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Search Committee Diary

Search Committee Diary

Edward F. Aboufadel

Southern Connecticut State University

September 1993 ? April 1994


Introduction: This Search Committee Diary describes a search conducted during the 1993-94 academic year to fill a tenure-track position. The search was carried out by the Mathematics Department of Southern Connecticut State University. Although this third diary of mine is in no way comparable to Dante's Paradiso, or even Lucas' Return of the Jedi, I hope that it will stimulate discussion in the mathematics community.

 

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below.

-- John Dryden

 

September 15, 1993: This year the Mathematics Department of Southern Connecticut State University will be searching to fill a full-time position in Mathematics Education. This past spring, one of our professors stepped down from her position here to take a similar position at another institution. Now we have been authorized to conduct a search to replace this person.

Back in May, we were not sure if we would be able to do that. Southern, like most other universities, has been under financial pressures for a number of years now, so nothing can be taken for granted. It was not until mid-August that we were allowed to hire someone in a temporary, one-year position in order to hold the funding for the slot. We selected one of our long-time adjuncts.

Last week, our department chair was notified from the powers that be that "we may begin the search process to fill the Mathematics Education position". The first step will be to select a search committee. The method of selection is described in our Departmental By-Laws, which have been written and approved by the Department. Here is how this works: anyone who does not wish to serve can notify the department chair within the week. Everyone else is put on a ballot. We vote, and the top three vote-getters serve on the committee. The department chair is a fourth member of the committee, and, after the vote, he selects a fifth committee member. Basically, a third of the department will be on the Search Committee.

I have decided that I would like to be on the search committee, so that I may see what this process is like, so that I may participate, and so that I may keep this diary of our work.

 

September 26, 1993: The election of our search committee is complete. After sending a memorandum to department members expressing my interest in the committee and in writing a diary, I was elected to the committee. There is a total of five members, and we will first meet as a committee on Tuesday, the 28th, to select a committee Chair and to discuss the parameters of our search.

 

October 2, 1993: The Search Committee met twice this week, on Tuesday and on Thursday. Our main accomplishments were developing the official Search Committee Guidelines and creating the official advertisement.

In our department, the Search Committee develops guidelines that then need to be approved by a vote of the whole department. The guidelines are not an expected timetable, but rather a flowchart describing the process. Here is a summary of our guidelines: First the Search Committee will conduct a preliminary screening of all applicants, including applicants we may meet at the Employment Register in Cincinnati. Then, the committee will decide on several semi-finalists. The folders for these candidates will be available for all department members to study and comment on. After we receive these comments, the committee will decide on three or four finalists, who will be invited to campus. (The University will fund visits by up to three candidates.)

The guidelines describe what will occur during a finalist's visit on campus. There will be: an interview by the Search Committee, a lecture or lesson by the candidate, informal meetings, including lunch, with the faculty, and a meeting with the Dean. (This is exactly what I experienced in April 1992 when I traveled to Southern for an interview.)

We also devised an informal timetable. First we established a deadline for applications: January 24, 1994. Actually, that's not quite accurate. We say in the advertisement: "First consideration given to applications received by 1/24/94," which means applications received after that day might not be considered. We determined that we would need a week to decide upon the semi-finalists (keeping in mind that we will be reading applications as they come in), and that by mid-February we could contact candidates about the on-campus interviews.

We did not develop these guidelines from scratch. Basically, we took the guidelines from a previous search and modified them slightly.

We also composed a first draft of the job advertisement. There was a similar search here a few years ago, so we used that advertisement as a basis for our new one. There was some discussion as to what kind of person we were looking for. We are looking for someone to teach undergraduate and graduate mathematics education and mathematics courses, and supervise secondary school student teachers. This last responsibility is particularly important to us, and we discussed how to make that clear in the advertisement. We were concerned that if we made the requirements too broad, then we would receive the dreaded 500 applications, but if we made the requirements too narrow, no one would apply. One committee member joked, "No diarists need apply."

By the end of the Thursday meeting (September 30th, 12:30 PM), we had decided on our advertisement. Now the hard part began. The advertisement needed to be approved by a myriad of offices on campus. Meanwhile, we felt it was important to get the advertisement into the December issue of Focus and into the November issue of The Mathematics Teacher. We made some calls. The deadline for the December issue of Focus was October 1, with the following issue not out until February. For their November issue, the deadline for The Mathematics Teacher had passed, although they said that if we could squeeze a camera-ready ad into a 1 inch by 2¾ inch box, then they could squeeze it into their next issue. The following issue would be out by December 20, and that issue had a deadline of October 21. We decided that this wouldn't be worth it to us, but we still wanted to get the ad into Focus.

