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[accounting_abd]

For a few of the campus visits I have next month, I been told that I will be meeting with some students.  From what I am able to gather, these meetings do not sound like formal teaching presentations.  And since these institutions do not have doctoral programs, the students will be undergraduates and maybe master students.

I've been to a bunch of job talks and meetings with candidates at my school, so I'm comfortable with that process and what I should do and not do at my job talks.  But these informal meetings are a bit more nebulous to me, especially since the meetings will probably involve undergraduates.  The fora contain a bunch of advice on performing a teaching presentation and job talks, but I can't find much on these small informal meetings.  I just want to make sure I don't do anything stupid that will mess up my chances at one of these institutions.  I asked one of my advisers at school about these meeting and she said she had only been on one of these and it was really weird.

I was wondering if anyone has some advice or thoughts about these meetings. 

[yellowtractor]

I know we've had threads on these informal meetings w/student in the past, but it's quicker and easier to reply again than to use the search function, such as it is....

Typically these meetings perform several functions, only some of which are immediately relevant to your pursuit of a job.  First, they telegraph to the job candidate that the institution is "serious" about teaching.  Second, they telegraph to students that the institution is "serious" about making them a part of the process.  Third, they typically allow the candidate to get a sense of the student body and culture, since they usually take place without other faculty being present.

Of the schools I know that schedule these, a few solicit student feedback as a formal component in the evaluation process; others solicit student feedback but don't formally consider that feedback as they make their hiring decision; and a few don't solicit student feedback at all.  YMMV.

When I've had these, I've used them as an occasion to chat up the students, with questions like "Why are you majoring in X?" and "what would you like to see in a new professor of X?"  In other words, I've interviewed the students under the guise of having an informal conversation.

Every one of these I've experienced has been quite informal.  Perhaps there are schools or departments where meetings with students are more structured, but if so, I'm unaware of them.  The "weirdness" comes, I think, when neither the candidate nor the students have much of a clue why they're there.

[georgiaprof]

I had one of these sessions once.  The committee member left me in a room and said that the students would be arriving shortly as class was just about to get out.  No one came.  I stayed there alone for about 45 minutes until the committee member came back and commented that no students had showed up for the other candidates' sessions either.  It was just odd.

[sir_lancelot]

I have had a few where a student rep was part of the committee. Those were usually quite good because the student was a formal part of the process and had a clue why he was there.

I had one "informal meeting" with students and it was weird. Only a few students showed up. Apparently they had to be chased down to come, otherwise I would have been alone. Both sides didn't know exactly what to do. I asked questions like what are they majoring in and why, how do they like the program, what's missing, what courses would they like to see, where do they expect to go with the degree, how do they like college/town etc. It  only became a little more lively when a few grad students decided to seek my help in whatever they were working on. Then I just became the "expert" on topic - but it was also a little bit like an exam. Weird!

[msparticularity]

I had lunch with a group of undergrads at once interview, and it was quite interesting. I was able to find out about where they had gone to high school, where else they had applied to college, whey they had come to the particular SLAC, and so on. Later, when I was talking to the members of the department, I could ask more intelligent follow-up questions about their student population and the students' needs and interests. (I did also talk to them about the specific program, of course, but I found the background information about them more interesting.)

[seniorscholar]

We generally have a grad student on the search committee, and always invite a group of grad students to meet with the candidate. The grad student on the search committee is responsible for getting feedback from the others there and reporting to the search committee, which takes it quite seriously. The most disliked candidates are those who talk and talk and talk about themselves, and fail to ask the grad students what they're doing. The best-liked are those who can provide some advice/resources/ideas to the grad students: "S/He took us seriously, and gave us some good ideas" would be the enthusiastic response. Of course it's a challenge to have "ideas" for grad students in a field not your own, but some candidates have evidently managed to be convincing at it.

At a R-1, we've more or less given up asking candidates to meet with undergrads: almost no one comes (even if the meeting is at lunchtime and the attendees are promised pizza) and/or they provide no useful feedback whatever. This may, of course, say more about our amorphous group of 500 majors than it does about any candidate.

[macaroon]

I'm passing on the advice I got when I was on the market....

