I mentioned a faculty opening at another institution to a freshly minted Ph.D. (a former student of mine). “Nah,” he said, after I suggested he apply, “I saw the ad and looked up the department’s faculty roster. Everyone is at full professor and none are near retirement. As much as I need a job, I’m not going to go fight that kind of battle.” I pulled up the roster myself, and he was right: With the exception of a couple of visiting faculty members, the entire department was at full-professor rank and none had served the institution for more than 20 years. That fact was a significant canary in the proverbial coal mine for my former student: The choking gas of inertia was likely to be present at a level that would snuff out a promising career.
I’ve often heard that there is much fun to be had in a department filled with junior faculty members. A wave of program growth combined with a few retirements can produce a bumper crop of young faculty members (not necessarily chronologically but career-wise) who bond quickly and elicit excitement from students. The problem can be, however, that as the department seasons, it can produce an inertia-filled cohort of faculty members who are now two decades beyond graduate school and who can be, well, fairly stiff where curricula are concerned (“developing new courses is a young person’s job” one full professor told me over a meal at a conference). Certainly this is not always the case, but it is the tendency. The comfort and experience that come from long service often create a division between senior faculty members and newcomers, both in terms of approach to the discipline and in terms of tenure/promotion expectations.
What advice might you have for job seekers who find themselves interviewing or teaching with a seasoned department? What are the warning signs one might note? Further, what can a seasoned department do to welcome junior faculty members, beginning with the interview process?
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6 Responses to Canary in a Coal Mine
drangie - January 11, 2010 at 4:45 pm
My advice to such a candidate would be to take the article with a huge grain of salt. Or, even better, to ignore it. ” The choking gas of inertia was likely to be present at a level that would snuff out a promising career.” Likely? Based on what evidence? What experience? “Certainly this is not always the case, but it is the tendency.” Again, some evidence or argument, please? This kind of slap-dash, sweeping statement is a cheap restatement of a hoary old stereotype. it is offensive. Can we have some more thoughtful writing here?
bolmanl - January 11, 2010 at 5:12 pm
I’d tell the young assistant professor not to overweight that demographic datum. It’s only one among many criteria to consider, and I doubt it’s the most important one. Yes, some long-time faculty can be crotchety and conservative, but I think some of them were that way in graduate school. In any job search, it’s critical to understand who your colleagues would be and what kind of culture obtains in the particular department or school. The key question is whether this is a place you’d enjoy working and if there are people there you would enjoy working with. Senior faculty can be a pain, but they can also be very good friends who really want to support their younger colleageues’ well being. They can share experience, provide counsel, and open doors, particularly if, like me, they see bright and talented young academics as not only the future, but one of the joys of the profession.
princeton67 - January 11, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Me three. A distracting metaphor. I would tell that putative candidate (1) if he’s in Arts, read the CHE article “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go”. Beggars can’t be choosers.(2) in any case, check out the faculty’s publications, research interests, evaluations. In other words, do some research!
alanc - January 12, 2010 at 10:13 am
By the way, the subtitle from the Academe Today email reads: “A department filled with full-time professors can sometimes be a turnoff to junior-faculty job applicants looking to make their mark.”You might choose to edit this before the weekly version comes out. This article is about “full professors,” not “full-time professors,” which would be an entirely different (and even stranger) story.
blueconcrete - January 13, 2010 at 5:34 pm
The student’s response presupposes he will belong to that department for the rest of his career, which in this day and age seems unlikely Unless the student is independently wealthy (or otherwise not desperate for a job like most of his freshly minted colleagues), I’m a bit surprised he thinks he can still pick and choose among the few remaining job openings out there. You best believe that if my supervisor makes me aware of a position he thinks I should pursue, I’m gonna. It doesn’t sound like the student is very serious about this whole working in academia thing.
systeme_d - January 14, 2010 at 4:53 pm
What an odd, out-of-touch attitude on the part of the student. Good luck on the unemployment line, buddy.Also, as comment #4 stated, the article subtitle in Academe Today was even more bizarre.