So, two of our committee members, including our newly-selected committee Chair, raced around on Thursday and Friday to get the many signatures and to find a fax machine. We were lucky. On Friday was a special event, the Albert Schweitzer Faculty Convocation, featuring an address by Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez. All the administrators were on campus that day. By 2PM on Friday, our advertisement was approved and out.

I begin to wonder how many schools face the advertising deadline problem. The school year starts in September, and it takes a few weeks to get a search committee organized. Ideally, you would want job ads in the October, November, or December issues of publication. Yet, by the time the committee is up and running, deadlines for some of these publications are lapsing.

Other publications that we plan on advertising in are the Notices, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Journal of Research in Mathematics Education, and the Newsletter of the Association for Women in Mathematics. We also want to advertise on e-math. Due to cost, we will not be advertising in The New York Times.

 

October 25, 1993: In the early stages, most of the work of the search committee is done by the committee Chair, and he has been busy. One task that he has been working on is signing us up for the Employment Register for the meeting in Cincinnati in January.

One difficulty he faced was the completion of the form itself. An employer in the Employment Register must complete a form that is available in both Focus and the Notices. There are many guidelines for this form. You must type the form. You cannot photocopy the form. You cannot submit the form by electronic mail. You must fit all that you need to say into the small spaces provided for you. (The Chair agonized about what to drop from our advertisement to fit under the title "Significant other requirements, needs, or restrictions which will influence hiring decisions.") The Chair made a mistake on the first form he worked on, so he borrowed my copy of Focus and used the form there.

The other difficulty had to do with funding. As with most public institutions, funds for searches are inadequate, while the need for "accountability" means that there is more than an adequate amount of bureaucracy. A small amount of money is dedicated to a search process, enough to help pay to invite candidates on campus and to pay for postage. In order to pay for the employer fee for the Employment Register, the chair had to go to five different administrators. Somehow he found the money for the Employment Register.

 

October 28, 1993: Today the Search Committee met with a representative from the Affirmative Action office, to review the legal lay of the land. We already had some contact with the Affirmative Action office, as that office had to approve the wording of our advertisement that was sent out.

As the applications come rolling in, we are to send out a response letter informing the candidate that we have received his or her letter. (I want to re-iterate that when I was applying for jobs, not every school that I applied to did this.) To be included in that letter is an affirmative action form and some information about the AAUP (since faculty here are in a union). The affirmative action form is returned to the Affirmative Action office rather than to the search committee, and the information on the forms is used to determine whether or not we are conducting a broad enough search, according to federal guidelines.

Another issue discussed in this meeting was the outline of the finalists' visits to campus, which I mentioned above. In the past, some candidates were able to meet with the Academic Vice-President (AVP) here, while others were not, simply due to the schedule of the AVP. These meetings occurred because the AVP was (and still is) interested in the attitudes and concerns of potential new faculty, but the meetings had no effect on the decisions of previous search committees. Nevertheless, we cannot give the impression of unfair treatment among the finalists, so it was determined that the AVP either meets with all the finalists or none of them.

This issue of fairness also came up with respect to the Employment Register interviews, possible telephone interviews of semi-finalists, and the on-campus interviews of the finalists. In each case, we need to devise a minimum set of questions that each interviewee will be asked. (It is acceptable if these initial questions lead to more specific questions about a specific candidate.) As a result, an interviewer does not need to dream up questions during an interview, which should make the interviews flow more smoothly. The questions need to be run by the Affirmative Action office, as they want to make sure we don't ask anything illegal. (For example: How old are you?)

Also at this meeting, the Chair announced that we had received our first application. It resulted from an advertisement placed in one of the local Sunday papers. Although there is no reason that we can't read this or any other application now, we will not begin serious deliberations until next month.

 

November 21, 1993: Job applications have been coming in over the last few weeks, and we now have over thirty. Here's how a mailing from J. Applicant is being processed: first, when the mailing arrives, the department secretary procures a manila file folder and the name "J. Applicant" is written on the tab. She places it in an area of a file cabinet labeled "unprocessed". At the same time, she updates a data base that she has started on her computer. The data on the computer is simply J. Applicant's name and address.

