associate professor

American  

noun

1. a teacher in a college or university who ranks above an assistant professor and below a professor.

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associate professor British  

noun

1. (in the US and Canada) a university teacher lower in rank than a full professor but higher than an assistant professor

2. (in New Zealand) a senior lecturer holding the rank below professor

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Other Word Forms

• associate professorship
  noun

Etymology

Origin of associate professor

First recorded in 1815–25

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

associate professor

Dr Pascal Vrticka, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Essex, has spent nearly two decades studying attachment.

From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026

Jonathan Gienapp, Stanford associate professor of history and law, stressed there are reasons for education beyond making money.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 2026

“It’s hard to find things that are not made of plastic,” says Phoebe Stapleton, an associate professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026

"Itch is one of the major symptoms in most chronic skin inflammation patients," said Bo Duan, associate professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 2026

Panofsky, who had risen precociously in his two years at Berkeley to the rank of associate professor, detested the very idea of the oath, but signed— “reluctantly,” as he put it later.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik