Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea.
Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea.
Academic rank (also scientific rank) is the hierarchical rank of a teacher, researcher or other employee in a college, high school, university or research establishment. The academic ranks indicate relative importance and power of individuals in academia.
The academic ranks are specific for each country, there is no worldwide-unified ranking system. Among the common ranks are professor, associate professor (docent), assistant professor and lecturer/instructor.
The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word docens, which is the present active participle of docere ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualification that shows that the holder is qualified to be employed at the level of associate or full professor. The title of "docent" is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French maître de conférences (MCF), and equal to or above the title of assistant professor.
Docent is the highest academic title in several countries, and the qualifying criteria are research output that corresponds to 3–5 doctoral dissertations, supervision of PhD students, and experience in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors are usually experts in their field and teachers of the highest rank.
In most systems of academic ranks, "professor" as an unqualified title refers only to the most senior academic position, sometimes informally known as "full professor". In some countries and institutions, the word professor is also used in titles of lower ranks such as associate professor and assistant professor; this is particularly the case in the United States, where the unqualified word is also used colloquially to refer to associate and assistant professors as well, and often to instructors or lecturers.