How are faculty selected?

There is a discussion in another thread concerning holders of unaccredited doctorates supervising doctoral students at R/A schools. This thread raised a related question in my mind that I thought I'd post here.

How, exactly, does a University select tenure track faculty? I know that they post these jobs because I've seen the postings. For lateral transfers at a senior level, I know that a University will sometimes approach an established scholar.

But how is the decision made whom, of the piles of applicants there certainly must be, to hire?

 

Anthony Pina had some good comments about how faculty committees(or search committees) work, or along those lines, a month or so ago. You might look at a search for his posts. He is a university administrator.

 

How are faculty selected

Dear Bing,
Hi, usually there can be about 1500 applicants, and thirty selected for interview process. Yes hard to join the network.

Best Regards,
Stae.

 

Without wanting to validate the numbers, I'd guess that Stae is essentially correct in suggesting that these positions are extremely competitive. Clearly it depends on which school is being discussed but it is not uncommon for available positions to be advertised on a national level and people will travel thousands of miles to interview at some schools. Other schools tend to collect their faculty from amongst the local population.
Jack

 

Re: Re: How are faculty selected?

Having been both a full-time faculty and a full-time administrator (and on several hiring boards), here are some observations:

Selection of a tenure-track faculty member is a very subjective process that will involve some objective measures as well. A lot of factors play into the process, including the candidate's personality, internal politics of the department, affirmative action and whether the candidate's research/teaching expertise fills a need or void in the department. A big consideration is whether there is a percieved "fit" between the candidate and the department. Keep in mind that hiring faculty is something that is usually done at the department and dean level, so a great deal of variation can exist between different departments at the same university (let alone between different universities).

Keeping in mind that this is a subjective process and there are many things (such as "political hires") that are beyond control of the faculty candidate, these are the more objective parts of the hiring process:

Education - Most community colleges require a masters degree to teach an academic subject (English, history, science, mathematics, etc.) or an undergraduate degree and some years of expereince to teach a vocational subject (culinary arts, auto mechanics, airconditioning/heating, etc.). Universities usually require candidates to have the terminal degree in their disciplines (doctorate for most fields, masters in several fields).

Teaching - Given the usually stiff competition for faculty positions, one generally needs evidence of successful teaching experience at the college level. Copies of student evaluations and/or peer/dept. chair evaluations are useful additions to one's application portfolio. Someone interested in teaching full time at the college level should begin by obtaining an adjunct (part-time) teaching position and doing really well at that. Depending on the discipline, creating and delivering staff development workshops, corporate training and K-12 teaching can be counted as relevant teaching experience.

Scholarship - This is weighted very heavily in the hiring process at universities. One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is to think that a PhD is al that one leads to land a faculty position. Nothing could be further from the truth. To prepare for a full-time faculty position, one should seek out and join the leading professional/scholarly organizations in her/his discipline, attend the professional conferences (to see what is happening in the discipline and to establish a professional netowrk with those who work in academia and hire faculty) and develop a research agenda, which includes presenting at professional conferences and publishing in the discipline's journals. Writing sucessful grant proposals is another activity seen as ascholarly endeavor.

Service - Hiring committees will also look at a candidate's service outside the classroom. Service on campus committees (even as an adjucnt faculty), serving in leadership or other positions in professional associations, service to/in civic and community organizations and charitable work are all seen as desireable activities.

I hope that this helps.

 

Jobs in Academia

I've posted on this before... I am a tenured full time faculty at a leading community college in the USA and have sat on many faculty hiring committees. My advice is target an institution and show yourself as a useful adjunct first. Show you want the job! I can't tell you how many candidates stroll in here with the attitude "hey, I'm here... when do I start?" We get up to 400 applicants for each opening, so the competition is fierce. Many come to us with NO CLUE as to the role of the community college in the USA. We get tons of Ph.D.'s who come in and want "research release time." Good grief. I get asked all the time by adjuncts how they can get hired fulltime. So many think getting a Ph.D. is the magic bullet and IT IS NOT. In fact, committees will often QUESTION a doctorate first. We want to see TEACHING excellence, a hard worker, and a team player. Arrogant? Hey, take it to that university you got your doctorate from. If you have your heart set on a doctorate, FINE... get hired FIRST, then go for the doctorate. Now, if you want a university gig, forget all the above. Yes, you need a doctorate FIRST. That is like a union card for university faculty employment.

