First Person

Two Careers, One Offer

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By Rebecca Manderlay

The truly frightening thing about turning down a tenure-track job offer is that little bit of nagging doubt over whether you will ever get another. I don't care how great your research is or how much self-confidence you have miraculously managed to build during graduate school, turning down an offer is rough.

And it's even harder when it is an offer that should have been accepted.

Last month my husband, a Ph.D. in engineering, turned down his dream job. It was an assistant professorship at a top university. He would have had fantastic colleagues, the chance to participate in a new research center, and great university support, all in a city we liked.

The university had it all -- for an engineer.

But as I mentioned in my first column, I am not an engineer, I'm a Ph.D. in the geological sciences. When "Tom" first applied for his dream job, we both realized it wouldn't be a great fit for me, but we figured it was a good-enough opportunity for him that we would cross that bridge later.

I didn't fully appreciate the lack of fit until the offer came and I took a closer look at the university's Web site for any sign of environmental scientists there and found none. Nearby colleges were all teaching focused, so scientists with research or even interests similar to mine were nowhere to be found.

The closest departmental home for me at the university would have been engineering. And let me just say, I am not an engineer. I leave math to people who know better. I am much more talented at breaking things than building them.

At that point, I would have expected the chairman of the search committee to take one look at my CV and run screaming, or ignore me like a piece of furniture that could be easily moved and then stored in a dark corner out of trouble. (That's what happened to me in last year's search -- he got an offer and I got complete radio silence).

Instead, in a surprise move, the chairman not only welcomed my existence, but before we could say "bad fit," he had us on a plane returning for a visit.

Before we left, my postdoc adviser, with my best interests in mind, suggested I go to my own university's engineering school to practice "talking to engineers." It was clear that he considers engineers some sort of mildly fascinating alien species.

And when I arrived for the visit, and began a full day of interviewing with just about anyone who would talk to me, it was also clear that they viewed me in the same light.

The day of my visit I met more department heads than I would have guessed could exist at the university. I met with anyone who had ever done anything "environmental," even those for whom "environment" meant urban planning. The search committee recruiting my husband even considered setting up a meeting between me and the head of the history department, which shows you the level of effort (or maybe desperation) involved.

Of course, the committee tried to find a spot for me in engineering, too. Unfortunately, environmental engineers and environmental scientists share little more than the word.

At the ends of the many meetings, the department heads all said the same thing: They just didn't see a place for me in their fold.

So while I enjoyed the chance to explain my research to very diverse audiences, I came away feeling exactly how I feared I would: like Cinderella trying on some oversized army boot. Or maybe the university was the glass slipper and I was the evil, big-footed stepsister.

In the end, the university could offer me little more than an office and an affiliation. It also offered a year's salary and assurances that it would work hard to keep helping me.

But I would be missing colleagues and start-up money, not to mention any hope of getting a tenure-track job there. And how would I manage to find students willing to work on earth science but get a degree in engineering? Taking the job would have crippled my research and left me scrambling frantically to write grants with little institutional interest. I didn't want a soft-money position that would hang me out to dry. It just wasn't enough.

You are probably wondering why we didn't just accept the position, suck it up, and do the long-distance commute. Well, we've already spent a year and a half on opposite coasts while I finished my Ph.D. and he started a postdoc, and that experience just about killed me. So until we really feel as if all of our academic possibilities are exhausted, that option isn't on the table.

Rationally I know that turning down the entire deal was right for us. My husband knows it, too. If anything, his standards of what would be an acceptable position for me are probably higher than mine.

But, emotionally, I am heartbroken because I know how happy and successful he could have been there. And I keep asking myself: Do I have the right to stand in the way of my husband's career?

I've been involved long enough with women in science organizations to know that in dual-career couples, more often than not, it's the woman's career that takes the back seat. Women are more likely to give up research to focus on education and outreach, or to leave academe altogether for alternative careers.

I think I understand why that happens. This was one of those crossroads where I could have done it. I could have survived in that soft-money position so that my husband could flourish. And if he had said anything short of "this isn't good enough for you," we would probably be there now. I am lucky to have a partner so dedicated to my best interests and, I wonder, if the roles had been reversed, whether I could have walked away from a great offer.

What was really encouraging about the experience is how hard the department tried. Even with the poor fit blatantly obvious, the members of the search committee were still convinced that, given some time, they could make it work.

I appreciated that because we can't solve this two-body problem by ourselves. It takes people at a university willing to work with us and push for a solution. It takes acknowledgement and acceptance of the idea that academics often come in pairs. The folks at the university did that, and their drive and enthusiasm will go far to make academic life easier.

I think the main things that stopped us from being willing to settle were confidence and optimism -- confidence that we are good enough as individual scholars to land positions we want and optimism that those positions might exist at the same university.

I am not sure what will happen to that optimism once the end of our postdoc support is in sight. At that point, maybe, desperation will force one of us to take a back seat in our dual search. For now though, we continue on with the assumption that somewhere out there, dream jobs are waiting for both of us.