On Thursday of each week, the Chair processes the unprocessed files. J. Applicant's file is checked to see if anything is missing (such as vita, transcripts, letters of recommendation, or even cover letters), the Chair records what is missing, and the file goes in the "processed" area of the cabinet. The next day, our secretary sends out a form letter to each of the newly processed files, acknowledging receipt of the application and summarizing what is missing.

After Thanksgiving, the Search Committee will be meeting to discuss how things are going. At the meeting, I'll be passing out a form that I have been working on that we will be giving out to anyone we interview in Cincinnati. The form has some information about the department, and points out some of the work we have been doing in mathematics education, for which we have received some recent praise. For example, through a program called Project CONNSTRUCT, we interact with public school teachers through co-teaching collaborations and other enrichment programs.

 

November 30, 1993: The Search Committee met today, and began to prepare for Cincinnati. First, we talked about what kinds of questions we want to ask during the short interviews in the Employment Register. We decided, among other things, that it is important to find out about any secondary school experience that a candidate may have, given that one of the responsibilities of the position is to supervise secondary school student teachers. Our secretary will create a form that we will use to take notes during the interviews.

Also for the interviews, we plan on bringing copies of a fact sheet about Southern that I mentioned before and that the committee approved today. Each interviewee will get one. We are also bringing along a few copies of our undergraduate and graduate catalogues.

When we get to Cincinnati, we will have to decide whom we prefer to interview at the Employment Register, so today we developed a plan to determine that list. From now until December 21, members of the Search Committee are going to study all the applications that we have received so far. (As of today, we have received 68, although many of our advertisements have yet to appear. We should be in the new FOCUS that is out next week.) Each member of the committee will give each applicant a grade of "Yes", "Maybe", or "No". At the December 21st meeting, we will discuss our grades and a pool of top candidates will emerge. We will look for these candidates in Cincinnati. We will also examine the "yellow book" of resumes that candidates submit to the Employment Register. We are supposed to receive the book before Christmas.

Without reaching a conclusion, the Search Committee discussed if, soon after the December 21st meeting, we should notify the candidates who clearly do not fit our criteria. We probably will, and I have already volunteered to draft a rejection letter. I told the committee that I still have all of my rejection letters from two years ago, and that I would dig out the best and the worst of the lot.

At this meeting, we also approved a flyer that will be sent out shortly to mathematics education departments, and one committee member distributed an essay by Paul Humke at St. Olaf College entitled "Making the First Cut." The essay appeared in this week's Concerns of Young Mathematicians, which is sent by email by the Young Mathematicians' Network. The essay described Professor Humke's impression of the search process at his school. To St. Olaf's advantage, it appears that they usually know the previous Spring if they have the approval to hire someone, whereas we had to wait until September to determine if our vacated position would be filled or remain vacant. As a result, their time table is about two months ahead of ours. He notes that the first "winnowing" occurs in December, so that by the time they go to the January Meetings, they have 15 finalists. In comparison, we probably won't have our finalists until late February. At the January meetings, then, they can informally meet with their finalists. On-campus interviews at St. Olaf are in February.

Well, I have a lot of folders to read through the next few weeks.

 


I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

-- T. S. Eliot

The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention

of printing. Printing has destroyed education.

-- Benjamin Disraeli

 

December 4, 1993: Today I began reading the application folders. I read through fifteen of them in about ninety minutes. At that rate, if we were to receive one thousand applications, I would spend one hundred hours reading through them. Let's hope we don't get that many.

What can I say about the folders I read? It was very interesting. At the risk of sounding like a form rejection letter, let me say that there are a lot of accomplished people out there. Some have very impressive research backgrounds, while others have a lot of teaching experience.

With approximately twelve pieces of paper per candidate in hand, I have to grade these candidates as "Yes", "Maybe", or "No". (Again, the question I am trying to answer is, "Should we interview this person?") Twelve pieces of paper can actually tell you a lot. You get a sense of where a candidate's priorities are from what is sent.

When it comes to applying for jobs, there is one approach, the scatter-shot approach, for which we young (and not so young) mathematicians have become famous. This approach is to take advantage of computers and copy machines and to apply for any position that comes along. It is clear to me that some of our candidates have done this, since many have little to say about the fact that one of the responsibilities of the position, as stated in the advertisement, is to supervise secondary school student teachers. Silence on this topic is, of course, not the kiss of death as far as I am concerned, and perhaps when I am done reading all of the folders, I'll discover that practically no one has anything to say about supervising secondary school student teachers. After all, it is not a common responsibility in academia, although it is an important one.

