My department searched two positions this year – for a tenure track assistant professor of Architectural Studies and for a one-year replacement faculty member in New Media/Video. The first position has been offered and accepted and the second position – well, I hope the committee decided this afternoon on their recommendation!

Once again, I’m glad not to be chair any more!

I’m on sabbatical, but I agreed (in a moment of weakness) to do a task with a job search. I have to read through the files (though not much else) in order to be sure the committee is doing a fair and equitable job. 87 folders (luckily they aren’t actually all complete, so I can skip incomplete ones).

So I was reading along through the middle of the alphabet yesterday. One candidate’s name began Mil- and the next folder was an Ras-. I assumed one of the other folks had put a block of folders back into the drawer carelessly, so I stepped over in the office to find the rest of the M candidates. Turns out there were no candidates with a last name beginning with N, O, P, or Q.

Weird.

(Oh, once again – if you’re a grad student who has completed the Ph.D. your advisor, at least, ought to want you to get a job badly enough to personalize the letters of recommendation. “To whom it may concern” letters that stress the likelihood that you yourself will be an excellent advisor of graduate students don’t do you much good at small liberal arts colleges. I understand that your fourth reader may not be much invested in your career – but your advisor?)

Salovey, who is 54 and lives in New Haven with his wife Marta Moret, came to Yale as a graduate student in 1981 and has three decades of academic and administrative experience at the university. He is the only president in the history of Yale who has served as the chair of an academic department, as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as dean of Yale College, and as provost.

Maybe a good thing – but you know, it can be dangerous, too.

Kroger named new Reed College president.

I know only what I’ve read about Reed and some idle chit-chat here and there – but Reed has always struck me as an intensely academic place (oh, and with a weird reputation for drugs, though there always seemed something carnival-like to what I’ve heard). And everyone at Small LIberal Arts Colleges know they refuse to participate in the USNews ratings. Read the Wikipedia entry.

So, to hire someone with a J.D. instead of a Ph.d., though it’s all  the rage (and we’ve survived for 13 years with our local version), seems striking. Higher Education has certainly turned against hiring from the inside!

Maybe they hired the Oregon Attorney General to do something about the druggie reputation? Interesting.

I think we just made the transition from having applicants to candidates . . . after hours of Skype interviews on 3 separate days we have narrowed our focus to a group of four. The Provost gave me permission at a meeting yesterday (yes, I had a committee meeting on a Sunday – argh!) to bring the four to campus, and I emailed them yesterday evening. Now we’re scrambling to construct a schedule, to get dates on the Provost’s calendar, etc., etc.

I feel fine about posting this here because someone (one of the 4, I have to suppose) has updated the Academic Job Search Wiki with the information!

Hobart and William Smith folks got news this weekend of someone leaving. My friend and neighbor Professor Susan Henking has taken a job at a really interesting and complicated place — Shimer College in Chicago. She going to be their 14th president!

The more I’ve read the more perfect a place is sounds for Susan. Here’s their internal version. Here’s Wikipedia. It’s going to be a complicated but interesting time for President Henking — and for Shimer! I wish her, and them, all the best!

One of my colleagues on the search committee was reading files yesterday afternoon and asked who else was searching this season. I popped onto the Academic Jobs Wiki to answer her question. Here’s the competition, with some notes:
Tenure Track
Early Modern or Renaissance/Baroque
College of Charleston – Ren/Bar (teach a 3/3 load)
Concordia U Montreal – filled
Tulane
Oklahoma State – hiring assistant or associate
U of British Columbia – asst or assoc
U of Pennsylvania – wide ranging regional interests, 1300-1750
Narrower than us
Case Western – Early Modern Southern Europe
U Wisconsin-Madison – Early Mod Northern Europe
Columbia – Southern Europe 1300-1700
Broader than us
Coastal Carolina – Renaissance specialty, must teach Medieval, Ren, Baroque – filled
Grinnell – medieval / early modern – asst or assoc
Lawrence U – Renaissance primary, Medieval secondary
Mills College – Medieval, Renaissance, OR Baroque — filled
U of Alabama – Medieval/Renaissance
U of Montevallo – Ancient to Renaissance
U of Pittsburgh – any field in pre-1750, especially Mediterranean or Global
U of Southern Indiana – Med, Ren, OR Baroque
Non Tenureable or Other
Lasalle University– Chair, Fine Arts Dept – specialization in Ren Art
Middlebury – visiting
UMass Dartmouth – visiting
Our job?
Hobart and William Smith Colleges invite applications for a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in Early Modern European Art and Architecture, beginning Fall 2012. Preference will be given to candidates prepared to teach broadly in the arts of Europe and with a research specialization in painting or sculpture. Additional teaching interest in an outside field or period complementing those of current department members is desirable (e.g., African-American, African, Pre-Columbian).
We seek an enthusiastic colleague with broad competencies that will allow work with faculty from other departments in our general curriculum and cross-listing of courses with our interdisciplinary programs (see catalogue: these include, for example, Women’s Studies, European Studies, Africana Studies, Environmental Studies, Media and Society). The Department encourages participation in Global Education programs. Ph.D. preferred, ABD considered.
The teaching load is five courses per year, one of which will be a 100-level survey course. Successful candidates will show an ability to offer relevant intermediate and upper-division courses, including capstone courses, and to participate in the First Year Seminar program.

Of course WE didn’t remember that there would be a federal holiday Monday, so some material will be trickling in legitimately late, but we’re hoping to gently close the door soon, get everything read (some of us have read a lot, some a little, and some none, but that’s about average). There are all sorts of interesting folks who are applying; this is the exciting phase, before we have to make any decisions NOT to hire anyone (other than the most flagrant examples of applying for every job this year). Just off hand, I think we’re in the high 50s now for total number of folders — but some of those have only one or two letters of recommendation in them and the application hasn’t arrived. Soon!

And I don’t intend to stir until mid-February!