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February 2, 2012, 12:13 PM ET

Do You Have Any Questions for Us?

Like a lot of job seekers this month, I am spending much of my time now preparing for interviews. This means not only anticipating possible questions about my teaching and scholarship, but also thoroughly scrutinizing the universities and their search committees. I want to be able to reference specific ways in which the current faculty's research intersects with my own work and to articulate precisely how I might add something to the particular department/program. This kind of preparation is relatively straightforward. The questions are predictable and in most cases department Web sites with faculty biographies make it easy for job seekers to learn about past and ongoing projects. What I am finding more difficult to prepare for, though, are those last 5 to 10 minutes of the conversation when the tables are turned and the applicant is asked what questions he or she has for the... Read More
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February 1, 2012, 10:44 AM ET

Libertarians vs. Authoritarians

Who knew how polarizing the issue of classroom management could be? I certainly didn't, until I read the comments on my December Two-Year Track column, "The Rules about Classroom Rules." Clearly, there are two distinct schools of thought regarding how best to manage one's teaching environment: the "libertarian" approach, which basically allows students to behave more or less as they like as long as they're not disturbing others, and what I'll call (at the risk of much additional abuse) the "authoritarian" approach, which calls for strict rules and swift punishments. Consider the very first response to my column, a long and (I thought) rather nasty comment in which the writer basically accused me of being single-handedly responsible for the decay of America's youth because I don't snatch up students' cell phones whenever I see them texting in class. My reply, I admit, was hardly kinder ... Read More

January 31, 2012, 11:39 AM ET

Please Don't List Me as a Reference

My last post, "Are Your References Reliable?," prompted several readers to weigh in on the ethics of providing a less-than-stellar employment reference. The general consensus of the comments was that would-be reference providers who have reservations about a candidate should be honest and encourage these job seekers to find others who can offer a more enthusiastic endorsement. I agree completely, but what happens when a candidate fails to even ask permission to list you as a reference? Just before the holidays, I received a message asking me to return a reference call for a "highly confidential search." No name and no clue about who we might be talking about were provided. Because I take reference inquiries seriously and always take care to return these kinds of calls promptly, I did what I always do. I got on the phone and looked forward to being helpful. Unfortunately for the... Read More

January 30, 2012, 11:43 AM ET

Faculty Working Conditions Are Student Learning Conditions

We've found a forum here and elsewhere online to finally open some conversations about contingent faculty issues. On individual campuses it is hard to find time or opportunity to talk through these things in any meaningful way. At the New Faculty Majority Summit this weekend we've tried to shy away from the airing of grievances, no matter how valid, and focus on ways to move forward. That's where I've been stuck--knowing the problems is just the beginning and I haven't known how to do more. A theme for the NFM is the title of this post and something that I think we need to emphasize in any discussion with the broader public about why they should care about our problems; after all, jobs are tough to find all over. Why does contingent faculty even matter? It matters not just to me and you and the other 800,000 non-tenure-track faculty across America. It matters to everyone who will take a... Read More

January 27, 2012, 04:16 PM ET

Some Notes on Thank You's

Interviews are being set up all across academe these days, as searches begin to near their final stages. Professional conference interviews are concluding, phone interviews are in high season, and on-campus interviews are on the horizon. When I went on the market for the first time, I sent out loads of thank-you notes. Call or e-mail me? You get a thank-you note. Interview me? A note to everyone on the committee. Turn me down and hire someone else? A final note expressing gratitude. I suppose this was a testament to my parents' interests in good manners, which merged with my deep-seated desire to have a job. On the other side of the job-search table, I have received stacks of thank-you notes over the years. They stand out visually in my mail, as the vast bulk of my mail is in standard business envelopes that dwarf the smaller hand-written notes. I always smile when I get them, in part ... Read More

January 26, 2012, 11:20 AM ET

Fear No Eval

A confession: this fall, compiling application dossiers in evidence of my teaching effectiveness, I read my students' evaluations for the first time in over two years. It's not that I've avoided feedback; during that period I've had my teaching regularly reviewed by graduate faculty and peers whose notes have been greatly appreciated. Nor is it that I am particularly thin-skinned in the face of criticism. Rather, I think I began avoiding student evaluations after my first semesters as a teacher because they simply baffled me and I felt I was spending altogether too much of my teaching energy worried about how I was being graded. What exactly did it mean when one student simply wrote, "Did not learn a thing. Terrible.," and then, in the standardized portion of the form, checked that he or she agreed that the instructor "stimulated student learning"? This particular evaluation came from a...

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January 25, 2012, 02:46 PM ET

Adjunct Moneyball

I watched Moneyball recently. It's about how the Oakland A's changed the way Major League Baseball teams spend money on players. A scene early in the movie shows a bunch of scouts sitting around a table with the team's general manager, Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt). Beane has just learned that his three star players were bought by richer teams and that the A's won't give him money to buy big talent. In the scene, the scouts are talking about potential players, commenting on things like throwing styles and athletic build and heart. Beane stops them, saying they talk too much about useless things. They don't understand the problem, he says, which is that, in the league, "There are rich teams and there are poor teams, then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us." According to the movie, baseball had become about money and it was unfair for teams that didn't have money. So teams, ... Read More

January 24, 2012, 02:36 PM ET

Student Envy

Most of us in academe are not in it for the money. We like the intellectual camaraderie, the flexible time, and even the sense of purpose that we often feel about our work. The paychecks we earn may make us wince from time to time, but we know that if we have a steady job that comes with some form of security, we are better off than most folks on this earth. But then there are the times that make us gulp. Don’t you hate it when a student comes back to thank you for helping her to prepare for a professional degree that actually does make money and you find out that this 24- or 25-year-old already outearns you significantly? We can smile and act like it doesn’t bother us, but let’s be honest, it does smart sometimes. Similarly, it hurts a bit to find out that one of your students has been admitted to a graduate school that turned you down when you were a student. It's easy to... Read More

January 23, 2012, 02:31 PM ET

Are Your References Reliable?

Last year, one of my colleagues was notified by her employer that her services would no longer be required. The story, as she told it, was that she was asked to "turn around" an underperforming division, but institutional leaders didn't really appreciate that turnarounds can cause some pain and later changed their minds. In the end, she said she and her institution parted ways amiably and the person to whom she reported even agreed to serve as a future reference. Seven months after receiving the bad news, my colleague was still unemployed, but she was not idle. In fact, she was exhausted by almost weekly flights hither and thither to interview at colleges, universities, hospitals, and consulting firms all over the country. In search after search she was one of two or three finalists. A finalist, yes. The finalist, no. She was stumped about her lack of progress. "I know I have the... Read More

January 20, 2012, 03:17 PM ET

Convincing the Partner

I have written before about how hard it is for my institution to help prospective faculty members find suitable employment for their spouses or partners. We share this challenge with many small private colleges and universities in small towns and rural areas, and I have had many conversations with my fellow chief academic officers at comparable institutions about how to find or create viable options for partnered candidates who we have invited to join our faculty. Though our possibilities in the spousal-employment area are limited, there is one thing we can do to show partners and spouses the life they might have were they to come to Storm Lake. This year, we have started to invite the selected candidate and his or her spouse or partner back to campus for a short visit to explore the town and get a taste of what life is like here. Doing this has increased our search expenses somewhat, ... Read More