 

December 14, 1993: The big Reading of the Applications continues. I have come across two applicants so far that I think are promising, and I wonder if the other members of the Search Committee will feel the same way that I do. I guess I will find out next Tuesday.

This week we are sending out our flyer to Mathematics Education departments that we have on a list. Our ad was in FOCUS last week, and it is also now available on e-math, so by now people should know about our position. That, in fact, seems to be the case, as during the past few days we have been averaging 20-25 new applications per day. (The count on Friday was 107, so we must be closing in on 150 as of this writing.) Perhaps with the semester ending, people are finding more time to send letters out.

I talked to our secretary today to see how she is dealing with the flood of mail to the Search Committee. She is spending practically her whole working day processing applications. In the mornings, she finishes dealing with the previous days' bids for our position, which includes sorting out the documents and preparing the "we've received your application" form letter. The new mail comes in around noon, and then she starts over again. Our secretary has an undergraduate assistant who helps her a few afternoons a week. I suggested that we should hire another undergraduate just for the month of December to help us with these applications, but our secretary just laughed that sardonic laugh of someone who has worked at an institution long enough to know what can be done and what can't.

Apparently a few of our intrepid applicants view our hiring contest as some sort of lottery and have applied twice, I suppose to increase their odds. So far none of these wily folk have slipped past our secretary's watchful eyes.

As a final touch, our secretary saves the cancelled stamps from the applicants' envelopes and sends them to a convalescent home. The home is somehow able to raise money from the cancelled stamps. Graduate students take note!

 

 

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

--- Shakespeare

 

December 20, 1993: Working an hour or two a day, I have now read through 167 application folders. Some are complete, while others are missing letters of recommendation, but I am getting the gist of the quality of our applicants. Of the 167 applications, I have ranked about a fourth of them as either a "Yes" or a "Maybe."

It is interesting to see the many ways that schools send out letters of recommendation. At some schools, there seems to be an office that coordinates the sending of the letters, so for some applicants, we have received just one envelope with all three letters in it. These packets often include a page that states that the applicant has waived his or her rights to see the letters. For other applicants, the letters come in one at a time, and we have applicants that have only one letter of recommendation so far, while others have two or three, and a few have eight or nine. In our advertisement, we asked for three.

There are basically two types of recommendation letters. There are the "wonderful research" letter and the "wonderful teaching" letter. A colleague of mine tells me that, ten years ago, the letters were more balanced. Concerning the "wonderful teacher" letter, it troubles me a bit that practically every one of our candidates is either "an exceptional teacher", "an effective teacher", "an excellent teacher", "an exemplary teacher", "a tremendous teacher", "an accomplished teacher", "the best T.A. who ever worked for me", or "in the top 25% of the T.A.s at Watchamacallit U." Judging from these letters of recommendation, I start to wonder why people think there is a crisis in undergraduate mathematics education. ("Maybe it is because the extraordinary teachers need to spend too much time looking for jobs," the diarist says sarcastically.)

Tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, the Search Committee meets to trade opinions about these applicants. Our goal is to come up with a list of people we would like to interview in Cincinnati (if those people are at the Winter Meetings, of course).

 

December 21, 1993: As I awoke this morning, a tropical storm was blowing through Connecticut. It was windy, rainy, and mild. I fought the storm walking from my car to Engleman Hall. A few minutes later, we started our meeting.

For an hour and a half, we compiled our "votes" on individual applicants. When all was done, we had a list of about thirty applicants that we will be looking for in Cincinnati. (I'll call this group our Quarter-Finalists, and we will add to this list after the holidays.) Many of the job seekers pointed out in the cover letters that they would be at the Winter Meetings, and most of those said that they would be enrolled in the Employment Register. We will see what happens next month.

It is premature for us to send out rejection letters. The files of a majority of the applicants are incomplete. We've decided to contact some of our leading candidates to remind them to send the rest of their documents in. (Letters of recommendation, in particular, can be slow in coming.)