Typically these meetings involve food.  Students will come for free food.  It's also typically your only chance to eat.  You need to get the students talking and keep them talking - both so you don't come off as a self-important jerk, AND so you can get some food down. 

A great way to get them started talking is to ask them something about campus culture.  At any school, you can use the "Are there any campus legends?"  question.  Or, perhaps, "What's the most fun non-academic event on campus?"  Better if you can find a copy of the school newspaper and bring up a current event or campus controversy.  (Example - textbook rental.  Useful for YOU this semester?).

After a really light discussion, you can start talking about research and teaching, but by then, you'll have already eaten and they won't be sitting there like sticks. 

[scampster]

I went to a lot of these a grad student and they were mostly only weird if the candidate was someone who didn't know how to be the facilitator of a discussion/conversation (I am in engineering, so it is not like we have discussions in the classroom on a regular basis). I think it is kind of a lot of pressure to put on the candidate - at my grad school they used to schedule these for over an hour to accommodate students with different class sessions. Keeping a discussion going for over an hour is hard for anyone I think.

I think the biggest mistake I have seen is when the candidates let their guard down too much because they are with students - I had no problem relaying any idiotic things a candidate said during such sessions right up to my advisor if he was on the search committee (and we also had formal evaluation forms where I would write this stuff too). It is probably easier to keep your guard up with undergrads than with grad students.

I've only done one of these myself and I didn't find it awkward or weird, but it was only coffee and snacks and it was for less than a half an hour and I am a chatty person so making conversation with a group for a half an hour isn't hard for me (especially if you ask them a lot about themselves, like mentioned above). But much longer than that would have been hard.

[reener06]

We do these with every candidate, and as grad students, we get lots of notices and emails telling us to come, and generally we do, but the faculty want our input. We vote on which we liked best, submit comments, and the vote is discussed during the vote on candidates, not as an official vote, but I have seen it sway members who are undecided.

There is always food, and it is difficult for candidates to eat during this time. Good candidates figure out how to eat by first asking everyone to go around the room and introduce themselves, state what they do, what year they are, and who they work with. Extra points if you appear to write this down--it may or may not come in handy for you, but it looks like you are paying attention.Extra extra points if you can write it down and eat.  We are often asked what we like and dislike about the department, how funding works, what we would like to see done better, what classes that particular candidate could offer that we want but aren't currently offered. One candidate asked us about the town and how bike-friendly it was. Another asked what there was to do (but note you are with grad students, so they often have less time to do things or have not been in town very long). One candidate I disliked b/c he appeared to tell us what we needed w/o listening to what we were saying.

There are other opportunities for candidates to meet with students, which involve students more inline with that candidate's interests, but I have not been to those as we have had no hires in line with my interests.

FYI, we meet in the regular seminar room, and are trying to get a sense of how well you can manage us during a seminar, i.e, how comfortable you are in command of the room, how you can hear different opinions and react to them, esp. when they seem to be at odds with one another.

[michigander]

As you can tell from the other responses, preparing for this meeting is a crap shoot.  I've had such sessions where the students arrived briefed, organized, and with agendas and approved questions in hand.  I've had others where the students were as clueless as I was about what was supposed to happen.  So (a) keep in mind that no matter what happens you're being interviewed and evaluated, (b) maintain an appropriate professional demeanor, and (c) be ready to run the session if necessary and have a few questions to ask to find out about what it's like to be a student there, what the student body is like, what students are looking for from faculty members, and so forth.

[biologist_]

We always include an hour for the candidate to meet with the MS students.  When I interviewed for my present job, I was in a room with four students, so I asked them about the program, their research, what they planned to do when they were finished, whether there were enough classes available, how/when they chose their thesis advisors, how/why they chose the program instead of going elsewhere, etc.  They asked me various questions, but I can't really remember what they were.

We ask our students what they think of candidates and they fill out forms commenting on the research talk and teaching demo.  If they indicated that a candidate seemed uninterested in interacting with students, that would be a red flag.

