My significant other is looking for tenure-track jobs; an offer may be pending. If it is, part of the negotiation would be whether or not they’d hire me in a comparable non-tenure track position to the one I currently hold. I would really really prefer to be either in a tenure track position at a teaching college or on an instructional professor track!
It’s a come down to realize that my credentials might be an afterthought in all this. Eh, she’s got a Ph.D. She’s taught a variety of classes. Evaluations are pretty good. Why not? No need to actually interview her or see her teach.
We’ll see how that plays out.
I emailed my letter writers about having letters ready. My CV is pretty much up to date. I should be an obvious hire if there is a position open; my undergraduates won a lot of awards for research and projects from my class in the past year, both at my university and away. I won a college-level teaching award, which is no small thing either.
I can’t shake the feeling that all that great stuff about me and my teaching might be gravy but it really won’t weigh in the decision about me at all.
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the current head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, came to ASU and participated in a lunch series hosted by the Association for Women in Science, which I attended. I have been thinking about your situation since you described it, and have been thinking that it seems useful to me to consider how other people have shaped their careers. Anyway, Lubchenko had an interesting story to tell about getting hired at Oregon State University. I don’t recall how the entire story went, but it involved, at some point in the negotiations, Dr. Lubchenko and her husband proposing to their soon-to-be department, that a good compromise for everyone involved would be a joint hire of herself and her husband, with each of them hired for 3/4-time positions. That meant their salaries were collectively equal to 1.5 times the salary of a single professor (a pretty good deal for the university), neither of them had to work completely full-time, and they were both hired as valuable additions to the department. At the time, it was a highly unusual proposal, but they were fortunate that the department wanted them and was open-minded about it (this was before spousal hires were really even heard of).
I think about Lubchenko’s story whenever I start to think the right thing isn’t out there for me – it’s a reminder that sometimes we have to create the right situation for ourselves. And I think any respectable institution should take you and your credentials seriously and on their own merit.
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