Tomorrow I am driving west to see my parents, brother, and niece for a few weeks, and then I am driving to Cincinnati. The other committee members who are going to Cincinnati are flying in, so I'm in charge of bringing the various catalogs and flyers that we will be giving to our interviewees at the Employment Register. When we all get to Cincinnati, we will meet up with the committee Chair who will coordinate our activities there.

Happy Holidays!

 

January 13, 1994 (Thursday morning): I have arrived in Cincinnati and the Winter Mathematics Meetings are well underway. The marquee on the Cincinnati Convention Center announces simply: "Welcome Mathematicians".

Three members of the Search Committee (including myself) are here and we met yesterday afternoon to get ourselves organized for the Employment Register (ER). Over 500 people have registered this year as applicants in the ER. Our first task was to choose as many as twenty of these people for our interview request list. Before we met, each of us had looked over the book of resumes of applicants that is provided by the ER, so each of us had a short list of numbers to contribute. We combined these lists together into our List of Potentials.

Next, we took out our list of Quarter-Finalists that we developed last month to see which of them were participating in the ER. We found that eight out of our list of 30 Quarter-Finalists were participating. Surprisingly, there were a few of those eight who were not on our List of Potentials. We figured that this was due to the limitations of the ER resume form. With the addition of these people, and with the addition of a few on-site applicants, our List of Potentials grew to thirty members.

Employers are allowed up to twenty requests, so we had to now cut some of the thirty. To do this, we went through the resumes one by one, exercising less generosity in our judgments than we did initially. When the smoke cleared, we had actually reduced our List of Potentials to seventeen, and we submitted that list to the ER.

Next, we decided on a schedule for the interviewers. Sometimes we will have two interviewers, sometimes just one. I will be interviewing for all of the Thursday afternoon time slots and a few of the Friday afternoon slots.

Participating in the ER takes a lot of time. Our Wednesday afternoon meeting alone lasted ninety minutes. I am not getting to as many sessions as I have in past Winter Meetings.

I'm observing that, as in past years, some applicants are leaving notes in the employers' message boxes requesting interviews outside of the ER. Related to this is the atmosphere of anxiety among the applicants as they worry about their futures.

There are also some new wrinkles in the job market this year. I hear that more schools are using email to handle applications and rejections. One friend told me that he had already received a few email rejections.

In the ER, at least one school yesterday sought to discourage certain applicants from requesting an interview with that school. To those people who had already sent the school an application and whom the school had put on their "Probably Not" list, this school sent notes reminding those people of their low status in the process and strongly suggesting that they not request an interview with that school. This is probably not a bad idea, provided that the note was a reminder and not an initial announcement.

This morning the Chair picked up our interview schedule. Sixteen of our seventeen requests were met. Of the sixteen, seven were mutual requests, which means that the applicant also requested us. The other twenty-four interviews will be with people that we did not request, but requested us. Of those twenty-four, nine labeled Southern Connecticut a "high-priority" request.

Finally, the Chair informed me yesterday that since Christmas, the number of applications for our position doubled. We now have over 300 applicants. I have a lot of reading to do when I get back to Southern next week.

 

January 15, 1994 (Saturday night): Late yesterday afternoon we completed our forty interviews. I participated in fourteen of them. For a few of them, I was the lone interviewer. When I worked with someone else, I was the lead questioner about half of the time.

Each interview was fifteen minutes long, and a typical interview went something like this: at the beginning of the interview, we gave the applicant a copy of the job announcement and the one-page description of Southern Connecticut State University that I wrote before Christmas. Often, but not always, the applicant would give us a vita that we could refer to during the interview. This was helpful.

We then said something like this to the interviewee: "In our department we have approximately eighty mathematics majors. Many are in the Applied Mathematics program, a few are pursing a B.A. degree in mathematics, but the majority are seeking a B.S. in mathematics with secondary education teaching certification."

(If someone wants to teach high school mathematics and wants certification from us, we require that they earn a B.S. in Mathematics. Some other schools do not do this, but I think it is a sound idea.)

We continue: "This position has many responsibilities, the primary one being to supervise these certification students, particularly when they are doing their student teaching. What kind of background do you have in secondary education that would relate to this responsibility?"

(We are rather lucky to have a position unusual enough that we can quickly get to the point. I wonder how it would work if we were looking for "an Applied Math person"?

I would hope we could develop a pointed question or two to ask in the ER.)

