At my institution, faculty are expected to acquire substantial federal research funding. If we are asking faculty to submit many grant proposals per year and using this as a factor for their tenure and promotion , it seems very reasonable to assess their ability to write compelling technical documents that will be read both by specialists and non specialists. This is one additional important use of the research/teaching statements.
Regarding time commitment - In my field it is not necessary to extensively personalize the research and teaching plans for each university, so most of the text can be recycled between applications. Writing the first application is very time consuming while the marginal cost of additional applications is fairly minimal. Perhaps this low marginal cost is why some folks apply very broadly even if they are not particularly interested in a certain location.
I think this type of search season is happening more (we're seeing them here). One issue I'm curious about is whether postdocs/recent PhDs have mentally recalibrated to be way more willing to draw the line at working in a place they don't want to live, but nevertheless still apply to all the jobs in the sector they want, because...reasons? If there's no chance you'll live in State X, maybe do X State College a favor and don't apply for the job? Expectations for spousal arrangements also seem to have grown beyond what they were in the past, although I do wish (well-resourced) colleges would start seeing some of those as opportunities rather than Gordian Knots
Nah, man, any academic who can't glean everything they need from a job letter and a vita should automatically be removed from the search committee and any administrator who can't read a vita should be demoted back to adjunct faculty. A good letter will embed research and teaching statements and will at least hint at diversity-related matters. Requiring a grad student or junior faculty member to cater to specific jobs with endless piles of bullshit because some professor or dean doesn't know how to read a letter and vita puts the burden in exactly the wrong place. Also, any college or university that requires candidates to fill out online forms to provide information already in the letter and vita should lose accreditation.
I think there is an enormous disciplinary difference at work here, in terms of the ability to do research under the particular circumstances of a given institution. There are areas of physics that are readily amenable to an undergrad-only institution, and others that require access to grad students and postdocs. And still others that might SEEM like they'd be too advanced or resource-intensive for a small place, but that the right person can make work. We need to know that we're not going to be wasting both the candidate's time and the college's, and that requires more data than just a letter and a CV.
But that kind of thing should come up in a letter and then, if they get there, in the interviews. I'm not sure how it comes out in SEPARATE teaching, research, and DEI statements, or how it comes out in asking first-round people for transcripts. Like, if someone is pursuing a job at your college, rather than parse these kinds of questions within the committee, ask them if they are committed to your kind of institution.
And while we can claim disciplinary special pleading for asking for reams of material from grad students (we are truly a unique unicorn of a discipline!) as someone who has for several different yearly cycles chaired college tenure and promotion committees for people from a range of disciplines, including the sciences, I'm not convinced. EVERY discipline has the divide between major research desires and major teaching expectations at most of our institutions. An Africanist in history would love to be able to travel to Africa regularly. That would be easier at Northwestern than at Bridgewater State.
By your own admission, you asked more than 100 people to submit an enormous amount of material. 90% of them will never speak to someone on the committee. I think ideally we owe job candidates more than that, and if we can't give them more than that, we need to ask for a lot less.
Of those 90%, many will speak to *some* committee, though, making the writing justified, assuming (I think correctly) that research and teaching statements between an application to school X and school Y differ only at the margins, and candidates are applying to a bunch of positions. For recent searches I was on, a ~3 page vision/plan of research for an experimental science doesn't seem too heavy a lift.
Yeah, I think my other unstated reaction to this is that it's really not THAT much material-- I skimmed back through the drive with the folders, and almost all of the completed packets are under 30 pages, with most of those including reference letters. And it's prep work that any candidate needs to be doing anyway-- drawing up a clear and plausible research plan, having an actual answer to the appropriate questions about teaching, etc. There's a little extra burden of customization when applying to multiple places, but that's pretty minimal for the most part-- a paragraph or two is plenty.
I really just don't see this as an unjust imposition on somebody who's looking for a faculty job. It's probably worse to be on the READING end of this, in terms of sheer volume, but I would rather have the information than not. I just don't see any way that knowing LESS about the candidates is going to improve the decision-making process.
One thing we did that I do think was reasonable was only asking for reference letters from long-listed candidates, although I think I appreciate that more as a letter-writer...
I've historically found letters really useful even at the first cut stage, so I tend to want them early. Also, the experience of trying to wrangle letters from some of my references with months of lead time makes me uneasy about the idea of asking for them on a compressed schedule at a later stage of the process.
