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April 15, 2008, 10:47 AM ET
A Joint Decision
When Leigh Ann Wheeler and Donald G. Nieman decided to get married, she gave up a tenure-track job in Florida in 2000 to move to Bowling Green State University, where he was dean of arts and sciences.
At first, Ms. Wheeler was only a visitor in the history department before working her way onto the tenure track and finally into a tenured position. But while she and her husband enjoyed working on the same campus, Ms. Wheeler says she never felt comfortable at Bowling Green. Some history professors, she says, resented that she was a spousal hire who was married to the dean. “It can create divisions,” says Ms. Wheeler.
So when Mr. Nieman began looking at job openings for provosts a year or so ago, Ms. Wheeler was not too thrilled by the prospect of being a trailing spouse all over again. Then the history department at the State University of New York at Binghamton e-mailed to ask if she was interested in a job. When Ms. Wheeler told them no because her husband was an administrator, Binghamton said they might have a job for him as well.
Now, after winding their way through separate interview processes, Ms. Wheeler and Mr. Nieman will both be moving to Binghamton this summer. She will be an associate professor of history, and he will be dean of arts and sciences.
“It’s sometimes kind of hard to believe it worked out,” says Mr. Nieman, who had also applied to be provost at the University of Northern Iowa, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and Illinois State University. He was offered the post at Northern Iowa but turned it down. “This was so obviously the best thing for us as a couple,” he says of the Binghamton move. Their 5-year old son will attend a school on Binghamton’s campus this fall.
Jean H. Quataert, a history professor who headed the search committee that voted to hire Ms. Wheeler, says she wasn’t daunted by the idea that Ms. Wheeler would probably come only if the university decided to hire her husband. “These things do work out, and you have to wait for your moment to come,” she says.
Ms. Quataert knows that firsthand. Her husband, Donald Quataert, a historian, followed her to Binghamton in 1986, and now they are both full professors there.
Categories: Administrative-hiring, Faculty-hiring
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