There were many different responses to the question. If the applicant had some background in secondary education (e.g., used to be a high school mathematics teacher; received certification in some state; was involved in a program in graduate school that included high school teachers), then we asked probing questions about these activities. We might have asked: "What teaching methods did you use in your classes?", "What do you know about the NCTM Standards?", or "What is your opinion of the Standards?"

Another responsibility of the position is to teach undergraduate mathematics courses, so we asked the interviewees which classes they believe they could teach. We asked about their college teaching experience and about their use of technology in the classroom. We did not have much time to discuss their dissertation work.

If there was any time left, we often asked the applicant if he or she had any questions of us. A few asked about the cost of living in Connecticut.

Now, some of the applicants were clearly not suited for the job. I asked other Search Committee members whether or not we should just tell these people right then and there to not expect a call from us, but it was felt that this should be a committee decision and not just the decision of the interviewers. On the other end of the spectrum, we couldn't express too much enthusiasm to promising candidates, pretty much for the same reason.

Next week the Search Committee will meet to sort out our impressions of the interviewees.

Interviewers (including myself) commented that after several interviews, it was hard to remember if a certain question had been asked yet. To help us keep track of things, we had a comment sheet on each candidate that we filled out, and we referred to it during the interviews.

Someone could make a mint rolling a food-and-coffee cart around the big interview room.

Each employer had a message box. We found a number of items in our box. Some people put their resume in the box (and nothing else). Others put a whole packet in. We are treating either a resume or a packet as a formal application. That means that we will bring each one back to New Haven for processing, just like the others, and we will decide on "Yes", "Maybe", or "No" for each one.

So there were over 500 applicants in the ER, and there were 69 employers. Some other employers told me that they have received over 400 applications so far for one position. At least one school is trying a method where applications are screened immediately when they arrive, and the people who are obviously inappropriate for the position get rejection letters quickly, which follows the "Mattix plan" which is available over e-math.

 


Some books also may be read by deputy, and

extracts made of them by others.

--- Francis Bacon

 

January 31, 1994: The pace of the search has slowed to a crawl these past two weeks, for a number of reasons. First has been the dangerous weather of the past few weeks. Southern was closed two different mornings last week, and a Search Committee meeting we had scheduled has been postponed until next week. The second reason has been the beginning of Spring Semester, which has distracted all of us with on-the-spot advising and roster juggling.

The third reason is that we now have over 450 applications, 250 of which haven't been read yet. In order to speed up our decision-making, we have decided to split the unread applications among the five of us. The Chair has asked us to "try to identify the clear and evident rejections since we have been consistently agreeing on these." We will meet soon to come up with a manageable number of viable files.

 

February 8, 1994: The Search Committee yesterday settled on seventy Quarter-Finalists -- the thirty from December plus another forty from our individual readings this past two weeks. The other 400 or so applicants we have rejected completely, and we will start sending them rejection letters soon. Many of the rejected applicants were simply not who we were looking for.

Our next task is to reduce the seventy Quarter-Finalists to fifteen or so Semi-Finalists. We will do that on February 16th. To prepare to do that, each of us on the Search Committee will be reviewing the applicants of this super seventy and also our notes from the Cincinnati interviews. After that meeting, the applications of the fifteen or so Semi-Finalists will be distributed to all members of the department for comments.

The School of Education here was looking to hire for a position starting January 1994, but the funding for that position was cut over the holidays. The Search Committee wondered if that meant that funding for our position was also in jeopardy, but the Chair said that the Dean has reassured him that there is no problem.

 

These are the things that you at home need

not even try to understand.

-- Ernie Pyle, war correspondent

 

February 16, 1994: Today the Search Committee met to make our second cut. After some discussion and voting, we separated our seventy Quarter-Finalists into four groups. The first group, which we labeled as "Double Stars", is made up of the best candidates, and there are seven of them. Next are the "Single Stars", which number eleven. The third group is the "Pluses", and there are nine of them. The remaining forty-three we have now rejected. The eighteen "Stars" are our Semi-Finalists (which is a little more than the fifteen that we planned, but that's OK), while the "Pluses" are our alternate candidates. The next step is to give members of the department the opportunity to comment on the applications of these eighteen candidates.

Although it would be both difficult and inappropriate for me to go into the details about how we are making these decisions, I do want to point out that our reduction from nearly 500 applications to fifteen Semi-Finalists is based basically upon the application materials only. (In the case of those that we saw in Cincinnati, our observations from those interviews were factored into today's decisions.) Only after we receive the comments from the department will we start doing telephone interviews. Then, to decide on our three Finalists, we will use the combination of the department's thoughts, telephone interviews, and further deep reading of the application folders by the Search Committee.

