The University of California system announced today that two women with hefty scientific credentials would take over as chancellors of the system’s Davis and San Francisco campuses. The two face final approval by the system’s Board of Regents, according to a news release.

The choice for chancellor of the Davis campus is Linda P.B. Katehi, 55, who is provost of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Katehi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, was dean of engineering at Purdue University before her stint in Illinois, which began in 2006. As provost she is the chief budgetary and academic officer.

Susan Desmond-Hellmann was picked to lead the San Francisco campus, which has a heavy health-sciences focus. Dr. Desmond-Hellmann, 51, is a physician who has worked on cancer research for most of her career. She spent 14 years at Genentech Inc., the pioneering ...

I have heard adjunct faculty members pinpoint the exact day when they hope to finally get their revenge. It’s the day that students, parents, voters, politicians, etc., finally realize that 70 percent of college faculty members are getting the short end of, well, everything. When that happens, look out! Just you wait, Henry Higgins!

Sadly, however, I think most Americans are as unaware of the plight of adjunct instructors today as they were in 1990. So why aren’t part timers able to spin their own message? Why do we seem unable to whip up a tsunami of attention and support? After all, we’re highly educated people; many of us teach public relations, marketing, labor relations, and writing. Wouldn’t you think people with such skills could get Americans to focus on the “adjunct problem”? Yet here we sit, thousands of Eliza Doolittles waiting to throw slippers at the Henry Higginses of...

In my last post, I discussed some steps that hiring institutions should take to prepare for any searches they are fortunate enough to have scheduled for next year. Now I’d like to propose a parallel discussion for job candidates.

First, it almost goes without saying that candidates contemplating a run at the market next year should have a clear plan about how to prepare their application materials. They should be lining up fresh letters of recommendation, and probably drafting or revising their teaching and research statements. At the very least, they should craft job letters for various kinds of institutions.

But there’s a more important philosophical and practical set of questions they need to deal with as well, and the time for honest soul searching is probably before you actually apply to an array of positions. To put it briefly: Candidates need to develop a clear idea of what...

Most on-campus interviews include some sort of meal component. Many candidates dread those events for a number of reasons. Some have food allergies. Others have picky or restrictive diets. An increasing number have had limited experience with semi-formal dining etiquette. Most fear the pressure of having to talk while eating (if you have to talk and can’t eat, you’re left feeling weak for the rest of the day).

I’ve also heard of gaffes related to menu selections. Lobster? Too pricey. Small steak? Politically incorrect. Big Salad. Too fussy. Not to mention the potential dangers of alcohol consumption or the tricky world of ethnic foods.

Ironically, just about the only time most faculty members eat with one another is at those search dinners!

What suggestions would you offer for meals during the interview process?

In a response to one of my blog posts, a faculty member lamented the strained relations between the Republic of Faculty Off the Tenure Track, and the United Kingdom of Tenured Professors. “Why, oh why,” asked the faculty member, “can’t we just all get along?”

It’s an interesting question, and I agree that a serious diplomatic divide persists.

Are adjunct faculty members viewed as “less than” simply by virtue of the fact that they teach off the tenure track? Several commentators on my blog entries have made such claims: Full-time faculty members deserve X because they publish, do research, advise students, advise student clubs, serve on committees, participate in governance, etc. Those duties are integral to well-run institutions. Are full timers simply envious of the fact that part timers don’t have to do any of those things?

To be sure, part timers are not...

An interesting recent thread in The Chronicle‘s Forums raises, once again, the issue of the influence your first academic job will have on the rest of your career. The array of responses shows just how complicated a potential new faculty member’s choices can be in the face of a very difficult market, the pressures of relocation, family considerations, and professional aspirations.

So, how true is it that “your first job will set the tone for your entire career”? That depends on what you mean by “set the tone,” I suppose, because on some level it’s inevitable that you will be affected significantly not only by your first job, but by every one you hold. If “setting the tone” is narrowed a little to “setting the course” for a career, the answer is more difficult.

There are many stories in the Forum thread about how people have published themselves out of a first job. That process is...

In a previous post, I asked why it’s apparently so difficult to manage a smooth faculty search that treats candidates with at least a modicum of respect and humanity. A good search committee, and particularly a good chair, can do a great deal to ensure that a search is conducted professionally and thoughtfully.

The challenge, of course, is to assemble a good committee, and that’s not easy. You need several faculty members who are reasonable amd willing to be at least a little flexible. They must have a strong sense of fairness and of program needs, as well as a good idea of what constitutes “excellence” in their particular institutional context. Judging from the comments to my previous entry, some departments cannot seem to assemble such a group, at least not consistently.

One of the best comments I’ve ever heard about hiring came from an employment lawyer, who said that “A” people ...

At my last two institutions, I have been in charge of the teacher-education program so I have more than a little experience with hiring faculty members in that field. One of the major challenges in hiring education professors, and something I’ve recently discussed with candidates, is that in some states, experienced teachers with a doctorate can make much more money teaching in K-12 schools than they can as university professors. While we may certainly argue the superior attractions of a university job, when you’re looking at salary differentials of up to $25,000 annually, it would take a great deal of pleasure in one’s work to make the financial sacrifice worthwhile.

Another challenge is the limited numbers of people holding doctorates — either Ph.D.‘s or Ed.D.‘s — in education fields. The salary structure in many public-education systems favors the accumulation of graduate credits...

In a recent post, I discussed the happy circumstances that enabled my university to fill vacancies left by a late retirement and another recent departure.

This afternoon I looked at applications for one of the positions, and was reminded of how different late-season hiring can be from the process earlier in the year. For one thing, we have to move much more quickly: Registration for fall classes has started, and while it’s not absolutely necessary that we have all courses staffed, it certainly makes things easier both now and in August.

For another, the pool is a little different. Because of time constraints, we had to shorten the application deadline. We also have emphasize regional advertising more heavily than national, because we expect that candidates who don’t have to come a long way are more likely to accept a position this late in the year. There are still very strong...

I have lost many excellent writers over the years that I have been publishing the Adjunct Advocate. Some simply stopped freelancing, and others landed full-time writing jobs. A third group is made up of writers who landed tenure-track jobs; six of them in the past 18 year. They share some of the same characteristics. In fact, the six of them took an almost identical path toward the tenure track. It got so that I could tell which of my freelance writers who were adjuncts on the prowl would, eventually, end up sending me a “Dear P.D.” letter. I have come to think of them as the Six Musketeers.

So how did they do it? Here are several of the character traits they had in common:

Hell bent for leather: Each of the six writers applied for dozens of jobs every year, and never let rejection deter them. They applied for every full-time teaching job opening for which they were qualified. Of ...