[txloopnlil]

Be aware that students will often ask you "forbidden" questions - "do you have kids?", "is your spouse a professor too?" - most of the time it is just they are genuinely curious or trying to make conversation and don't know the "legality" of those questions.   I've also seen trusted undergrads/grad students being intentionally seeded by their faculty mentor with questions that would be very inappropriate if asked by the SC.  Figure out how you are going to handle that, because your answers will get back to the SC in most cases.

Students can often give you a very unvarnished view of the department - especially the grad students. Sometimes you just need to ask just the right question and you will hear all the dirty laundry of the last 5 years or so erupt. Back when I was in grad school, there were some real problems in my program with graduate teaching stipends, and the admitting of an excessive number of grad. students without any support commitments.  Then right in the middle of this contentious period with lots of ill-feelings all around, the department held a search to replace a popular TT faculty member (Dr. B) who had not been renewed in divisive  and politic filled continuence vote the previous year.  The consensus among the students was this faculty member had been the badly scr**ed by the department. At the same time a true abusive a**hole, Dr. A was granted tenure despite a number of complaints about his (lack of) teaching skills and his abusive behavior toward foreign students - but he brought in a lot of grant money apparently!.  Dr. B would have won his appeal easily, but he was snatched up by a smaller and more humane univeristy (where he has been quite happy and tenured for many years now) and chose not to fight it.

The seach committee was clueless apparently to the level of discontent of the grad students.  We were asked to take the candidate to dinner and apparently we had such a negative attitude about the grad student support  and the TT process we had witnessed, that the candidate withdrew his name from consideration even before he left town the next day.  The grad students caught hell of course and were not allowed to meet with the remaining candidates alone, but it was the straw that finally forced the department to address the problems that had been building and festering for a long time.

[geonerd]

We always set up a pizza lunch for the candidate and our students.  When I was interviewing for jobs I would ask the students about their research, have they been to conferences, why did they choose to attend This University, describe the process for qualifying exams and advancing to candidacy, what new course offerings would they like to see added to the program, what are some fun things to do in University Town, etc. Good luck with your interview.

[accounting_abd]

Thanks for all of the feedback! I really appreciate the great suggestions and enjoyed hearing about past experiences, both good and bad.

I feel much less pressure now that I have an idea of the point of these meetings.  I hope there is some type of food involved.

I really appreciate txloopnlil's thoughts about the SC seeding trusted students into these meeting specifically to ask the "forbidden" questions.  Never thought of students asking those questions, but that's definitely a possibility.

[tee_bee]

I've never heard of seeding the students with plants to ask verboten questions. Maybe my discipline is all fuzzy wuzzy and likes the rules.

Some great advice to highlight, to wit:

When I've had these, I've used them as an occasion to chat up the students, with questions like "Why are you majoring in X?" and "what would you like to see in a new professor of X?"  In other words, I've interviewed the students under the guise of having an informal conversation.

This is a real winner. The goal is to show that you care about these students. At my current job, I was hired into a senior position. At my informal chats, I asked both the grad students (PhD, mostly) and the junior faculty "what can I do for you and the department that would be helpful to you?" Later, I was told that the senior grad students and the junior faculty really supported my candidacy, because I was the only candidate who seemed to take an interest in mentoring and collaborating. I knew some of the other candidates, so I know they would also have been great in these roles, but the fact that I asked was meaningful to the students and new faculty.

I think the biggest mistake I have seen is when the candidates let their guard down too much because they are with students - I had no problem relaying any idiotic things a candidate said during such sessions right up to my advisor if he was on the search committee (and we also had formal evaluation forms where I would write this stuff too). It is probably easier to keep your guard up with undergrads than with grad students.

So true! We recently interviewed a guy who, especially with the students, was incredibly willing to dish about his classmates, his advisors, other people in the discipline, etc. etc. Unsurprisingly, the candidate was the Smartest Guy in the Room, his colleagues were fools, etc. The condescension slipped into the job talk as well, but it was totally full frontal with the students. It really, really turned them off--they could only imagine the trash talking he'd do about the students and faculty in our department. He was technically competent, but he was such a boor that he was way down our list of acceptable hires--bordering on the outright unacceptable. Had it come to it, I don't think we would have hired him.

Be yourself, be curious, be open to ideas, and be the kind of prof you wish your profs were--or be the kind of prof you admire in your own department.