At this point, we are little behind the schedule we established last Fall. By now, we wanted to have our three Finalists picked. The Committee is a little anxious that we may lose a prime candidate to another school if we don't act quickly. One tactic we have undertaken is to call some of our better candidates, to tell them that we are interested in them, and to ask if they are still available. So far, no one that we have called has said that they have found a position elsewhere.

The Committee is also getting a little anxious about funding for this position. Last week a different department at Southern completed a search, decided on a candidate, and made the candidate an offer. Soon after, the offer was "put on hold" for financial reasons. The Chair asked the Dean what the implications were for our search. The Dean told us to proceed, but we are apprehensive. We are ready to vigorously defend our need for this position!

The Search Committee also decided on the wording of a rejection letter to send to those applicants who did not make our first cut. Thinking about my comments in FOCUS two years ago, I now realize that writing a good rejection letter is not easy. On the one hand, you want to treat these applicants with courtesy, and perhaps even sympathy. The opportunity is there to use the rejection letter to educate (provided that the applicant reads it), and you don't want people to go away with a bad attitude about Southern Connecticut State University -- after all, we may meet again. On the other hand, you don't want to get into an argument with anyone about how decisions were made. With these ideas in mind, we drafted the following letter:

 

Dear :

 

We regret to inform you that you are no longer under consideration for our position of Assistant Professor in Mathematics and Mathematics Education. We have a strong program in Mathematics Education at Southern Connecticut State University, and we are looking for a candidate with a doctorate, preferably with secondary school experience to maintain that strength. The key responsibilities of our position are as follows: to supervise the students in our program who are earning their secondary (i.e., high school) education teaching certificates, and to teach undergraduate courses in mathematics, and undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics education. That we are not able to make you an offer is more a reflection of our own specific needs than a negative judgment of your credentials. Nevertheless, we do appreciate your interest in Southern, and we hope that you will consider applying to us again, should we advertise a position suitable for your qualifications.

 

Sincerely ...

 

February 28, 1994: We are beginning to get calls from applicants who are wondering about their status in the search process. All questions of this sort are going to the Chair, who is telling them honestly where they stand. The first round of rejection letters is now being prepared by our secretary. One question we asked ourselves is whether or not these letters should be individually addressed or if they should read "Dear Applicant:" To tie up our secretary and our laser printer to produce over 400 rejection letters is simply beyond our means, so we are going to go the less personal route and make use of the copying machine. All Quarter-Finalists who are ultimately rejected will receive a personally addressed letter.

We also need to check with the Affirmative Action office now to determine whether or not we have been conducting a broad enough search, according to federal guidelines.

Here is an item of interest: the distribution of the years of graduation of our applicants. Of our nearly 500 applicants, 49% are receiving their Ph.D.'s this year (1994), 18% received them in 1993, 7% in 1992, 5% in 1991 and 3% in 1990. 9% of our hopefuls received their doctorates in the 1980's, and 4% of our candidates got their Ph.D.'s in the 1970's. 2% earned their degree before 1970. The percentage of our applicants who have not earned a Ph.D., nor indicate that one is on the way, is 3%, more than I expected.

 

March 1, 1994: Today the Search Committee met to try to whittle our eighteen Semi-Finalists into a handful of Finalists. All of us took a hard look at the eighteen folders, and we received some feedback from department members not on the Search Committee. Everything in the applicant's folder is important at this point: resume, letters of recommendation, transcripts, cover letter -- everything. We have cut about half of the Semi-Finalists. The rest we want to contact by phone for one reason or the other. (These phone contacts may involve two or more members of the Search Committee sitting in separate offices on separate telephones talking to the same candidate -- a real conference call!) After these phone contacts, we will have between three or five Finalists that we will be inviting on campus.

If a Finalist is not from Connecticut, then we will reimburse him or her for travel expenses. Also, we will be sending our Finalists information about the talk they will be giving to the faculty here. Because of the nature of our position, if a candidate wants to organize their talk as if they were teaching a class (by, for example, using group work or manipulatives), then that is fine (but not necessary). We are hoping to have Finalists start visiting this month.

