I was recently speaking with a colleague — a newly promoted associate professor — about some campus issues when she said, twice, that she hoped her concerns would register with the administration but that she was just one “small” person who didn’t “understand how things work.”

This colleague is a talented and respected member of the faculty. Behind her self-effacement is a real problem: Many professors have not had the opportunity to learn how their institutions actually work in terms of budgeting, planning, and other major functions.

That lack of understanding certainly contributes to tensions between the faculty and the administration. Senior officials are privy to tremendous amounts of information, some of which they don’t, or can’t, share because it is sensitive or confidential, and some of which they don’t share simply due to the huge flow of paper and conversations through the...

When I interviewed for an administrative post several years ago, the institution impressed me with its attention to detail. It sent a packet in advance of my campus visit that included copious details about employee benefits, including retirement contributions, faculty development, and health insurance. When I saw the insurance premiums, I almost had a heart attack: They were 80 percent less than the rates I had been paying at the time. Now that was a genuine incentive to do well in the interview!

Over the years, I’ve seen many institutions offer such information on their Web sites. But I’ve had others act downright crabby when asked for details about employee benefits before the hire was made. In my mind, free-flowing information is a part of marketing the position: attractive benefits generate (and retain) better applicants.

How can an institution do a better job of providing...

The other day I was in a meeting with one of our school deans who is in the midst of a search for a new faculty member in a discipline that offers plenty of opportunities for us to build ties between the campus and the surrounding city.

We were talking about inviting one or more local leaders to meet with our on-campus candidates. However, as we discussed how we would make the arrangements, it became clear that we really don’t have a good idea of how to involve outsiders in an academic search process. How would we collect their opinions? We would have to give them an orientation in how the hiring process works in academe but how much insight should we share about our goals for the search and our hopes for the new colleagues’ links to the city?

Academe talks a lot about civic engagement — it has been a main thrust of discussions at the American Association of Colleges and...

One of my mentors used to advise me to throw paper at problems. Her thinking was that a thick-enough dossier or report would result in success, nine times out of ten. I disagreed and have tried to avoid that practice, but I have to admit that over the years I’ve seen the truth of her advice played out in tenure cases, annual reports, accreditation studies, and other occasions for massive deforestation.

In faculty searches, the same philosophy seems to be at work, with application packets ballooning. I’ve seen many that are two and three inches thick.

In the situations I mentioned earlier, you already have the job; you are simply completing a particular task. My advice to job seekers, however, is to avoid the temptation to submit too much raw material. My friends on search committees tell me that they would rather see a relatively terse application that includes a link to a nice Web ...

Madonna G. Constantine, the former professor of psychology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College who was fired following allegations of plagiarism, has sued the university seeking reinstatement, the New York Daily News reported. University officials declined to comment to the newspaper about the lawsuit.

In a complaint filed in a state court, Ms. Constantine alleges that rivals within Teachers College manufactured the plagiarism allegations, the Daily News reported, and that she was the victim of “extreme bias” from the law firm the university hired to investigate the allegations.

That firm concluded after an 18-month investigation that Ms. Constantine had plagiarized the work of two former students and a former colleague. In an interview with The Chronicle last February, after the law firm’s findings were publicized, Ms. Constantine, who is African-American, said...

I once heard a tech guru say, “Computers save time like kudzu stops erosion.” Using a computer makes you more effective, but it can get a wee bit out of control.

As much as I love e-mail and other technologies, I resent the ways that they insinuate themselves into my personal time. About a year ago I completely stopped answering my campus e-mail over holidays and weekends (apart from messages from my president/provost) because I was spending too much time dealing with work that really could have waited until the work week. It was seductive to feel so productive, but it was wearing me out.

“Work creep” is really bad in online teaching environments. I’ve always heard that online teaching is supposed to be a timesaver, but my family and friends whose jobs are 100 percent online seem to work every single day of the week. In an academic environment, it is easy to forget that the life of ...

In my last post, I mused on the use of RateMyProfessors.com in search-committee deliberations. We all know the problems associated with that site, but what about the value of university-sponsored student evaluations of teaching?

When I started on the academic market, my advisers told me to photocopy some of my student evaluations and include them in my CV packet. Now that I’m on the other side of the table, I know that those evaluations are of little use since they are hand-selected by the applicant. Who would include poor evaluations?

Still, there’s a part of me, perhaps the cockeyed optimistic part, that likes to see those evaluations, however flawed. Search-committee veterans: How much do self-submitted student evaluations influence your deliberations?

A few weeks ago, I attended my university’s welcome dinner for new faculty and staff members. Of the dozen or so newcomers in attendance, five of us (including me) were still trying to sell houses in our previous locations.

Not all of the hopeful sellers were senior administrators but had varied job titles, duties, and, of course, compensation.

The housing dilemma will clearly affect hiring at all levels, introducing new and complex distortions into the academic market this year. A report on that issue appeared in The Chronicle this past summer, and a thread in its On the Money forum focuses on whether people can consider applying for jobs in light of the difficulty or impossibility of selling their current homes.

The buyer’s market is potentially good news for faculty members starting their first academic jobs (presuming, of course, that they are not already homeowners). But it’...

Forbes magazine recently came out with its college rankings. The methodology was pretty controversial because of its heavy reliance on RateMyProfessors.com reviews.

RMP has been written about from a number of angles, including the propensity of some professors to post reviews of themselves and friends as a way to deflect criticism that’s been posted. It’s hardly a scientific means of assessing teaching effectiveness.

Having said that, I suspect that most search committees review the RMP postings of job finalists. Typically that review looks for the red flag of consistent complaints. In fact, I sense that totally positive reviews are dismissed, while consistently negative ones find their way into committee deliberations.

Is it fair to use RMP postings at all in search deliberations?

The responses to my previous post demonstrate the tremendous nexus of politics, personality, equity, opportunity, and transparency that gathers around questions of institutional “fit” during the hiring process.

At institutions in less-than-desireable locations, the issue of fit is particularly complicated, due to smaller candidate pools, more difficulty recruiting, and other factors. As promised in an earlier post, I want to consider hiring challenges at such institutions periodically in this blog.

At the beginning of my academic career when I was at another institution in rural Iowa, whenever we would undertake a search, one of my senior colleagues would always say, “we need to hire someone who will stay.” It is true that faculty turnover imposes tremendous challenges on small colleges; it would often take two or three years for a new faculty member to become genuinely effective ...