Thursday, April 12, 2012

Searching

Does your department have a particular philosophy or practice regarding the make-up of search (hiring) committees for tenure-track faculty positions? And if so:
  • Is the committee chair the person most closely related to the subfield of the search, or is it someone from a bit outside this subfield (but experts are included on the committee)?
  • Are people from outside your department (or program or whatever the relevant unit it) typically included?
  • Are any of those people ever non-academics?
  • Are students part of the committee? Postdocs?
  • If students are on the committee, do they have access to all application materials, or only some? (for example, CVs but not letters of reference) 
  • Is there always at least one assistant professor on the committee (because they possibly represent the future of the department and have a good view of what is current in particular fields) or not (because serving on such a committee is a huge amount of work and assistant professors shouldn't spend so much time on service activities and/or your department doesn't want to give this responsibility to the untenured)? (or other reasons of philosophy, beyond just 'There are 3 of us in the department and one is an assistant professor' type reasons.)
  • Other? 
Those questions are designed to get a view of how search committees are constituted at different places (answers may vary depending on type/size of institution), but I am also wondering if you personally disagree with any of these or other aspects in your department?

27 comments:

Mark said...

In my department, searches are usually not highly focused, which is typical for the field (mathematics). The committee chair is generally someone not wildly far from the basic area(s) in which we hope to make hires. People from outside the department, students, and postdocs are never included, also typically for the field. Our department doesn't put assistant professors on search committees, partly for the reason you suggested, but also to protect them from being caught in the middle of potential political fights (which are probably more likely when the area of the hire is more open).

Anonymous said...

My dept is a science dept at a SLAC
The chair of the department is the chair of the committee. Every member (tenured/tenure track as well as lecturers) is a voting member of the search committee. We have 2 students on the committee and they have full access to all materials and discussions - although they do not get an actual vote. We also have one faculty member from another science department, 1 faculty member from the committee on tenure and promotion, and a 1 faculty member who acts as diversity representative. Assistant profs are on the committee as department members, and potentially as the faculty member from outside the department or the diversity person. Our last search committee has a total of 12 people (10 fac/2stu) on it - rather unwieldy....

mathgirl said...

In both my current and previous departments the searches are focused, the chair of the committee is the closest possible to the area among full professors, people from outside the department, students and postdocs are never included, and assistant professors working in the specific area are always included.

Being part of those committees as an assistant professor was very stressful, but I think in the end it was worth it because of the learning experience.

Anonymous said...

Our hiring committees are basically made up of the entire group in the field in which we want to make the hire (physics department: so the nuclear physicist are all on the committee to look for the next nuclear physicist etc.). The chair is usually the most senior person who is competent and not over-committed. No grad students or undergrads are officially on the committee, but the faculty do solicit our opinions (undergrads see a lecture by the prospective hire, and the grad students see a seminar and have a meeting with the prospective hire) and that is definitely taken into account in the decision on who to make the offer to (we don't get to see application materials, but I kind of wish I could see what the packets are made of just for future reference). The hiring committee takes their choice to the rest of the department, who seems to always agree, and then then it works it's way up the food chain from there.

Anonymous said...

It depends on who is the chair of the department what the answer to these questions is. Search committee philosophy has varied a lot from dept head to dept head over the years. I like it when the search committees have broad representation from the faculty (in terms of expertise) and the chair is not the 'most expert' in the subfield being hired. Student participation has been variable in usefulness (I don't mean student input in general, but an actual student member of the committee). Some have been great (insightful, diligent) and some have just been warm bodies sitting there so we can say that a student was involved.

Anonymous said...

It didn't occur to me that assistant professors wouldn't be included in search committees, so this is interesting. I don't think it would have occurred to anyone in my department that we needed to protect assistant professors from political battles (possibly harming their tenure cases in the department vote). We just don't have those kinds of battles, or at least not with those types of consequences, unless I am totally clueless, which is possible.

mOOm said...

Almost all our committees have the director of our 65 or so faculty department as chair... There must be someone from outside the department. Otherwise we try to get someone with field expertise and gender balance. No students, postdocs, or non-academics (for academic positions) apart from an obligatory person from HR making sure the rules are followed. Assistant profs might be included or not.

Mark said...

Just to clarify my comment about political battles: such battles aren't common in my department and I've never heard of a tenure case in my department having difficulties as a result of one. But some of the senior faculty nevertheless feel strongly that untenured faculty should be protected from the slightest possibility of such a thing.

