middle zone. They are paid to teach classes. This sometimes requires the same sort of tenure protection that professors enjoy - but not always (and probably not usually). "Tenure" in primary and secondary educational institutions is another beast entirely, and I don't pretend to understand it.

So...teaching and performing don't really fit the tenure model at the college level. And, they generally do not require a "terminal degree". There are analogous positions in other academic fields - people who teach courses, or perform (directed) work in the field. Those people don't have tenure either, and don't necessarily require a terminal degree, either.

It's the extra dimension of a "professor" job that both requires that "terminal degree" AND makes the job something that requires tenure. Like it or not, there are real reasons why the two go together.

In many fields, it's *possible* to get a tenured professor job withOUT the terminal degree. Usually, these people have extensive high-level experience which is considered to be the moral equivalent of the terminal degree. It happens - but it doesn't happen often enough to recommend it as a career PLAN.

So - you want to be a "tuba professor"? Well, you probably don't even really know what that means. The good news is that the way you find out what it means is the same as the way you become qualified for the job - you go to grad school and jump through all those hoops. Hoops which are remarkably similar to the tasks you'll actually be asked to perform as a "professor".

As I tell my students - if you don't like being a grad student, you'll HATE being a professor!

No - I'm not a "tuba professor". I'm a professor who also hacks away as an amateur tuba player.