Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Ivory Filter Flask: 7/15/14 edition

A few of the academically-related positions posted on C&EN Jobs:

Halifax, Canada: Looks like Dalhousie University is looking for 2 tenure-track professors of chemistry. "Preference will be given to applicants in the fields of synthetic chemistry, computational and theoretical chemistry, and analytical chemistry." Also, looks like Canadians will be given preference.

Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University is looking for an assistant professor of analytical chemistry for fall 2015 - you can never get started too early!

Milledgeville, GA: Georgia College (and State University -- there's a new one for me!) is looking for an organic chemistry lecturer to start January 2015; Ph.D. desired.

Napa, CA: Napa Valley College is looking for an "Instructional Assistant IV" to work in the chemistry department -- not quite sure what it's all about, but it looks to be half administrative/half teaching. Pays 38-44k, which isn't horrible, depending on the education they expect.

Last Minute Lecturers: St. Cloud State University is looking for a chemistry lab coordinator to start September 8 "or sooner" (!). Minot State University desires a visiting assistant professor of analytical chemistry to start August 18. Tick, tick, tick! 

20 comments:

  1. Wouldn't it be great if American RO1 Universities gave American-born Americans preference?

    So much for that idea.

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    1. I'd hazard a guess that 1st-generation immigrants are underrepresented in assistant and associate professorships of Ph.D.-granting departments of chemistry.

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    2. Underrepresented? I strongly disagree with that assessment.

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    3. What matters to RO1 are a couple of things: 1.) name of post-doc advisor, 2.) do you sound intellegent, 3.) publication record, and 4.) green card. Doesnt matter if you are American-born or not.

      A lot of faculty at RO1 would not be here if it was not for the green card. So I think Dalhouse is doing something that most politically correct RO1's could not do.

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    4. Why should anyone care about the hiring practices of some obscure noname university in the middle of nowhere anyway?

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    5. Anon1:05: The O-1 and EB-1 visas already exists for such people. You barely need a bachelor's degree to quality for an H1-B...much less a Nobel Prize.

      But thanks for confusing the issue. Who needs clarity, right?

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    6. Lets say that green cards were no longer issued to foreign-born immigrants. Sure, America would lose a lot of nobel prizes, without a doubt. So what would we gain? Well, probably improved salaries for people who wish to remain in science, because of less competition. Maybe enough of an improvement so that a man can actually think of raising a family on a single income from a science job.

      Id say thats worth it, or ate least worth trying for.

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    7. " Well, probably improved salaries for people who wish to remain in science, because of less competition."

      You are falling for the lump-of-labor fallacy. Broad-based immigration has no effect on wages, either in theory or in practice. Of course, immigration targeted at narrow economic sectors could have effects within that sector, but these would be counter-balanced by the effects on other sectors.

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    8. Blocking immigration doesn't stop outsourcing to countries with cheaper wages.

      "Lets say that green cards were no longer issued to foreign-born immigrants. Sure, America would lose a lot of nobel prizes, without a doubt. So what would we gain?"
      Besides the nobel prizes I would lose some of the closest, dearest friends I have found not to mention a window into the mindsets of the older generations in my family who immigrated long before I was born.

      Also what's with the " enough of an improvement so that a man can actually think of raising a family on a single income from a science job" - did you forget that women enter science and would like better wage prospects?

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    9. It is pretty clear -to me at least- that by importing large numbers of PhD candidates from 3rd world countries and who stay here in the US-job market afterwards, that we are also importing the same quality-of-life issues which brought them over here in the first place. In other words, for example, they are willing to work for less, and so we must, also.

      As far as the origins of US Nobel laureates are concerned: yes significant numbers of them came from abroad. But, they were war refugees, at least to a significant part. They were also from a much earlier generation than the situation with which we are now confronted in the job market.

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    10. Chad Brick: "Broad-based immigration has no effect on wages..."

      I think George Borjas at Harvard would probably disagree.

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  2. Just to be clear, the Canadian job posting says Canadians and Permanent residents (the Canadian equivalent of a green card). If it is any consolation, I think all Canadian academic job postings say something to the effect that Canadians and permanent residents are preferred, and that rarely stops most Canadian schools from hiring non Canadians that were trained in the US or Europe if they are the best candidates, so I don't think this is an undue hardship. It is just the Canadian equivalent of the affirmative action blurb that is on all US job applications. One other consideration is that getting permanent residency in Canada and citizenship is far far easier than in the USA. In Canada, time you spend as a student there can count towards your permanent residency requirement, unlike in the USA.

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    1. Actually, as a Yank who has spent a lot of time in Canada, I agree. And actually, I called up the people in Halifax to discuss the job, and also asked them about that. There are actually quite a lot of US-American professors working at Canadian universities. That is not true elsewhere: both Germany and Switzerland practice de-facto age discrimination when it comes to foreigners

      On the other hand, there are a lot of foreigners at the university where I am now adjuncting on the US East Coast. Mostly Chinese. There is also a European national who his sitting on his butt after getting tenure.

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    2. Is calling a prospective school typical in the job hunt? Did you get to speak to admins or profs? I struck out on the job search last year, but maybe I needed to do extras like this to show interest. Funny, I know a european prof who is sitting on his butt after getting tenure too, but I doubt we are thinking of the same school.

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    3. I don't know if it's typical to call people up as part of your job hunt, but I did it in order to stick out. Especially because the academic job market is so dire now, that even a place like Halifax will likely get mobbed by applicants from all over North America. There were also other fairly unique circumstances to my calling, but I won't go into them here. But in answer to your question, yes, I called and e-mailed to arrange a conversation with someone on their search committee, and over five different time zones, at that.

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    4. Halifax is a nice place, that job would be a pretty sweet gig. But yeah, there will be a lot of competition. Best of luck.

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  3. Oh gosh, our ad for the analytical position at NAU (Flagstaff) featured on Chemjobber? I feel like I've seen a celebrity!

    Flagstaff is a great mid-tier state school, awesome location, huge new building under construction, friendly colleagues. I'm not on the committee, but can answer general questions if anyone posts them.

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    1. I'm glad to see your comment about how great NAU is! It has been on my list of places to apply since seeing previous ads. What type of analytical facilities are already on campus (NMR, MS)? It was a little hard to get that information for the department's website.

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    2. Anon @ 6:01 pm.

      I apologize if the website is not terribly helpful. We have two (newer) NMR instruments (400 and 500 MHz), LC-MS and several GC-MS instruments, although I don't know the specific model/brands. Cyclic voltammetry instrument and new Cary UV-vis spectrophotometers (our fluorescence instrument is older, but works well). We have a very nice ICP-MS upstairs that gets used a lot of uranium studies. We have an excellent instrument coordinator as well and we're always trying to get more "cutting edge" instrumentation (e.g. NSF MRI).

      An analytical person could probably finagle their start up package for a new instrument to go with them into the new building in Fall 2015.

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    3. @anon 658

      Thank you for taking the time to respond. I can certainly work with that setup to start with. Maybe I'll find myself on your campus in the future.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20