Comments on: how most of us live; ask a scatterbrain

By: Kieran

Kieran — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:20:17 +0000

I’ve seen several different sorts of talks at job interviews:

-straight-up job talk on your research
-job talk plus teach a class
-teach a class plus an informal presentation of your research around a roundtable
-present your research to undergrads (or mix of faculty & students)
-just teach a class, no research,

- deny an undergrad an extension on a paper.
- attend a committee meeting.
- try to find a piece of paper in a messy office.
- avoid attending a committee meeting.
- fix a paper jam in the photocopier.
- successfully fill out reimbursement form FA9302X-C Rev 2.
- get inappropriately drunk at a conference.

By: tina

tina — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:48:37 +0000

I’ve seen several different sorts of talks at job interviews:

By: Anomie

Anomie — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:06:02 +0000

Wait - I’m getting the impression that not all job interviews involve having to give a job talk in which you present your research. Is this not the case? Or is it just structured differently in different schools? At both schools I’ve been at, the candidates’ job talks were very important. At least, it seemed like they were. I wasn’t in the room where the decisions were made, but a lot of the talk outside that room centered on the person’s job talk and whether they pulled it off.

By: sociosam

sociosam — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:56:00 +0000

I teach at a State school with technically a 4/4 load but everyone except lecturers get one course release per semester for research (so in reality a 3/3 load). We offer 30+ B.A. degrees and a couple of M.A. degrees and no doctoral programs. I’ve served on several hiring committees. Nearly 100% of our full time tenure track faculty have terminal degrees.

Research is important - a publication or two is nice but a completed dissertation with publishing potential will often do. Research can be quantified more easily than teaching or service so it tends to be the graduate version of methods & statistics - the flunk out course or reason for not getting tenure.

If you get an interview, have a great lecture ready. All candidates, at our campus, are expected to give a public lecture over their speciality - often some slice of the dissertation. Keep it simple. Most attending this lecture will not know your area in depth and you will have one-on-one time for those that do later. The public lecture needs to be practiced and polished much like you might give to a student audience - in fact, there might be students in the audience.

I’ve seen these lectures make and break candidates. Years ago I saw on of our sociology candidates go from last to first choice when he gave a great lecture and the other candidates were unprepared. Last year there was a candidate (not in sociology) who was the committee’s favorite on paper. Unfortunately for him his presentation was boring, confusing, and his PowerPoint unreadable (grey lettering on a black watermark). After the presentation they could not get him off campus fast enough.

If hired, pay attention to your research - see above - you need to publish something but not necessarily what an A-1 school expects. Go to conferences and do papers. Maybe even seek out a colleague for some joint work.

On teaching, keep the students happy (Read Generation X Goes to College) but be challenging. You don’t need rumors that you are easy. Attend teaching seminars - while some might be waste they count as “points” toward tenure in your teaching category. Try to incorporate something new from a teaching seminar and document it in your annual report.

While on the topic of measuring teaching, keep these things in mind. And like Santa, keep a list.
1. All teaching conferences you have attended and how you might have used that information in your classes.
2. Students in your classes that presented their papers at conferences or published them in student journals.
3. Work with a student organization.
4. Publish something on teaching - depending on the nature of the publication, you might get to count this twice in both teaching and research.
5. Finally, don’t sleep with them!

When it comes time to writing up annual reports and your tenure dossier, remember Goffman. Reread Presentation of Self. Don’t be a braggart and claim to be God’s gift to teaching but come off as student centered and working hard at getting better.

More advice on tenure: Don’t let “Service” get in the way of publishing. And try to stay out of political fights - as they say, “Keep your friend close and your enemies closer.”

By: Jay Livingston

Jay Livingston — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:51:50 +0000

Neither R1 nor SLAC. I’m at a Division III state school whose administration wants it to be UMichigan (or come within one point of beating Duke). The administration wants us to hire people who will bring it glory in the form of prestigious publications and money in the form of grants.

The department, OTOH, wants people who can connect with our students so that we keep the majors we have and bring in more new majors. Yes, we want people who are smart and who do interesting research, but we also look at those teaching evaluations.

It can make for tension when tenure time rolls around (5 years), but so far we have not lost anyone who we wanted to keep.

By: monkeyfluffer

monkeyfluffer — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:30:50 +0000

I think there’s another layer of complexity that might need to be uncovered here in regards to the mentorship aspect in deciding to work at an institution that values teaching (or hey, some of us have that “decision” made for us as well). Not only are those who want to work at Liberal Arts colleges sometimes getting bad advice from their good advisers at their good programs, but getting good advice is hard because, in my experience, a lot of teachers in grad school have to work in hiding. I remember mentioning in passing to an adviser that my ideal job would be at a liberal arts school, but that I’d be really happy to work at a state school or community college as well. Needless to say, the look shot back at me made it clear I had committed a serious faux pas. I was too green to realize it at the time, but what I was essentially saying was “thanks for all the fellowships and support and money, but I don’t really have any intentions of doing anything in my career that will benefit this department in the long term.” I learned pretty quickly to keep my teaching aspirations to myself.

By: Anomie

Anomie — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:10:30 +0000

re: OW: I should edit my last comment. I did not get my master’s from a small liberal arts college; it was a midsized public university with a heavy liberal arts emphasis. The sociology department has 9 professors and a very small masters program. So my “advice” is coming from that perspective.

Also, my PhD will come from an R1, but not a top 10 in Sociology (though I think we’re in the top 50, if that makes a difference).

It would be interesting to map out the sociology bloggers we do know about and see how things like status play into it. The internet is supposed to be the great equalizer, but I think there’s enough studies out now that we know this isn’t true.

By: tina

tina — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:30:07 +0000

Re: non-R1s. Or, maybe it’s much harder to talk about these schools because they are so much less clear in their expectations. Clearly, the same old advice about better publications and more publications applies, but it is often unclear how many publications, or what kind, is good enough. Like OW’s case, the expectations for new hires is often not the same as the publishing expectations for those who are already there, so it’s really hard to give advice.

And re: the socio-blogosphere being elite. My suspicion is that this argument is very much like the question, common a few years ago, “why are there so few women bloggers?” In fact, there are lots and lots of sociologists blogging from all sorts of places. A lack of awareness does not mean they are not out there, or of course, in here.

By: colonel density

colonel density — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:49:21 +0000

Regarding SLACs, it seems like a tough market. Because they hire so rarely (so few faculty and ones that are likely less mobile than the ones at R1s with lower levels of turnover) there are not that many openings. So if you are *really* set on that type of a job, definitely talk to people about it. And make sure your advisors make it clear in their letters to those places that you *really* want that kind of a job. (By the way, SLACs also compete for top research types of folks, they just often aren’t successful in recruiting them so it’s hard to see from the final outcome who got offers in the first place.)

Regarding non-R1 big Us, I suspect that research still matters quite a bit (as it does at SLACs as well), but there is (1) tons more teaching than at R1s; (2) much fewer resources than at R1s so in some ways it is probably much harder to keep up with research. This would suggest to me that people simply do not have time to read blogs.

With all of the resources available to me at my R1 school ever since I started this job combined with a relatively low teaching load, I am not surprised that I would get more research done than peers at R2 schools. Over time, this gap would only get wider.

By: shakha

shakha — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:13:19 +0000

kristina b: that, or we scatterplot folks could have alienated folks. a lot of our conversations are “insider” and in answering questions the assumptions are often that you want to be at a top 20, that getting and ASR is what we’re all aiming at, etc. so they could be out there, but just not listening (reading) us anymore! not sure why i’m cynical tonight, but i am…