The chairman of our English department posted an announcement for a job opening in medieval studies only a few hours before Colleen, our resident medievalist, died.
The timing was awkward, to be sure, and the chairman apologized profusely. He did not want the department to feel he was trying to replace Colleen the moment she left earth for a much better appointment.
Colleen had been a faculty member in our close-knit department for more than 15 years. Students loved her for her whip-smart understanding of medieval and women's literature, her kindness and accessibility, her wit and irreverence. Her colleagues were no less fond. To many of us, she was not only a close friend and mentor, but also a hard-working peer who willingly assumed the tedious service tasks no one else wanted.
As a result, hiring Colleen's replacement this past spring seemed an impossible task, given that our entire department -- professors and students alike -- believed her irreplaceable.
Academics on the job market often express frustration about the difficulties of the search process: the inexplicable behavior of committee members, the apparently biased choices they make, the ambiguous and presumably unfair notion of departmental "fit." The Chronicle's forums reflect that frustration well, as post after post articulates the aggravation people feel about the seeming randomness of searches.
In the spring, I read the forums with a different perspective: that of a search-committee member in the midst of a very difficult search -- difficult because we in the department were all mourning the loss of a colleague and friend. We recognized that for the good of our institution, we needed to move on, yet personally, we were not ready to let go of our grief.
During our search, that tired excuse for a romantic breakup -- "It's not you, it's me" -- suddenly seemed an appropriate axiom for the hiring process, too.
As I considered the stress experienced by so many on the job market, I wanted to remind candidates not to let their worth be dictated by a committee. For the most part, search committees work in good faith, but sometimes competing issues (such as the death of a friend, in my department's case) complicate the panel's job.
Some applicants will always take a committee's rejection personally, or see the entire process as unfair and random. But my experience last spring has reminded me that job searches will always be less than perfect (as will search committees and job candidates) because we are all human, all flawed, all driven by complex desires and emotions. To believe otherwise -- that somehow a job search can be objective, impartial, unbiased -- is naïve, at best.
In our department, the specter of a new job search emerged two years ago, just as students were leaving for spring break, when our colleague and friend was diagnosed with metastasized colon cancer. That semester, as Colleen had surgery and began chemotherapy, members of our department taught her classes, graded her essays, and lamented together about what the Internet told us regarding Stage IV colon cancer: that only a small proportion of sufferers lived past five years.
Nonetheless, Colleen responded well to chemotherapy, and during the 2005-6 school year, she seemed her jolly self. She taught her classes, including a popular new course in international women's literature, received a promotion, and published several articles. All seemed well, and the memory of ominous Internet prognoses faded (just a bit) from our minds, if not from hers.
The cancerous spots on her liver would not disappear, though, and after an experimental treatment in fall 2006, Colleen's health began to fail. She never complained and continued to teach her classes, but she was noticeably weaker. Although no one wanted to voice concerns, we all wondered whether Colleen would be able to teach much longer, or whether we would need to begin the arduous process of hiring a replacement.
The answer to our speculation became clear in January 2007, when Colleen learned her cancer had spread further and her liver was failing. Our department was faced with an impossible decision: Start a new job search, although a health miracle might bring our colleague back to us; or wait until Colleen's death, when a viable search for the next academic year might be unfeasible.
We did not want to start a job search, although the department recognized that what was best for the institution was not necessarily what was best for us. Or for Colleen.
When her family members announced they were seeking hospice care for her, we could no longer ignore what needed to be done for our institution, and our chairman drew up a new-position announcement. He sent it out to everyone in the department via e-mail and then, several hours later, received word that Colleen had died, just as the hospice nurse was visiting her for the first time. Many of us, on reading our e-mail at the day's end, received the new-position announcement and news of her death almost simultaneously.
And so, our job search commenced from the depths of grief, as we were comforting students, attending memorial services, and trying to get through each day without crying every time her name was mentioned.
After several weeks, applications started rolling in, but my own sadness had barely diminished -- and, judging from my colleagues' demeanors, their hearts were not wholly up to the task facing us, either.
Looking through applications and conducting initial phone interviews proved difficult. Rather than allowing candidates to stand on their own merits, I found myself using Colleen as my measuring stick to evaluate the quality of the applicants. Sure, some of our applicants had more publications than my friend, or degrees from stronger graduate programs, but in my mind, no one would ever measure up. Because, of course, none of them was Colleen.
As we narrowed our field of applicants to our top three, discussions turned to the idea of "fit." Some job searchers seem to find that admittedly nebulous term unnerving, and argue that search committees should seek the candidate with the best credentials, the best degree, the best publishing record, all other externalities be damned. I always found that argument absurd, and thought so even more as we shuffled through the large applicant pool.
During our search, we rejected several candidates with impressive publications and great teaching evaluations. It was clear from their materials and from phone interviews that they would not be good for our department for a variety of reasons: They did not fit our departmental ethos; or their teaching interests did not fit our department's needs; or their intense focus on a particular research agenda did not fit the teaching-centered nature of our university.
I did not feel bad disregarding those candidates, knowing that our very cooperative department needed a good fit to maintain its well-being. Yet the problem was trying to find someone who fit the considerable Colleen-shaped hole in our department. Or, more likely, the problem was that I saw the hole in our department as being Colleen-shaped, one into which no one else would fit.
As we moved to the campus-interview stage, I began to wonder if our search would become one of those discussed on The Chronicle's forums, where job seekers regularly regale one another with stories about the inexplicable behavior of some search committees, about the oblivious, the bizarre, the downright mean.
While I thought our committee appeared friendly to candidates, perhaps I could not perceive how strange we really were. Would candidates be frustrated by the way department members referred to certain medieval courses as "Colleen's classes," or some advisees as "Colleen's students," or the office reserved for the position as "Colleen's office"? Did candidates notice that during quiet moments at dinner, one or two members of the committee wiped tears from their eyes?
Fundamentally, I wondered whether candidates were better off knowing the position they had applied for was once held by a beloved department member. Would that make our strange behavior easier to understand? Or would it just increase the pressure applicants felt?
That I had set an unreasonable standard became obvious to me during job talks and teaching demonstrations, when I noted to myself -- far too often -- how the candidates did not speak about their research as compellingly as Colleen had, or teach as dynamically.
And during dinner outings -- usually a raucous good time, given the nature of my colleagues -- I noticed how each candidate did not contribute as much witty banter as Colleen once had. I'm sure my other colleagues perceived that as well.
Of course, I recognized my judgment was unfair. Someone meeting us for the first time is not going to tease and joke as naturally as someone with whom we had years of shared history. Nor will all candidates speak with the same energy about their research as Colleen always had -- especially in the artificial venue proffered by a job interview.
But that returns me to my original point. While job seekers long for some sense of impartiality and rationality from search committees, it's important to remember that the committees themselves are made up of human beings, and that their humanity will always diminish any chance that a search will be entirely objective.
Although our committee's work was complicated by grief and the difficulty of letting go, we ended up hiring a scholar with strong credentials, a long publishing record, and the potential of fitting well within our department. I felt, too, given the circumstances, that our search was as fair and as transparent as possible, thanks especially to our chairman's hard work, his ability to communicate clearly with candidates, and his systematic approach to the search.
The candidate to whom we offered a position is certainly different from Colleen: Our new recruit is younger, for one thing, and less experienced, and seems a little more edgy than was my sweet-natured friend. As we move toward a new academic year, I am looking forward to working with my new colleague, learning from her, discovering what she can uniquely offer our department.
I know that, while my new colleague will have Colleen's office and classes, she will not be Colleen. And one day soon, I hope I will be OK with that.