 

A personal relationship with the candidate or strong referral arising from a personal relationship is an important factor in hiring faculty for the tenure-track.

Dave

 

Re: Jobs in Academia

Cogent - I appreciate your post and generally agree. You'd be surprised, however, how many universities do give credence to industry and adjunct experience. Yes, the PhD is a union card - but when I'm involved in faculty hiring, I'm looking for a "package" - teaching, service and scholarship. In the business field, practical experience really does matter.

Regars - Andy

 

My experience has been much the same as mentioned above. I've applied for FT faculty positions, but I've run into roadblocks because I hadn't punched the right cards or jumped through the right hoops yet.

It was particularly disheartening when I applied for a job teaching business law at a small but AACSB-accredited B-school. This was just a temporary lecturer position, a year-to-year appointment, non-tenure-eligible--the lowest rung of the ladder. I thought my JD from a top-tier and year teaching as an adjunct with stellar student evals would at least get me an interview.

Boy was I wrong.

I took the bull by the horns and called the head of the search committee; I asked him what they were looking for in a candidate: JD? MBA? LLM? College teaching experience? Significant publishing? The fellow told me: "Well, we're looking for all of the above if we can get it." I pondered what sort of madman with three advanced degrees (the kind that can often land you lucrative six-figure careers) publishing, and teaching experience would think it's a good idea to pursue a non-tenure-eligible temp job for $30 or $40K at a midwestern state's fourth largest public school.

Of course, I wasn't even granted an interview. At that point I decided to enroll in the UMass MBA program--no turning back. Maybe by this time next year, I'll finally be starting on that long and winding road to tenure.

 

Here are some thoughts from Paul Cohen at UMass:

The Ideal Faculty Candidate
as imagined by Paul Cohen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strong research departments like UMass look for three general things in a faculty candidate: Excellent recommendations from excellent people, evidence that you can do the job (e.g., publications, proposals, teaching experience), and a good fit in terms of research area and personality.

Good quality four-year institutions are looking for the same thing, but they weigh the evidence differently: Teaching experience, writing and speaking skills, and a general background are more important, but they still want research.

I'll describe specific qualifications in a minute, but let me start with what I hope will be good news. My impression is that the job market is not quite a buyer's market. I could be wrong, but I sense that there are many, many candidates, but not very many outstanding ones. UMass graduate students are better off than most when it comes to getting an academic job. This is because we are a well-regarded school with highly respected faculty, and I believe we have a reputation for producing good scientists with strong research and engineering skills who know how the academic game is played. Thus, search committees will look at you carefully and you will be competitive.

The ideal faculty candidate is a theoretical abstraction, but some people come close, and I'd like you to be one of them.

The ideal faculty candidate, let's call her Carole, has letters of recommendation from the best people in the field, and these letters are very strong. Carole has half a dozen letters, some from her committee, others from experts at other institutions. The letters say Carole has done creditable research on several topics and projects, all of it good. Her dissertation is important, timely, well-chosen, challenging, intrinsically interesting. Her treatment is scholarly, thorough, empirically-adept, well-engineered, insightful, produces good results. As a researcher, Carole is a self-starter, full of ideas, enthusiatic; she takes the initiative, has good judgment about research questions, works efficiently. These skills are complemented by a flair for writing and strong engineering abilities. Carole has worked cooperatively with faculty and other students in the lab on a variety of projects. She can be counted upon to give a good presentation to visitors with little or no notice. Carole has a huge capacity for work and the ability to keep several efforts going at once. Carole has a great personality and will fit happily into any well-adjusted faculty.

From her letters and Carole's vita, several other things are obvious:

• Carole has publications. Not many, perhaps, but they are good stuff and they appeared at good conferences and in strong journals.
  
• Carole has a good reputation. She has appeared on panels at conferences and workshops. Her advisor mentions her to colleagues and speaks about her work at every opportunity. Carole has reviewed papers for conferences and journals and is known to and respected by the program chairs and editors for her careful, thorough, mature assessments. When Carole speaks at conferences, she takes pains to continue the discussion with people after the talk, and gets their business cards, and sends them her papers, or directs them to her homepage.
  
• Carole has established that she can do the job. In addition to her research qualifications, she has written proposals for fellowships, grants and contracts, so the funding scene is known to her. She has presented work at site visits and contractors' meetings. She has teaching experience, and her students give her good evaluations. She is a first-rate programmer who can start up her research at a new institution without missing too many beats. She writes lucid, lively prose, apparently without effort.
  
