Jobs

Florida International University - Assistant/Associate Professor of Higher Education.

I can't find a good link, but there is a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of Southern Mississippi in their student affairs program.

Jobs

Assistant professor of higher and postsecondary education - University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Assistant/associate professor in adult education and higher education leadership - Oregon State University.

Teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State University. (I can't find a stable link to this job, but it's teaching 5 courses a semester in a distance program, non-tenure track.)

Job updates

No, I don't have a job. Yes, things are happening. But this post is about other people.

Several of my friends at Vanderbilt (or formerly at Vanderbilt) are on the market, and congratulations to them for getting jobs at the University of Southern California, Cumberland University, and the University of Tennessee!

I was chatting with a friend in K-12 about opportunities this year. He interviewed at some pretty darn good schools. By contrast, there were no top ten higher ed programs with assistant professor positions this year, and I think that there were no top twenty jobs available, either. (Just to reiterate: At the assistant professor level, which is what I am eligible for.) This is just an illustration of how the first faculty job someone takes is only partially influenced by the opportunities available, which are somewhat random.

Job news

I just got my first of these letters for the job season:

"Thank you for your interest in the higher education position in [Department X]. I regret to inform you that funding for position has been withdrawn because of the continuing budgetary restraints encountered by [our fair state]. Please be assured that withdrawal of funding for this position in no way reflects on the quality of your application."

I'm actually surprised this is the first letter I've seen like this; last year there were quite a few more. But it's good to know they don't want me to feel responsible for the recession.

A long and winding road

For those of you not in academia, I thought it might be interesting to see what a job interview for a faculty member is like. It's a long process. This following is a distillation of a schedule for one of the searches our department is running this semester:

Day 1: Dinner with the search committee.
Day 2: Breakfast with two faculty members. Four half-hour meetings with four different faculty members. Lunch with three more faculty members. Four more half-hour meetings, three with faculty and one with the dean. Late afternoon, the job talk. Dinner with two more faculty members.
Day 3: Breakfast with yet another faculty member. Lunch with students. Meeting with department chair.

Except for a three-hour gap the last morning, there aren't any real breaks in the schedule - there are a few 15-minute gaps between meetings. Long enough, if things are running on time, to use the restroom, but not enough to clear your head or stop being "on." This schedule is pretty typical, although sometimes the first-night dinner is dispensed with.

Jobs

Appalachian State: Assistant Professor in Higher Education, Adult and Developmental education.

Jobs

University of Montana: Assistant/Associate Professor.

Jobs

University of Missouri - Kansas City: Assistant professor.

Old Dominion University: Assistant Professor.

Clemson University: Assistant Professor.

Jobs

University of North Dakota: Open-rank position in higher education.

Azusa Pacific University: Open-rank position in higher education.

The Ohio State University: Assistant/associate professor in higher education and student affairs.

University of Utah: Assistant/associate professor in higher education (two positions).

(Note: I can't find online listings for the last two yet. Will update when I do.)

Jobs

Florida State University: Assistant/Associate Professor in Higher Education. You may recall that last year FSU had a job opening that was frozen; this suggests things are looking up.

Jobs

George Washington University: Assistant/Associate Professor in Higher Education Administration.

Jobs

New Mexico State University: Assistant/Associate Professor in Education, Management, and Development.

Jobs

University of San Francisco: Assistant/Associate Professor, Organization and Leadership.

Jobs

University of Toledo: Tenure-track position in student affairs.

Jobs

Central Michigan University Tenure-track position. This is the first time I've seen a job that was open to someone in K-12 OR higher ed.

Jobs

William & Mary: Assistant Professor in Higher Education.

Vanderbilt University: Three jobs, including one at the associate/full level in higher education. (People ask me, why don't you stay in Nashville after graduation? Because Vandy is the only game in town. Even if they hired their own (they don't), I can now point to this ad - the only hiring they'll do this year is not for an assistant professor.)

Jobs

With the job market gearing up again, I've been thinking about the recent graduates in my field and what they've chosen to do. In no particular order, my compadres include:

• a researcher at a think tank in DC
  
• an administrator in a higher ed advocacy group
  
• institutional researchers (two)
  
• a professor, not of higher ed, at a community college
  
• professors, of higher ed, at flagship state schools (two)
  
• an administrator for a denomination's higher ed board
  
• a state higher ed coordinating board researcher

The thing is, as far as I know only one of the folks who is not a higher education professor even considered applying for faculty jobs. It's not that they wouldn't have been competitive, either. A few more interesting data points: All of the faculty members are single and childless. A couple of the women only considered jobs in their spouse's city of employment. Several women were adamant about wanting "a normal family life" or "a job that gets left at the office."

