Tuesday, June 5, 2018

The 2019 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List Start (3 positions) and Open Thread

The 2019 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 3 positions.

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

The 2018 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List finished with 552 positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? This will serve as the open thread.

Otherwise, all discussions are on the Chemistry Faculty Jobs List webforum.

27 comments:

  1. @CJ
    The Coalition of Next Generation Life Science has posted various data (demographics, admission, attrition, and graduation rates) for their PhD programs, including chemistry. The coalition currently consists of nine elite institutions, including some Ivy League and Big Ten.
    http://nglscoalition.org/coalition-data/

    Here is the December 2017 article in Science Magazine which describes the founding and mission/objectives of the coalition: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6369/1388.full

    Hope you and other readers find this information pertinent and interesting. I was surprised by some of the data!

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  2. Hey,
    this year, can we add a column for "date added", so we can easily find new entries? I think this would be easier on you guys (thanks for the hard work!) as well as more reliable/flexible than the "highlight in yellow" paradigm.

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  3. I would love if the stats at the bottom were cross-tabulated for the three variables of category, specialization, and rank.

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  4. What are our thoughts on going out on the academic job market more than once? Does a failed first search make you less attractive in a second one? Does the reason why the first search failed matter?

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    1. Unless you're the golden boy from a megalab and applying only to top-20 schools, most places won't know anyway if you tried last year. Presumably, though, if you tried last year and are considering trying again you have probably relaxed your standards.


      I got an offer on my 3rd try through the ringer. This was most likely related to finally getting several nice papers out the door. The first cycle I didn't have many papers out, none yet from the postdoc, and didn't get any interviews. Second cycle I had a few papers out, but not really good ones, and almost got an offer (interviewed, was selected by the faculty vote but the search was canceled by the dean). Third cycle I got an offer, probably since I finally got nice papers out in high profile journals.

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    2. I was on the market 3 years, didn't get a TT until my 3rd try. Had visiting positions previous.

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    3. There is noting wrong going for multiple job search seasons. If the rule was one-and-done, there would be many failed searches (both for institutions and candidates). Make sure you use the feedback you received from the previous search (if you got any) to make your search better this year. Or, if you weren't successful at all to receive any feedback, then take the silence as something and not just do the same as before.

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  5. Chemjobber, is there enough interests in your blog audience to start curating a chemical engineering faculty list?

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    1. We had one in 2016-2017.

      I think there might be some interest, but not necessarily a ton. If you would like to start one, I'd be happy to publicize it for you.

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    2. Sure, I can help with the curating of the list!

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    3. Sounds good. Please e-mail me at chemjobber@gmail.com

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    4. May I suggest including Materials Science & Engineering as well? I think both ChE and Mat Sci tend to be equally adjacent and relevant for chemists.

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    5. That would be most appreciated!

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  6. The posting for the College of New Jersey no longer has a functioning link.

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  7. My department will be starting a new search for 2 TT faculty for retirement backfill. We are in dire need of gender diversity, and we are thinking of ways to increase our female applicant pool. Out typical solicitation reads "Post-doctoral experience highly desirable", but we are thinking about following this statement with a qualifier that says "however, female candidates and underrepresented minorities will be considered without post-doctoral experience". Obviously, we'll get HR to smooth out the wording, but I'd be interested in hearing opinions about waiving the postdoc expectation to entice diverse candidates. For context, my institution is a public state school (~20k enrollment) with a mixed research/teaching emphasis. Faculty typically teach 2/2 loads and are expected to publish about 3-4 papers and recover startups through external grants before going up for tenure. Startups have ranged from $200-300k in recent years. There is no Phd program in chemistry (BS & MS only), but some faculty can accept PhD students through participation in adjacent programs (biology, physics, engineering, etc).

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    1. I understand the desire to diversify, but in my view, discrimination is never the right way, no matter the goal. chemjobber had, rightly, stopped such discussions on last year's thread, so this isn't the place to discuss affirmative action in general. However, in my non-expert opinion, your suggestion is simply illegal - affirmative action seems to be permitted by courts where the race/gender/etc. is an "added factor", somewhere over a tie-breaker, but still just one thing in a total consideration of the candidates. To waive a requirement (or strongly implied requirement) for a class would go way too far, I think.

