I heard a speaker at a recent conference remark that university life changed when the “Office of Personnel” transformed into the “Department of Human Resources.” The change, he opined, meant that the “person” was jettisoned and converted into a “resource.”

I often stand amazed at how frequently academe treats employees like some sort of consumable resource. Adjuncts who are ground into dust, housekeeping staff workers who are denied benefits, even entry-level faculty members who are tossed into the classroom with little preparation.

How is it that an environment so saturated with high ideals can harbor such a cynical view of workers?

Over the years I’ve seen my share of visiting faculty members come and go. Some, myself included, are converted to the tenure track; others put in their year and head on for other employment. No one’s story is the same.

Visiting faculty members often ask me for advice on just how involved they should be in the life of their temporary departments. It’s a hard line to walk. A too-eager attitude can be read as an indication of desperation. A hands-off approach can be interpreted as “No thanks, I’m only visiting.”

I’ve seen crazy duties assigned to visiting faculty members “because they are only temporary” or, more unfortunately, because they are willing to work extra hard to prove themselves as colleagues under the mistaken belief that it will improve their odds for a permanent position. I’ve also seen visiting folks practically shunned, which is deplorable.

My advice is to treat a ...

In any discussion of academic hiring, the matter of institutional “fit” will always arise. Colleges and universities obviously want to ensure that the people they hire can succeed in their specific institutional contexts, and rightly look at qualifications, skill sets, past experiences, and temperament in making hiring decisions.

The problem with fit, of course, is that it can also be an instrument of discrimination. “Will this person work out here?” can easily turn into “this candidate is not like us.” Because fit has essentially no objective indicators, it is a slippery concept and can certainly be used dishonorably or illegally to discriminate against qualified candidates.

It is unrealistic, though, to assume that paper qualifications are a sufficient indicator of an individual’s potential at a specific campus. Interest and or/experience in a particular type of institution,...

One complaint I hear with some frequency from job candidates is about the “ambush interview.” That’s when a search chair calls out of the blue and casually asks to speak to you for a few moments. Those calls usually are informational (to check on your continued availability as a candidate or on the prospects of your attending a conference) and take place in searches being conducted late in the year when time crunches occur. Occasionally the calls veer into interview territory with a few “While I have you on the phone …,” questions.

Such questions are patently unfair, and make the search committee appear cavalier or, worse, glib. Most candidates don’t object, however, because they are afraid to sound disinterested or arrogant. The truth is that every contact between the committee and the candidate is a part of the interview process. Candidates need to understand that. But search...

The College of William and Mary has a not-so-new president in W. Taylor Reveley III, the current interim president and longtime dean of the law school, college officials announced. Mr. Reveley took over on an interim basis in February, after the emotionally charged departure of Gene R. Nichol.

“The challenges that the college are facing need immediate attention from a strong, committed leader,” said Michael K. Powell, who leads the college’s governing board, in a written statement. “Moreover, in our judgment the college would benefit from an extended period of stability.”

College officials praised Mr. Reveley as a popular leader who has worked quickly to improve private fund raising and build ties with students, faculty and staff members, and state lawmakers.

Tenured Radical continues her excellent series on the job search with a great deal of sensible advice for job seekers who are already employed in tenure-track positions. She discusses how to approach the cover letter, how to answer the always touchy “why are you interested in leaving your current position?” question, and how the currently employed should handle other aspects of searching.

Many of the challenges facing such job seekers stem from the often intensely personal nature of academic employment. In my experience, many faculty members treat their academic positions as directly connected with their personal identities. In turn, they identify, in sometimes odd ways, with their employing institutions, and from that alchemy emerges the idea that those who are seeking to move elsewhere are personally insulting those institutions.

A great deal of that phenomenon depends on the...

Kent State University is trying a new and unusual tactic to improve its status, retention rate, and fund raising—paying cash bonuses to faculty members if the university exceeds its goals in those areas.

The bonuses are built into a contract, approved last month, that covers 864 full-time, tenure-track faculty members who teach and do research on the university’s eight campuses. Proposed by Lester A. Lefton, Kent State’s president, the “success bonus pool” will be divided among faculty members if the Ohio institution improves retention rates for first-year students and increases the research dollars it generates and the private money raised through its foundation.

The message behind the institutional-performance bonuses, which are much more common in private industry and for university presidents than for professors, is that faculty members should benefit from the work they do that ...

Academic medical centers are finding it easier than expected to pull the plug on marketing practices that seek to sway doctors’ prescribing practices, according to a study published this afternoon by The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Fears that faculty members would flee and industry-research financing would dry up if free lunches and gifts were banned have not been realized, the study found. A report of the study’s findings was written by David J. Rothman and Susan Chimonas of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Stanford University became the latest institution last month to announce that it was imposing strict limits on industry support for continuing medical education.

In the last two years, at least 25 medical centers have adopted stringent policies aimed at preventing conflicts of interest, the...

Thirty-six percent of professors at the nation’s leading universities have partners who are also professors, and the proportion of faculty members who are hired as couples is on the rise. But even the nation’s top research universities usually hire academic couples without written guidelines, raising questions about fairness and academic standards.

Those nuggets of information are among the findings in a hefty new report on academic couples by Stanford University’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, “Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know.” The institute’s 98-page study—based on its 2006 survey of 9,043 faculty members at 13 top research universities—is one of the largest and most-detailed examinations yet of faculty couples. The 13 universities are not named in the report, but they are representative of the country’s top research institutions,...

Greg R. Sandoval resigned in June as vice president for student affairs at Southwestern College, located near San Diego. The longtime administrator’s departure came after a student-services employee filed a sexual-harassment claim against him, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Mr. Sandoval later tried to rescind his resignation, but was rebuffed by the college’s president, Raj K. Chopra.

The drama was far from over, however. Earlier this month David J. Acosto, president of the university’s governing board, added a special item to the agenda for last week’s board meeting to consider postponing Mr. Sandoval’s resignation until January, at which point he would qualify for lifetime medical benefits from the college.

Mr....