The thing is, in education there are a lot of other possible careers other than "professor." It's not like a PhD in philosophy. Still, I've been surprised by how many bright, promising graduate students are not considering or seriously pursuing the faculty role.

Jobs

University of Houston: Assistant/Associate Professor - Educational Psychology. For those of you not in the field, it's unusual for a higher education job to be in a department called educational psychology. Usually, it would be in an educational policy and leadership department, or maybe adult and lifelong learning, or occasionally at a center for higher education. Despite this nomenclature, the opening has little to do with psychology.

The job season has now begun

University of Missouri: Assistant, associate, or full professor with expertise in higher education leadership and/or policy.

Higher education hiring

A report on hiring in higher education is available here. While it is ostensibly about the second quarter of 2009, it covers long-term trends as well.

One thing to note is that it focuses on job postings rather than actual hires; last year, quite a few jobs were posted and never filled due to budget cuts or hiring freezes.

By the way, the job season hasn't quite geared up yet. I've seen two job postings in higher ed, neither of which I'm qualified for - one for a dean and the other for someone researching community colleges.

Edited to add: Actually, there are two community college positions, at Morgan State and at Old Dominion.

Jobs

Central Michigan University: Assistant Professor in Educational Administration.

Jobs roundup

I promised that when my job search was over for the year, I would share some details of the search. That time has come.

First, the most important news is that I will be sticking around Vanderbilt for another year as a student, finishing up my dissertation and getting some articles out.

I applied for 11 positions, which included one postdoc and two strictly assistant positions. The others were either open-rank or assistant/associate. (What that means, for non-academics, is that there is a lot more competition, including luminaries in the field.) Three schools requested more information or interviews of some kind from me. And I received one offer, which I ultimately declined.

Several of the positions weren't offered to me or to anybody else because of state budget cuts. That, combined with the number of open-rank positions, made it a difficult year for someone finishing up. In some ways I'm relieved, because I can use the next year to get a lot done.

Jobs

Marywood University: Assistant/associate professor in higher education.

Jobs

[crickets]

I've been out of town for spring break; details will be posted after I get my pictures uploaded. In the meantime, here is a new job announcement.

University of Georgia: Assistant or Associate Professor at the Institute of Higher Education.

Some shorts

• I can't be bothered to find the links at the moment, but job ads for faculty positions are down 15% in history and 21% at the MLA, and rough estimates are that actual hiring is down 40%, due to freezes after ads are posted.
  
• "The failing economy has taken its toll on academia like it has everywhere else. Here are just a few of the (potential) consequences of the crisis."
  
• The Turnip Truck stopped selling Theo's Chocolate, which is my favorite. Much sadness.
  
• Make this page more bacony. Via Made of Meat.
  
• My 2009 goals are to through-hike Indiana's Knobstone Trail, complete my Cumberland Trail 50-mile patch requirements, and hike in at least two new states. My sister and I will be visiting Isle Royale in the summer, so Michigan will be one of them.

Jobs

St. Cloud State: Assistant/Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration.

Job outlook

A friend asked me the other day if I couldn't get a job here in Nashville, and I said, "Well, not unless I want to work at Starbucks." Which wasn't really very funny, because it's tough to get hired anywhere at the moment, and I don't have experience as a barista.

All of you know the economy is tough. It's tough in higher ed too. At least two jobs I applied for canceled their job searches because of hiring freezes. I saw a posting for a faculty job at a public university here in Tennessee (not one I qualify for), and it bore the note "contingent upon state funding." Well, you can pretty much write that one off: Tennessee colleges are getting cuts in appropriations of over 20%.

But more specifically in Nashville, that means we can count out TSU, and Vandy doesn't hire its own grads as faculty. That's all the programs that have higher ed programs around here. And Vandy has a staff hiring freeze, so it's unlikely I could get a postdoc or a staff position. Quite a few of our grads have gone on to work at the state board of higher education or the Tennessee Higher Education Commission in the past, but those agencies are already frozen and are facing cuts.

