Sunday, November 19, 2006

Faculty search: a primer


Candidates come in for interviews. Each interview is a two-day affair. The candidate is scheduled to meet pretty much everyone on the search committee, and maybe a couple of other people in addition if there's time. Usually at 4:00pm on the first day, we have the candidate give a departmental colloquium. We point out to them when we invite them that the audience for our colloquia is very general ... The point is we want to see how well the candidate communicates to a general audience about their work .... There are more visits on the second day. In the late morning (usually), the candidate sits down with the committee and gives a shorter (say 20 minutes) research plan talk. This is where the candidate tells us what they want to do in the near and longer term, and what kind of resources they think they'll need to do it (e.g. a big laser system, or a dilution refrigerator, or access to fab and microscopy tools, etc.). ...

That's from Doug Natelson, who has written "A primer on faculty search" (in a US university, presumably in a science/engineering department). Two posts have appeared, with probably one more to go.

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