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Liberal Arts Jobs - Advice from the other side.
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Job Search
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By dkung
Posted Mon Apr 28, 2003 at 03:28:14 PM PDT
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When I was finishing my degree back in 2000, I was specifically looking for a job at a liberal arts school. I had an enormous amount of support (from recent grads, from classmates, and from sources like YMN), and my search eventually landed me in an ideal spot at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Since then, I've been on the other side of the interview table twice. Nothing teaches you how to be a better candidate than reading hundreds of applications, talking to candidates on the phone, interviewing them at the joint meetings, and welcoming them to campus. While I don't have plans to use this knowledge personally, I hope that others in the YMN community can benefit from the lessons I've learned on this side of the table.
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| First a disclaimer. Every search and every school are different. St. Mary's is a small (1800 students) public (despite the name) liberal arts school, with a department of six mathematicians and two computer scientists. We advertise for mathematicians in any subfield of mathematics, and while research is expected, the emphasis of our search is primarily on teaching.
Applications
We received a huge number (my chair won't let me say exactly how many) of applications for our tenure-track search this past year. Each member of the committee views the applications differently, but for me, having an applicant mention something specific about the job, our department, or the liberal arts gets me to take a closer look. Why? Imagine that it's early December, you have a stack of mid-terms to grade, finals to write, the Putnam exam to proctor, and a huge stack of applications to read, one of which says "I am writing to apply for your tenure-track or post-doc position." Since we have no graduate students (and thus no post-doc positions), the subtext screams "I am looking for a research position and have applied to a whole mess of other schools in case I don't get what I really want." As an applicant, that's not the message you want to communicate.
The most difficult part of writing an application is undoubtedly the teaching philosophy (TP). Part of what makes it so difficult is that you don't know (and can't know) your audience - and even if you did, you could never satisfy everyone. (One of my colleagues and I apparently like disjoint sets of TPs.) That said, there are some general guidelines. Anything over two (or at most three) pages probably won't be read thoroughly, and might hurt your chances. One of my late night vents: "What makes this person think I have time to read a 10 page TP?" Avoid tired clich |
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