Then envision this across not just Nashville, but the entire country ...

I'm not trying to elicit sympathy. I have another year of funding guaranteed, so I won't be out on the streets. Most people aren't so fortunate, even many students on the job market. It's just that the kind of job I thought I'd get used to be narrow because the kind of job I wanted was rare. Now the kind of job I think I'll get is narrow because jobs are rare.

Jobs

University of Pennsylvania: Post-doc positions.
University of Wisconsin: Assistant professor.

Jobs

George Washington University: Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration.

UTEP: Assistant/Associate Professor of Higher Education.

University of Michigan: Assistant/Associate Professor at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education.

Cloudland Canyon

Group shot
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

Here's the group photo from a 6.8-mile hike we did at Cloudland Canyon, in Georgia near the TN/AL border. The leaves were just beginning to hit their stride.

Jobs

Dallas Baptist University: Assistant Professor, Higher Education and Statistics

University of Texas at San Antonio: Associate or Full Professor of Higher Education

Jobs

University of Southern Mississippi: Assistant/Associate Professor in Higher Education Administration

Michigan State University: Open-rank tenure-stream position specializing in "teaching and learning, outcomes assessment in postsecondary education, international and comparative higher education, student affairs administration, and technology as it relates to teaching and learning in postsecondary education."

Jobs

University of Louisville: Open-rank position in higher education.

Jobs

Benedictine College: Faculty, EdD Program in Higher Education and Organizational Change.

CSU Fresno: Assistant/Associate Professor, Post-Secondary and Community College Education.

Morehead State: Assistant/Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education,

Stanford University: Open-rank, tenure-track position. "The Stanford University School of Education (SUSE) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) seek nominations and applications for a joint appointment in the broad area of international post-secondary education."

Jobs

Rutgers: Tenure-track assistant professor "to lead the development of a new master’s degree program in College Student Affairs for fall 2009, and to contribute more generally to teaching and curricular development in higher education."

Georgia Southern: Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership. Note: Requires "at least two years of administrative experience in education."

Jobs

Florida State University: Assistant or Associate Professor of Higher Education

Harvard University: Open rank, open specialty.

Jobs

Appalachian State: Assistant/Associate Professor.

Jobs

Ohio University: Assistant/Associate Professor of Higher Education teaching in the areas of "organizational theory, leadership and change; community colleges; higher education finance and economics; and/or diversity and social justice."

University of Wisconsin: Assistant Professor in sociology of education.

Jobs

University of Iowa: Assistant Professor, specialization open but seeking someone quantitative rather than qualitative.

Job openings

University of Toronto, tenure-stream appointment in the field of
Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement.

Boston College, assistant professor, student affairs/development

Job posting

Morgan State University, open rank with specialization in student affairs. (Morgan State is a public HBCU in Baltimore.)

Job posting

Penn State: Open Rank, tenure-track faculty position in Higher Education (Specialization open).

Background info: Penn State has the top-ranked program in higher ed. An open-rank, open-specialization search usually means a department is not trying to fill a gap (i.e., their community college guy retired and they want to replace him) but that they're looking for the absolute most promising candidate out there, be it a newbie or a tenured star. Now search committees aren't silly; they know that a newbie can't have the same record as a full professor. They don't stack them up against each other but against the pool of similar people - that is, would this person be in the 99th percentile compared to those with similar time and experience?

Is that light the end of the tunnel or a train?

Yesterday morning I sat sleepily at my computer checking my email, until I sat up straight, startled, uttering mild oaths. The email that had occasioned this was a listserv that often includes job announcements, and on this occasion it included the very first job posting for an assistant-level, tenure-track faculty position starting in fall 2009. In other words, job season is now open.

I've been debating how to handle job searches in this blog. In general I am open about most things, but a certain amount of discretion is more appropriate in job-hunting. I've decided that I will post relevant job openings as I see them. Just because I have posted a job does not mean I have applied for it. In some cases, I may explain why I am not applying, just to give a better sense of the market. In other cases, you'll just have to wonder. Only after the entire search is done will I give any more specific account of it all.

So this
first position is at Miami University of Ohio. They're looking for an assistant or associate professor with a focus on student affairs. I will not be applying, because I have no expertise in that area, and I am not interested in developing it, either. However, seeing it is a definite prod!

Now, time to revamp my CV, get my references lined up, and whip out a little dissertation.