      Let me suggest, instead, a different way. A major issue for women is family - women worry about combining pregnancy and child care with work, with tenure requirements, etc. (though this should be a worry for both members of a couple, it falls way more on the woman, partly because of the reality of pregnancy, and partly because of still-existing gender-roles). If your institution has a good maternity-leave policy, why not mention that? Do you have some sort of subsidized and/or on-campus day care? What's your policy for tenure clocks for family leave?

      In the same vein, do you have a good, structured mentorship program? Leadership training? Support for grant writing? Teaching training? Mentioning such programs in the job ad will help assuage concerns about "will I succeed here", and those concerns seem to be more common for female and minority candidates.

      The point is - my suggestions will help, I think, diversify your candidate pool, while being useful and welcoming to everyone.

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    2. OP here. All of your suggestions are actually included in the draft solicitation, and we take pride in highlighting the departmental culture of maintaining an excellent work-life balance. I should also clarify that the relaxation of the post-doc expectation is an effort to reach out to a population that might not ordinarily seek an academic post for the very reasons you've articulated. Postdoc experience is rarely "required" in any solicitation, as most schools want to leave the door open to qualified candidates who may not have such experience (e.g. industry hires). As such, no actual requirements are being waived; rather, a specific pool of candidates is being informed that they encouraged to apply directly from their grad programs. From a legal and logistical perspective, all candidate applications are accepted and vetted. However, provosts and deans may legally offer special incentives to increase faculty diversity. For example, it is not uncommon for universities to offer larger startup packages to underrepresented candidates. Similarly, bypassing the postdoc track could be considered a discretionary recruiting incentive.

      As I mentioned, the exact language will be ironed out with HR, and I'm not really interested in debating the vagaries of hiring policy. What I'd really like to know is if any of CJ's readers from underrepresented groups would be more inclined to apply for a faculty position if they felt like they could do so without having to grind through one or more postdoc positions. For my part, I never did a postdoc stint and have never regretted it.

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    3. So, if postdoctoral experience is not actually important for the position (and your own experience seems to support that), why define it as "highly desirable" in the first place?

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    4. Good point. I guess that's just a copy/paste relic from the last search. Maybe we'll just omit any references to postdoc experience and say that the department is especially committed to diversifying the faculty, and that female and other underrepresented applicants are strongly encouraged to consider applying (including ABD). We can work out the legalese and argue the fairness and logic of faculty searches, but the original question is simply this: If offered the opportunity to jump immediately into the aforementioned TT faculty role without a postdoc, would any readers take it? Is this enough of an incentive for someone who might not ordinarily put together an application package to do so?

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  8. What happened at University of San Francisco chemistry dept?

    They are advertising for an organic chemist. It looks like they had some retirements...but there were ALSO two mid-career tenured organic chemists: Megan Bolitho (got tenure there) and Jie Jack Lie (hired as associate).

    Now they are memory-holed from the website, and no news on the web that I can see as to where they are....

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    1. There aren't any mentions of Megan Bolitho grants, or Jie Jack Lie publications, or both their student's previous successes. All of these used to be on the University of San Francisco Chemistry department site.

      You can find some of this stuff archived on the main university site if you look, but there's been some serious deleting. All gone! Spooky!

      I doubt anyone from the department can comment - when things like this happen there are usually legal reasons why not - but perhaps someone else with knowledge of the situation can comment on what they've heard.

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  9. Does anyone know as to how much one's research proposal play a role in landing a potential TT position? Does it have to be impeccable, innovative and out of this world? Or does it have to be realistic?

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  10. I'd suggest taking out the mention of a post-doc altogether, do as open a search as you can within the discipline or subdiscipline, and put the word out to faculty members who might have students/postdocs who'd be interested in applying.
    I've seen places get hung up on needing subdiscipline X this year pass over a good female candidate in subdiscipline Y only to hire a man in subdiscipline Y a few years later.

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  11. Any thoughts on postings that say the review starts on _____ but apply by _____ + 1 month for full consideration (e.g. review starts on Sept 30th, apply by Oct. 30th for full consideration). How often do people get screwed who submit Oct 29th because the committee found enough good people at the end of Sept?

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    1. This seems like as good as a place as any to note that I will be posting the "review starts" date as the date by which the position will be sorted by on the Faculty Jobs List.

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  12. This thread was closed on September 3, 2018. In order to avoid the comment nesting problem, we will go with monthly open threads.

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