Anonymous said...

My only experiences on a search committee so far have been as an undergraduate at a SLAC. We had a group of five students, usually juniors and seniors from different sub-fields of our department, that would meet with each interviewee for lunch. All senior majors, student committee members, and anyone else would see the prospective hire give a seminar and could pass their opinions along to the chair. We had CVs available to us, but didn't spend a lot of time with them for the faculty searches that took place during the school year. For the hire of a head laboratory instructor, which took place in the summer, we read CVs and statements of teaching philosophy pretty carefully before lunch. We would meet up after lunch, come to a group decision (sometimes divided), and one person would present our opinions to the chair, usually by an email that everyone else could see so someone could comment if something was misconstrued.

Anonymous said...

Usually the chair is someone senior (at least tenured; I chaired one when I was newly tenured assoc prof) in the area of the hire (not necessarily absolute closest in specific subfield, but generally pretty close). Asst profs can be included. We usually (not always, it seems) do have a student, though they don't vote and don't really do much. I think they can see all materials but don't remember. I don't think postdocs have been included.

We are involved in one exceptional case now where the chair is from a totally different field. This is because we have had two failed searches in this field, with the failures being in part because of intractable subfield-subfield schisms within the committee; it was felt some impartial adult supervision was needed to prevent this from happening again.

Anonymous said...

I am in a Biology Dept--broadly based. The search committee is usually largely composed of members in the field of interest, with one member from a completely different area for an outside opinion, and an effort made to include both senior and junior faculty (including asst profs) and both men and women. Other Departments are occasionally included --med school departments or chemistry in the case of MCDB appointments and Ecology Curriculum for EEOB. We do NOT have postdoc or student members. However, all candidates meet with students and student feedback is solicited. Feedback is also solicited from all faculty. The committee then brings recommendations to the whole faculty, who vote via secret ballot, and almost always defer to the expertise of the search committee, who spent a lot more time on the process.

Mark P

JaneB said...

We have HR processes which set a standard committee, essentially. For tenure-able positions, the committee is usually chaired by the Head of Department and staffed by four other people, the Dean (which makes all meeting scheduling extra hard), the most senior person in the department in general research area, the most senior person in the teaching programme the person hired would mainly contribute to and a representative from outside the department/from the most distant group from the area of appointment within the department. These five people make the final choice of who is appointable and in what order they will be offered the position. The rest of the department MAY attend all the talks given by the candidates, and if they do they can submit written feedback and rankings for the candidates, but these are only input for the rest of the committee.

Advantage - this is a good-sized committee for practicalities (although the seniority of the members means that scheduling can be problematic). Disadvantage - the rest of the department does not get to read all the applications, or even the short-listed applications, and so the rumor mill goes MAD. There is too much politicing around an appointment, although in the end game the Dean usually puts hir foot down and appoints the person with the most sexy-look publications and future grant income generating potential as they see it, since these are the two things that most easily help FACULTY look good...

MathTT said...

Our searches (so far) have been open in terms of specialty. The hiring committee is five tenured members of the department plus the department chair (though dept chair is not chair of the committee).

It didn't occur to me to ask why assistants can't be on the hiring committee. In my mind, it's just as well... it is a *lot* of work. And we do have input into the process anyway; we are just spared long meetings and endless arguments.

First, we all read the applicants in our area or closely related areas, and we give the committee our rankings. So (I believe) the hiring committee only looks at the applicants that are rated most highly in each area, rather than looking at hundreds and hundreds of applications.

Also, we discuss applicants at department meetings, and after a campus visit each member (tenured / tenure track) gets a vote as to whether or not to hire the person. The votes are non-binding on the hiring committee, but they do seem to take our opinions seriously.

Anonymous said...

What, you have places that are allowed to hire? We are almost entirely tenured here, retirements coming, and have been told repeatedly by the dean that we can't hire for several more years, due to budget issues.

Anonymous said...

I'm at a small department at an R1. Even so, the chair is never the chair of the search committee. We may or may not have a graduate student on the committee, but never postdocs. We may or may not have research scientists on the committee. We usually have assistant professors on the committee. I don't think rank is taken into account much in the committee composition. The chair is a person whose scientific area is closely related to the target area.

Anonymous said...

