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[expat]

I've got the opposite question for those who have more experience than I do with the inside workings of search committees in the USA.

I'm a US citizen working at a national university in a first-world country that's not on the American continent.  I've been doing this for almost a decade, after working for a few years at a tt job in the USA.  My specialty is closely related to the country in which I am working, and I have lots of publications.  In many ways it seems to make sense (to me) to be here, but gradually I'm thinking of returning back to the USA.

How do search committees look at foreign-employed applicants?  Does one find a knee-jerk reaction that anywhere outside the USA can't possibly be as tough, as good, or as up-to-date as American institutions?  Does tenure or rank outside the USA mean anything for getting tenure within the USA?  Do candidates get rejected simply because of the cost of flying in an overseas applicant (in fact it's often not much more expensive anymore)?  I'm wondering how to reassure prospective employers in a cover letter.

Thanks in advance.

[%sig%]

[Search Committee Member]

Of course it all depends (as we keep saying on these boards) on the field, the demand, and the kind of jobs you're applying for. In an English department at a public R-1, we often consider people (whether US trained or not, and whether US nationals or not) who apply from outside North America. On the other hand, we have hundreds of applicants for junior positions (for which we would not hire someone well-published and senior elsewhere). When we are able to advertise at "open" rank -- where our goal is to hire someone we can tenure almost at once, if not at once, and someone who can begin to supervise dissertations immediately -- we have generally about 50 applications from senior people (about 25 of them really credible applications).

For junior posts we do screening interviews at MLA, and would probably not consider any overseas applicant who could not attend. But then, as I said, we would not consider a well-published person for a junior post, even if that person were willing to start over -- the argument is always "well, of course this person is 'better' than a new Ph.D., but if we'd advertised at open rank we might have had many other such candidates, since there would have been a completely different pool."  When hiring at a senior rank, we read the published work and go straight to campus interviews (since the people who are actually competitive are probably known to at least one person in the department -- and often more -- from conferences and so forth).

We do have the money to bring finalists in from elsewhere in the world.

But the question of tenure on hire is a bit more difficult. The Dean and Provost demand that the person be already tenured at a comparable or better university. Thus (since systems of "tenure" and matters of ranking are enormously different -- but administrators at a research university with a lot of non-US faculty, especially in the sciences and math, realize this), we would have to produce a lot of documentation about teaching, professional visibility, publication, etc. etc. and would probably still -- unless the person is a big star -- have to hire at a senior rank BUT with a one-year appointment in the first instance, to be considered for tenure after the person arrives.

This is the best I can do from a limited perspective. I suspect, however, than at my school it would absolutely depend on your field, your visibility in your field, and the needs of the hiring department. We certainly raided the former Soviet universities for math and science people during the 90s -- but I suspect a lot of them were willing to come without any tenure considerations, and I don't really know anything about the process engaged by the College of Science and Technology, the Medical School, the Business School, etc.

[snippet]

I have seen one applicant in a similar situation who, even though he had marvelous credentials and publications, be eliminated largely because of his teaching.  The committee felt that he had not developed a teaching style that was appropriate for an American classroom and more importantly, that teaching hadn't been a priority for him for quite a while.  It is tough for our field to get and retain majors, so this was too important to let slide.

I would suggest that you try to show that you know what will be expected of you in your new teaching environment and that you can do it.