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[athena1]

This has come up several times...you get an offer and don't tell anyone until you have it "in writing". What do YOU mean by this? An email with some details? A formal contract? I can just see the formal contract taking a long time to arrange and I'd hate to hold off telling my current institution any longer than necessary (this is hypothetical for me at the moment).

<<What's up with spell check?>>

[mrhistory]

This has come up several times...you get an offer and don't tell anyone until you have it "in writing". What do YOU mean by this? An email with some details? A formal contract? I can just see the formal contract taking a long time to arrange and I'd hate to hold off telling my current institution any longer than necessary (this is hypothetical for me at the moment).

<<What's up with spell check?>>

Well, I had a letter faxed from the Dean with all the details of the *offer* made orally by chair A. Later, when I was waiting for the contract all my friends were signing for their systems...I find out that mine is in a state that doesn't give contracts at all. Then, in May I got a strange short letter from the President of the U appointing me for the next year. Turns out that *this* letter was the only real "committment" of the system in that state. No one ever mentioned this to me. Technically I wasn't "offered" a job in this state without that last two line letter.  Glad I didn't know that then

So, yes, I'd love to know what the committment threshold usually is. Because now I feel i need to know state law to determine if I have an offer or not that I should act upon!
 

[yellowtractor]

When I was in this situation two years ago I politely insisted on either the contract itself or, lacking that--at many schools it takes weeks if not months for those in charge to work up a formal contract--something in writing going over the points of agreeement, including salary, teaching load, etc.

What I wound up with, in the end, was an e-mailed memorandum containing the confirmation I felt I needed.  I decided that was enough (although I did archive copies of that e-mail several different places, just in case).  My actual contract didn't arrive until sometime in June, as I recall.

I should say that the SCC in this case was perfectly agreeable; all I was asking him to do was to put in writing the things we had discussed during the telephone conversation.  (I actually asked for the memo of understanding at the tail end of that conversation, "so that I can go ahead and withdraw from other searches."  Which was a nice way of letting the SCC know that other searches were in fact pending.)  I think I would be a little worried about the institutional culture of a school at which the SCC was not willing to do this, at least not without explaining why.

[athena1]

So, do you think the school with the offer would likely come through with an actual contract ASAP? I just could see that taking months...

[seniorscholar]

An e-mailed memo agreeing to the list of particular things that have been spoken about is, these days, what you expect to get and should get -- you send a return e-mail with "include original message in reply" so it's there on the same page -- which accepts the position. Also send a few copies or bcc's to other folks (e.g., dept chair if the original came from dean and vice-versa, plus your grad supervisor and other such people), and it will be just as good as anything you can get from most schools at this stage. (Used to be a faxed letter signed and faxed back; and before that a mailed letter signed and mailed back -- this is the current substitute.)

A formal contract -- which is, at this large public university a one-page letter signed by the university president repeating those specific terms and referring to the union contract for all other issues -- will not come, here, until the board of trustees has met on June 25 and formally voted to accept the list of new faculty presented by the provost. This is purely pro forma, but the contract won't come until after the 4th of July holiday therefore.