 

March 9, 1994: As we start to contact people by phone, we are discovering that a few of them have already been invited to other schools for interviews and have even accepted offers. That news has shot a bit of adrenaline into us.

 

March 25, 1994: We have now determined our three Finalists and have invited them to campus. One of the Finalists will be here next Monday, the second on Thursday, and the third on the following Tuesday. The Chair found email very useful to set up the interviews.

Each Finalist will have a similar schedule on campus. Here is what a typical day will be like:

 

8:00 Breakfast with interested department faculty

9:00 Interview with the Search Committee

10:00 Campus Tour

11:30 Lunch with available department members

12:30 Presentation by the candidate

2:00 Informal discussions with interested department members

3:00 Interview with the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences

 

During the campus tour, we will show them our high-tech classroom, the "transitional building" that is being built (the first stage of our Master Facilities' Plan), and our small classes (maximum enrollment is thirty).

It appears that I will be setting my alarm for an hour or so earlier for these interviews. We have heard encouraging news about continuing our search. The powers that be have given us strong assurances that when we choose someone to hire, it will not be in vain.

 

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,

Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis

On Education.

--- W. H. Auden

 

March 30, 1994: Events passed quickly this week and it appears that our search is almost over. On Monday, one of our Finalists came for on-campus interviews. The Search Committee was impressed with this person. Other members of the department liked the candidate, too, according to the comments that we solicited.

That same day, our other two Finalists withdrew their applications. One of our Finalists has received two other job offers already and the other backed away for various reasons.

Today the Search Committee met to discuss possible options. After some deliberations, we decided to offer the position to our Monday visitor. We have resolved to act quickly, since excellent candidates with a special interest or a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education have been hard to find this year.

At this point, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences takes over and handles the negotiations. After the meeting, the Chair talked to the Dean to relate the Search Committee's recommendations about requirements that should be included in the offer letter (e.g., that the candidate have a Ph.D. in hand by a specified date) and about salary. The Dean will consult with the Academic Vice-President about these issues.

 

March 31, 1994: Given our experience this year, I wonder if it is time for the leaders in the mathematics community to say something about the shortage of Ph.D.'s in Mathematics Education? On second thought, the last time someone brought up a shortage of Ph.D.'s ...

 

April 21, 1994: After a few weeks of negotiations with the Dean, our new colleague -- I'll call this person Dr. M -- this week accepted our offer.

J. Philip Smith, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, negotiates with Dr. M.

I suppose it is not too early to speculate about the Fall and what really matters in academia: Who will Dr. M be sharing an office with? Will Dr. M be happy here at Southern Connecticut State University? Will we be happy with Dr. M? Like myself, Dr. M will be going through an annual evaluation process to monitor teaching performance and professional growth.

Everyone on the Search Committee is relieved that our job is done. It has been a long process, and all five of us are glad that it was ultimately successful.

Of course, we still have to send rejection letters out to our better candidates -- the Quarter-Finalists. Our secretary is working on that right now.

 

Some Final Thoughts: As of this writing (the middle of June 1994), we are still receiving in the mail a handful of applications.

The Dean and I chatted recently about "departmental memory". He told me a story about a department at Southern that conducted a search one year and another search the next year, with no one on the first search committee finding his or her way onto the second search committee. As a result, the second committee made the same mistakes that the first committee did. Another department hadn't conducted a search in a decade, and when they needed to hire someone, they weren't sure where to start.

Recently, the Chair and I were wondering what we would change if we had to do another search next year. We both wanted to have a smaller number of applicants and to have the process move along quicker, goals that are not necessarily independent. We agreed that an advertisement that is even more specific about requirements of a candidate would be a good way to start to reduce the number of applicants. Maybe. The following anecdote was recently passed on to me about a different search: "The advertisement specifically mentioned 3 requirements for the successful applicant. A member of the search committee confided to me that out of that mass of resumes, only FIVE could be identified as MEETING the specific requirements in the posting!"

I wonder how much longer we in the Mathematics community are going to tolerate this situation: not enough jobs, too many graduates, an application process that is keeping the post office profitable and is taxing everyone's time and resources. None of us earned our Ph.D.'s because we wanted to send out scores of applications, write hundreds of letters of recommendation, or read folders whose number is comparable to the pages in an average Calculus text. We are intelligent people -- we should be able to solve this problem.

 

That day therein we read no more.

--- Dante

 

END

 


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