A friend of mine once observed that even several years into his tenure-track job, he still finds himself looking at job postings. He wondered, Is that normal?

I told him that I still check out the job ads, even though I’m a tenured full professor happily employed in a dean’s role. I do it, in part, out of habit. But I also keep an eye on the market for friends looking for new jobs.

And honestly, a tiny part of me remains curious about what else is out there. Is there a better position somewhere for me? Could there be grass greener than the lush field in which I labor? Perhaps my early experiences on the market, especially as a freshly minted Ph.D., created an element of paranoia as well. I can’t help but wonder just how long I can stay happy in my job.

So even as I wonder why I do it, I still carry a copy of the job listings from my...

As I hoped, my last entry on how graduate students and hiring committees are socialized by the culture of research universities has attracted a variety of divergent comments, including a thread on The Chronicle’s Forums.

People talked about how the job market functions relative to graduate training as well as about the priority placed on research, the challenges of finding money to support your work, the sometimes ill-functioning nature of institutions with high teaching loads, and so on.

Coincidentally, I recently received an e-mail message from a former student, one of the best I have taught in 20 years, who is now enrolled in a master’s program in English at a midlevel research...

The problem with workplace bullies, says Historiann on her blog, is not just that they drive off good employees but also that they turn “those who remain into bullies themselves.”

In Parts I and II of a post about bullies, Historiann advises their targets: “Don’t sue — run for your lives.”

“We don’t encourage people in abusive relationships to believe they can make the abuser change. Why should we expect people in bullying work environments to stick around and try to change the culture, when they have little if any power or influence to force reform?

She quotes Robert Sutton, author of The No...

Since I have to vet the job ads for the 15 units in my college, I have been amazed to see the differences in how various disciplines write their ads. Some are pithy and to the point, while others are more prosaic and inclusive.

I’ve grown used to the differences, but I am slightly paranoid about approving ads that violate my deepest pet peeves about job postings. As I peruse the job postings in The Chronicle’s print edition, I am reminded weekly that two kinds of ads drive me bananas: the very long ones (which seem to include every conceivable overkilling detail) and the very short ones (which omit important information such as subspecialty areas of expertise). For the long ones, the human-resources folks seem to have run amok; for the short ones, the budget folks seem to have screamed “Buy the cheapest ad available!”

What are your...

I know of several institutions that offer a small apartment to visiting faculty members as part of their recruitment package: rent-free living with a slightly reduced salary. Most faculty members jump at the opportunity because, in addition to saving on rent, they save on cable, Internet, and other utilities, as well as on gas. For last-minute hires, it’s a great help because it also saves candidates the trouble of having to make an additional trip to town to locate housing.

My campus has at least one such creative benefit: Our university advertises with our local AA minor-league baseball team and receives four box seats near the dugout. We post announcements for available tickets every couple of weeks in the summer on a first-come, first-serve basis. That provides faculty and staff members with a nice night out.

For those of you fortunate enough to have...

For a long time now, the worldview that dominates at research universities (“The R1 Paradigm”) has also dominated the rest of higher education. High research productivity, relatively low emphasis on teaching, and indifference to, if not disdain for, service activities are large parts of that worldview.

Its dominance can condition the behavior of both candidates and institutions in ways that are neither productive nor helpful. Graduate students who reach the job market are generally high achievers in highly competitive research environments, and have naturally absorbed the values of their mentors whose backgrounds fall within a select circle of research universities. Search committees are filled with people who have been trained and acculturated at those same select research universities.

The challenge for both candidates and committees comes in the...

Several faculty members in the College of Arts & Sciences I oversee left us for a few years — usually to teach or take an administrative job at another institution — only to return to our university.

Their reasons for leaving are highly varied, but they all seem to be glad to have come “home” again. In fact, some of them are quite open with their opinions about the proverbial grass not always being greener elsewhere.

It’s very common in administrative searches to contact fondly remembered former faculty members who might be interested in returning to serve in a new role. The advantage of that approach to recruiting is finding candidates who know the important players in the decision-making pool and know the institution’s culture from the inside.

Those same advantages, though, can be barriers to luring back former...

What is the relationship between faculty members’ political affiliations and their classroom performance? Stanley Fish says he’s answered that question many times before, but he’s answering it once again.

In May, Fish wrote a column on his blog, Think Again, “lampooning the University of Colorado’s plan to raise $9-million for a chair in conservative thought,” as he described it. The angry responses to that column — a summary of which appeared in The Chronicle Review last week — prompted Fish to take up the issue again on his blog this month:

“I would...