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January 3, 2012, 09:17 AM ET

Ready or Not?

You hear about an exciting job opening. Intrigued, you review the job posting line by line. "I can do that. I've got experience on that front. Yep, I’ve got that one nailed. I’ve done that before. I’ve got great examples to share to demonstrate experience in that area. Oops, I don’t have this qualification ... or that one. I’d better not waste anyone's time by pursuing this.” Is that you? Or, are you the more likely to say to yourself, "An 80-percent hit rate? I own this job!" Certain people, and to my great frustration they are more likely to be women than men, wait to be perfectly qualified for a role before pursuing it. There are others, however, who tend to think about their potential capacity for success and assume they can conquer the demands of a role with a little time on the job. So, who’s right? While I would never encourage anyone to be reckless in applying for role for...

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December 21, 2011, 04:39 PM ET

Holiday Break

On Hiring is taking its annual holiday break. We’ll be back on January 3. Happy holidays, everyone.

December 20, 2011, 02:43 PM ET

Pseudo-Science or Useful Tool?

For the last few years, we've been administering an assessment test of working and leadership styles to candidates for management positions at the university. The hiring manager reviews the test results during the search process to help gauge candidates' strengths and weaknesses while making a decision on an offer. I confess that, like many people with a faculty background, I am skeptical of what might be termed "HR initiatives" such as this personality test. However, in this case, my skepticism was based on ignorance. I had not examined the test we use, nor taken it myself, and so my response to it was pure prejudice, which was, as is so often the case, based on a lack of real knowledge about the issue in question. Last week, as we were finishing up our on-campus interviews for several senior leadership positions, my relationship with the test took a new turn. In one particular search... Read More

December 19, 2011, 12:27 PM ET

Party Tips for Introverts

As we approach the final crush of holiday parties, I am watching my introverted colleagues show signs of strain. They know that it's socially and politically important to see and be seen at these events, but many really, really just want to stay home. I am somewhere in the middle between an introvert and an extrovert, so while I'm good at working a party, certain guest combinations can suck the psychic energy out of me. In today's post, I'll offer a few tips for navigating the party scene. • Ask your host if she or he needs help with set up or serving. "Working" the party can give you something important to do and an opportunity to interact with others in a natural way. If you come early to do this, your host will have time to introduce you to the first sets of guests to arrive. • Inquire about the guest list in advance and make it your mission to introduce yourself to two people ... Read More

December 15, 2011, 11:18 AM ET

New Blood, New Life

What happens when an academic department steadily adds new professors to its ranks for about a decade? At the University at Buffalo members of the physics department have seen that kind of hiring spate revitalize research, teaching, and enrollment. And the department — which has hired more than a dozen physicists since 2000 — has crunched a bunch of numbers to prove it. "The university made an investment in the department and the hires that we have made are paying off," said Hong Luo, department chair. For instance, Buffalo physics students and professors wrote 100 refereed papers in the 2010-11 academic year — five times more than the department produced five years earlier. The number of students who co-wrote academic papers almost tripled and the number of students who presented research at conferences increased five-fold, too. The department also graduated 18 physics majors... Read More

December 14, 2011, 12:25 PM ET

A Duck a Day (or a Chair Resignation, Anyway)

Recently a noted classicist in the UK resigned her position as department chair over budget cuts in her unit. As an administrator myself, I immediately thought of Richard Russo's classic higher-education novel Straight Man, wherein a beleaguered department chair threatens to kill a duck a day from the campus pond unless budget cuts are rescinded. Anyone who is in the decision-making process knows how complicated these matters are. We also know some people who seem to be better at navigating (or manipulating?) budgets, personnel requests, and other things financial. Some folks almost seem prescient in how they construct their budgets and can alter them effortlessly whenever hard times come along. What advice would you offer to department chairs or other administrators in order to exert stronger pressure on these sorts of challenges? What's the most extreme action you've seen taken to... Read More

December 13, 2011, 02:36 PM ET

A Career Dilemma

I recently received the November/December issue of the American Federation of Teachers' publication, On Campus, and opened to the headline: "Community Colleges More Satisfying for Female STEM Faculty." According to the article, Ohio University researchers found that women make up nearly half of the faculty members at community colleges who teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses (compared with 33 percent who teach such courses at four-year institutions) and that there is greater salary equity between men and women at community colleges. My first thought was, "Yes! Fantastic! It's wonderful that women are doing so well at community colleges!" Of course, my next thought was, "Wait a minute. Given that community colleges are at the low end of the prestige scale, and that our faculty are focused more on teaching and service than on scholarship, this study is a... Read More

December 12, 2011, 03:31 PM ET

A Failed Experiment

This semester, I decided to shake things up a little. I tried two experiments with my basic writing classes. As the semester wraps up, I can safely report one failure and one success. That would be good odds for baseball but I'm not thrilled. I'll talk about the second experiment next week. But here was the first one: Traditionally I have stated in the syllabus that after missing two class periods (for a course that meets only once a week), a student's grade will be lowered one letter grade by each additional absence. It is rarely an issue because if you are missing class often, your grade is usually poor already. So this year I decided to take out the specific consequence and only give the institutional statement that attendance is mandatory. I have several students who aren't showing up very frequently. They were getting large assignments done with the help of the online materials... Read More

December 9, 2011, 12:28 PM ET

The Perils of Interim Appointments

Every time I hop on a plane, I stuff my carry-on bag with a stack of backlogged reading material. During my most recent cloud-based read-a-thon, I stumbled on a higher-education “career moves” column and one of the entries made my eyes pop: “After 5 years, NAME is pleased to report that ‘interim’ has been removed from her dean title.” Wait just one minute. Five years in an interim role? Five years??? Would you put up with that? Reading this entry transported me back to a time several years ago when I was asked to assume leadership for my department while the director took a six-month medical leave. At first I was nervous. Then I was psyched. “Heck, yes; I am going to do this!” I said to myself. My excitement quickly turned to exhaustion as I attempted to do my old job and the new job while trying to be a somewhat decent mother to my two young daughters. Being a decent... Read More

December 7, 2011, 12:35 PM ET

What is a C?

Grading essays involves a fair amount of subjectivity, as those of us who do it for a living know very well. It's not like feeding multiple-choice answer sheets through a Scantron machine. Even if you use a rubric, you still have to make a number of judgment calls: What exactly does "clear" mean? "Appropriate"? "Coherent"? I'm often reminded of the time one of my fellow graduate students presented a seminar paper that he had written in reader-response style. At the time, back in the mid-80s, I had never heard anything like it. I found it fascinating and thought it was pretty well done. The professor, though, was not impressed. He was a venerable southern literary critic in the formalist tradition who, as a young man, had been associated with the agrarians. Reader response wasn't exactly what he was looking for in his seminar. He gave my friend a C. I remember wondering what might have ... Read More