next »

[sojourner9]

I checked the posts but couldn't find advice on exactly my 2body situation:

I'm interviewing for several TT positions at private R1s. My SO is a "grad student on hiatus"--having disenrolled from a program to follow me to another city for my postdoc. In the meantime hu has worked several jobs in non academic fields. Now that I'm on the market, I would like my SO to be able to transfer in to a grad program if/when I'm hired... in a different field completely.

I'm hoping that someone out there in Chronicle Land has experience with this scenario from either the applicant's or SC's vantage point?? And if not exactly this scenario, ANY advice on how I should approach my SO's situation with the SCC in negotiations if/when the time comes. I don't imagine it makes sense to make my SO's transfer a line item in my negotiation, but I'm still unsure about HOW exactly to proceed.

Two complicating issues: (1) I can't expect an offer until AFTER the grad program deadlines have passed. So should my SO go ahead and apply then I ask the dean to put in a word to the grad admissions committee. Or should we just wait, see if theres an offer, then expect that my hire will outweigh the deadline requirement? (2) Due in part to my SO's "hiatus" and extremely esoteric field of study, hu is not an "ideal" candidate for the more general grad program to which hu would seek admission. In other words, the grad program & dean would likely have to *massage* the normal admissions requirements to admit hu.

thanks in advance.

[systeme_d_]

I honestly do not know if this will be possible.

I direct an MA program, so our admission standards are certainly not as high as PhD programs in my discipline, but they're still stringent.  We recently had a faculty spouse apply, and we voted to admit him/her (without an assistantship or funding, incidentally), but ONLY because s/he surpassed our admission requirements.  S/he was not a particularly good fit for our program, and we would likely not have admitted him/her otherwise because of this.  If this person did not exceed the normal standards, we definitely would have not admitted this person.

If our Dean presented us with the case of an SO of a desired hire in another department, we would surely say that we would not admit this person if s/he did not meet (or surpass) normal admission standards. Our Dean is not empowered to touch our grad program in any way.  That's the business of the Dean of the Graduate School, and at our place, they rarely make deals with one another.  (Although it is certainly conceivable that they could make deals with one another at another university.)

[janewales]

I direct our grad program (MA and PhD), and I'd resist any attempt to have admissions "massaged" by the dean, no matter the reason. It's a question of the integrity of the program, the workload for supervising faculty, the resources available to support our students... we're a mid-sized program, and it would be hard to absorb bodies that don't really fit.

[verbena]

You've already read this, yes?