• Carole presents herself as an expert and specialist with general interests and skills. Many departments are too small to afford a specialist in, say, update algorithms for an abstruse nonmonotonic logic, unless this person can also teach the general AI class, and a basic theory course, and work with other faculty. Carole presents her dissertation research in such a way as to show its broad implications and connections to several areas of computer science. In fact, Carole's committee has members from several areas.
  
• Carole enlists her advisor to find out who's hiring and to make phone calls and send messages on her behalf. She prepares a one-page research statement and a document that lists her accomplishments, and gives it to all her referees. This document is like her vita but it includes things that wouldn't appear on a vita, like the time Carole covered her advisor's lectures for a week without notice when the advisor got the flu.

From this brief description of the ideal candidate, you should see many ways to enhance your chances for a good job: Get a strong dissertation committee and senior, well-respected referees; start to make contacts with researchers at other institutions; publish, publish, publish; teach a class; work on your writing skills; demonstrate initiative, enthusiasm and a capacity for hard work; apply for some fellowships; ask your advisor to let you help write grant proposals; work collaboratively with more than one professor; attend conferences; volunteer for reviewing duties. This is a lot of stuff, but it can all be done, and our best students do it.

 

Re: Jobs in Academia

Cogent makes a vey good point here. My post addressed the domain of things that are used to consider a faculty candidate. However, community colleges will put a higher emphasis on teaching experience and service. Research experience tends to be a "tie breaker" between otherwise comparable candidates. At the university level, much more emphasis is placed in the "scholarly" category, which makes it difficult for those with little experience in this area. The best advice for a grad student who is looking to be a university professor in the future is to find a productive faculty member in your discipline and work with that person, co-authoring presentations and papers. Once you learn how to do it successfully, you are on your way. For those wishing to be a full-time community college faculty (I was one for over 7 years), follow cogent's advice and get as much teaching experience as possible.

When I was a full-time community college faculty some years ago, I found that I could always get travel funds to attend conferences because I was always presenting papers, which was seen as going "above and beyond" the requirements for being able to attend a conference. At the university level, there can be a great deal of competition for those funds, since many faculty operate under a "publish and present or perish" situation.

 

This is a news story from the BBC related to higher ed academic careers. It's somewhat interesting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4138710.stm
Jack

 

Re: Re: Jobs in Academia

Tony is right here... I know I tend to target a conference I want to go to, then do a proposal to present. The college loves this and always funds me. Now, I should also say if you have a doctorate do NOT try to get a community college faculty post as a way station while waiting for a university job to open up. First off, we will smell that a mile away. Secondly, "stooping" to the level of community college teaching usually marks you as an undesirable for universities.

 

As an outsider to the academy, I notice several things from these posts:

-the doctoral dissertation is IMPORTANT. It is not just a task to be completed to earn the degree.

-publication for its own sake won't help. The candidate has to actually be ACKNOWLEDGED as a national expert in her field, published in major journals and cited (I would suppose) often by other scholars.

-the candidate is being hired more for her future reseach potential than for what she's done so far.

I'd say from what you all have said here that the successful candidate will be more interested in her SUBJECT than in being a college professor. She will also likely view a faculty appointment as a support platform to continue her research rather than as an end in itself.

Comments?

 

Re: Jobs in Academia

Thanks for your input. Any advice for full-time doctoral student who can't do adjunct (e. g., an international student on F1/J1 visa)?

 

Nosborne - These points may or may not fit a given institution. As for dissertations - the longer you're out of school the less they matter. Mine is nearly 10 years old - and I've moved on to other topics.

Being an expert is probably the ticket for top schools - but in many disciplines at many middle tier schools, being a "solid citizen" is enough. Having a niche where you are the expert is a good, but not necessarily essential thing.

Candidates are hired for future research - but at many schools, they are also hired for teaching and service. What you have to figure out for a given school is what mix of teaching, research and service is desired.

Regards - Andy

 

What is meant by "service" in this context?

 

Service covers a lot of ground. It can be at a departmental, university or discipline level. For example, serving on a curriulum committee or doing advising are examples - as is working on discipline specific group - such as the North American Management Association, Academy of Management, Association for Information Systems, etc.

 

Ah. Thank you. That's how one gets to be a University President, too, no doubt.