How can adjuncts go from part-time to the tenure track? Not by applying for jobs at the colleges where they're already teaching, writes gbrown on The Chronicle's Forums. Her contingent colleagues should wise up, she says, and realize that most colleges won't "buy the cow if [they] can get the milk for free"—or at a steep discount, anyway.

She sympathizes with their plight: "it's unfair. But it's also a reality. It sucks to be an adjunct and get paid cr@p. It sucks that the people who pass you in the hall and say 'hello' do not respect you enough to at least give you an interview." But the only way to move up is to move out, the now-tenured gbrown writes: "I had to widen my search to get what I wanted."

Fiona, another tenured academic poster, seconds that advice. It's especially true for adjuncts working at research universities like hers, she says, which may have a clause in their...

What's a day in the life of a tenured professor like? Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't (usually) involve golfing or "polishing the fixtures on our yachts," FemaleScienceProfessor writes in a recent column. And, in fact, professing is but a small slice of the professorial-duty pie, she points out. Much of a tenured professor's time is actually spent working outside the classroom on an array of (largely unheralded) administrative tasks, FSP writes:

After tenure, our service commitments ramp up, and we serve on committees at our own university and beyond. Some of us edit journals and hold other positions in professional organizations. And we spend a lot of time advising students and other researchers, helping them reach their career goals. Most of us are busier after tenure than we were before.

Universities really do "get what they pay for: hard-working faculty members," FSP adds....

• Gilbert L. Rochon, a senior research scientist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing and director of the Terrestrial Observatory at Purdue University, will become president of Tuskegee University on November 1, the Montgomery Advertiser reports.

• The University of Georgia is on a hiring streak, the Athens Banner-Herald reports. The university hired more than 70 new professors this fall, a welcome addition after three years of budget cuts that left many jobs unfilled. "It's a definite step in replenishing the ranks of tenure-track faculty that have eroded over the past few years," Jere W. Morehead, UGA's provost, told the newspaper, though he was quick to add that the university still has a ways to go before it breaks even. "We're down about 170 since 2006 or 2007," Morehead said. Thanks largely to a big tuition hike, Michael F. Adams, UGA's president, said he's considering...

• The president of the University of Kentucky, Lee T. Todd Jr., has announced that he'll step down from his post when his contract is up on June 30, 2011, the Courier-Journal reports (also see The Ticker for details). A University of Kentucky committee, meanwhile, wants to up President Todd's base pay by $157,046 in the hope of making it easier to hire his replacement, the Louisville-based newspaper says.

• Emerson College has picked M. Lee Pelton, president of Willamette University, as its next chief, according to a college press release. He'll succeed longtime president Jacqueline W. Liebergott on July 1, 2011. See the college's Web site for details.

• The president of Saint Joseph's University, the Rev. Timothy R. Lannon, has announced that he will vacate his post in July to assume the top job at Creighton University, his alma mater, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

• According...

• The New School today named David Van Zandt, dean and professor of law at the Northwestern University School of Law, as its next president, according to a university news release. He'll succeed Bob Kerrey on January 1, 2011. See the university's Web site for details.

• Stephen Weber, longtime president of San Diego State University, has announced that he will retire next summer, according to the Associated Press.

• The AP also reports that the president of Worcester State College, Janelle Ashley, will step down next June.

• According to a plan released last week, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks will slash over a dozen positions as part of an effort to balance its budget, the Daily News-Miner reports. Some of the positions are vacant, but at least four employees will be laid off; cuts in temporary employees, student workers, and interns are also expected, the newspaper notes.

•...

The On Hiring e-mail newsletter is on hiatus this week and will be back next week.

A small but growing number of business schools are hiring ex-corporate CEO's as their leaders, BusinessWeek reports.

Just last week, Kenneth Freeman, ex-CEO of Quest Diagnostics Inc., and Neil Braun, ex-CEO of Viacom Entertainment and ex-president of NBC Television, assumed new posts as deans of Boston University's School of Management and Pace University's Lubin School of Business, respectively, the magazine notes. Both schools have looked to the corporate world for deans before, the article points out. Wake Forest and Ohio State Universities also have business deans that hail from the private sector. 

Someone with a business background might seem like a natural pick to head up a business school, so it might surprise you as much as it did me to learn that ex-executives are still rare in the business-education world. BusinessWeek writes that according to a 2007 survey of 355 U.S. and...

With the fall semester imminent, Tenured Radical offers some sage advice for tenure-track faculty newbies on how to succeed on the job without succumbing to work overload and burnout.

Her first tip is know where your job begins and ends:

Knowing your appropriate load allows you to know your overload. In consultation with a senior colleague, figure out what are the minimum number of bodies you are expected to manage, and what the department average is for each category and at each rank of the faculty. In the category of "body management," I am counting major advisees, non-major advisees, enrolled students, honors students, and any other person you need to manage (postdocs, graduate students, other faculty.) These categories can overlap—but count them twice when they do (for example, a thesis advisee who is also a major advisee = two bodies, as these are distinct activities that cannot...

• What's wrong with higher education? Too many administrators, write Andrew Hacker, a sociology professor at Queens College of CUNY, and Claudia Dreifus, an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, in an essay in The New York Times.

• Gay and lesbian workers are at last eligible for family and medical leave to care for sick or newborn children of their domestic partners, The Juggle reports.

• Audrey Williams June, a reporter for The Chronicle, notes that there's at least one good place to be an adjunct.

• Via Work Matters comes word of a finding that it may pay to get a little angry when it comes to negotiating—unless you're negotiating with someone of East Asian descent.

• Dr. Brazen Hussy finds that breaking up isn't always hard to do.

• Am I too fat to get hired? a poster asks Evil HR Lady. Her answer: Probably.