Research heavy program at an R1:
Search committe of 5 is chaired by someone closest to the field of the position. The rest of the committee is made up of those in the sphere of that field (we're really interdisciplinary). We often had one member of the committee who is from a federal agency with lots of research collaborations within our department. Students are not members of the committee but they are usually included in the decision. The entire program is polled about choices and the committee decides by concensus (not voting).

Anonymous said...

In my department, mathematics, we have highly focussed hires. The committee typically consists of chair, 2 area experts, 1 from another group with potential overlap (eg. a differential geometer when hiring in PDE analysis), 1 from another group with no understanding of the hiring field (logician in case above) and a grad student.

The grad student is there to liaise with the other students, ask totally random questions and shows how "inclusive" we are. If need be, an area expert can be untenured but not recently hired.

However, our department is shockingly apolitical and friendly between groups. It wasn't always so -- we never used to allow students or untenured members near the committee.

Many of the political fights about hires occur before this stage. We have an appointments committee that works with the Dean's office to determine area and write a targeted ad. That committee is only ever senior full professors and is carefully assembled.

Colleen said...

My department has a No Assholes policy. This is official policy dictated by the chair. It's working well for us so far.

GMP said...

We have several topical areas in the department, so each area has a representative on the hiring committee. There are no students or assistant profs on the committee. We generally decide as a faculty which topical area gets to hire next, but then within that area usually the search is very broad. After an interview, everyone who's met the candidate gets to chime in with their opinion, with the area faculty's opinions carrying more weight.

Anonymous said...

I was the grad representative on a hiring committee and we always had 1 grad student but never postdocs on hiring committees. I had full access the the materials including letters and I had a vote in the committee. I was asked by one candidate whether I thought I should have a vote and they suggested I was too inexperienced to have a vote. I thought that was very foolish - whether you think I should or not I had a vote.

Anonymous said...

I can see why some places have rules, but mostly it makes to put sane people on search committees, whether those people are asst professors, students or whatever. In an ideal case, there are enough sane, objective people to form a committee.

Anonymous said...

Our university has standard regulations for all committees with decision-making power, which includes search committees. All committees must have at least one faculty member (not sure if that means tenured actually), at least one graduate student, and at least one person of each gender. Committees with >6 people (which would be unusual for a search committee, at least at my department) must also contain at least one staff member (e.g. technician) and at least one undergrad (in practice never more than one), plus at least 30% members of each gender.

At our department (physics), search committees for any type of position (including TT) typically have 3-5 members where the chair is the faculty member closest to the subject area. The others are most often chosen for similar reasons but can also be simply whoever is available. We never have committee members from outside the department, although it is allowed so long as they are from the same faculty.

Student committee members have full access to documents and a vote equal in weight to each other member. Same for TT faculty.

Anonymous said...

I was the undergraduate student member of a search committee, way back when. I'm convinced the experience was most useful for me, meaning that I got to see the inner workings of academia. Other than asking the candidates "How do you feel about teaching" I doubt I offered anything substantial.
Great learning experience though!

Anonymous said...

I was a student member of a hiring committee in the UK many years ago. It was departmental policy that ALL committees have at least one student member and University policy that no students could participate in hiring committees. This was overcome in a typically English way -- I had to attend all meetings but was not allowed to speak or vote.

There was of course someone from HR there to ensure that all rules were followed. The best part was when one candidate was asked about a nasty review in Science of his recent book. The HR person demanded that he not answer the question as it was unfair -- no other candidates had written books so couldn't be asked about them!

jb said...

Science dept at state u: for tenured positions, only tenured/tenure-track in the committee. A call for members is usually issued at a meeting so it's voluntary. For other hires, standing personnel committee (faculty and permanent staff) to which may be added an udergrad/post doc depending on the situation.

Anonymous said...

In my department (physics, Europe), the chair of the committee is always someone from a different department, for example a chemistry professor (but it is always someone from the natural sciences). The search committee usually includes 6 professors and 6 non-professors, the non-professors being the gender equality commissioner of the institute, postdocs, and students. Two of the professors are from a different university.

Every person has one vote (so students and professors have the same voting weight), and everyone has access to all the files.

Anonymous said...

For those of you with 'no asshole' policies, please tell me how to spot one from the interview process. We got burned by one individual who turned out to be an asshole, but who interviewed very well! Fortunately, he didn't get tenure...