(I know a few people who don't want letters at all, only phone calls with the references, because they feel they get better information that way. That just makes my skin crawl, though-- anything that somebody isn't willing to sign their name to in print but would tell me on the phone seems to me like the very definition of stuff I shouldn't be using to make decisions that I might be asked to defend in court.)
Yeah, sorry, but I don't buy this "asking them for lots of material is actually a favor to them" self-delusion. As someone periodically looking into senior-rank jobs there are lots of applications that are an enormous pain in the ass. As someone who has been on enough hiring committees that you're not going to be able to bullshit me about how they work, you're not going to convince me that your deeply committed colleagues are more committed than my deeply committed colleagues and are reading every single thing they ask for. And if the committee is not reading every single thing, they are definitionally making people more vulnerable than they are do unnecessary work -- work that by ignoring it they are acknowledging is unnecessary.
At my institution, faculty are expected to acquire substantial federal research funding. If we are asking faculty to submit many grant proposals per year and using this as a factor for their tenure and promotion , it seems very reasonable to assess their ability to write compelling technical documents that will be read both by specialists and non specialists. This is one additional important use of the research/teaching statements.
Regarding time commitment - In my field it is not necessary to extensively personalize the research and teaching plans for each university, so most of the text can be recycled between applications. Writing the first application is very time consuming while the marginal cost of additional applications is fairly minimal. Perhaps this low marginal cost is why some folks apply very broadly even if they are not particularly interested in a certain location.
I think this type of search season is happening more (we're seeing them here). One issue I'm curious about is whether postdocs/recent PhDs have mentally recalibrated to be way more willing to draw the line at working in a place they don't want to live, but nevertheless still apply to all the jobs in the sector they want, because...reasons? If there's no chance you'll live in State X, maybe do X State College a favor and don't apply for the job? Expectations for spousal arrangements also seem to have grown beyond what they were in the past, although I do wish (well-resourced) colleges would start seeing some of those as opportunities rather than Gordian Knots
Nah, man, any academic who can't glean everything they need from a job letter and a vita should automatically be removed from the search committee and any administrator who can't read a vita should be demoted back to adjunct faculty. A good letter will embed research and teaching statements and will at least hint at diversity-related matters. Requiring a grad student or junior faculty member to cater to specific jobs with endless piles of bullshit because some professor or dean doesn't know how to read a letter and vita puts the burden in exactly the wrong place. Also, any college or university that requires candidates to fill out online forms to provide information already in the letter and vita should lose accreditation.
I think there is an enormous disciplinary difference at work here, in terms of the ability to do research under the particular circumstances of a given institution. There are areas of physics that are readily amenable to an undergrad-only institution, and others that require access to grad students and postdocs. And still others that might SEEM like they'd be too advanced or resource-intensive for a small place, but that the right person can make work. We need to know that we're not going to be wasting both the candidate's time and the college's, and that requires more data than just a letter and a CV.
But that kind of thing should come up in a letter and then, if they get there, in the interviews. I'm not sure how it comes out in SEPARATE teaching, research, and DEI statements, or how it comes out in asking first-round people for transcripts. Like, if someone is pursuing a job at your college, rather than parse these kinds of questions within the committee, ask them if they are committed to your kind of institution.
And while we can claim disciplinary special pleading for asking for reams of material from grad students (we are truly a unique unicorn of a discipline!) as someone who has for several different yearly cycles chaired college tenure and promotion committees for people from a range of disciplines, including the sciences, I'm not convinced. EVERY discipline has the divide between major research desires and major teaching expectations at most of our institutions. An Africanist in history would love to be able to travel to Africa regularly. That would be easier at Northwestern than at Bridgewater State.
By your own admission, you asked more than 100 people to submit an enormous amount of material. 90% of them will never speak to someone on the committee. I think ideally we owe job candidates more than that, and if we can't give them more than that, we need to ask for a lot less.
Of those 90%, many will speak to *some* committee, though, making the writing justified, assuming (I think correctly) that research and teaching statements between an application to school X and school Y differ only at the margins, and candidates are applying to a bunch of positions. For recent searches I was on, a ~3 page vision/plan of research for an experimental science doesn't seem too heavy a lift.
Yeah, I think my other unstated reaction to this is that it's really not THAT much material-- I skimmed back through the drive with the folders, and almost all of the completed packets are under 30 pages, with most of those including reference letters. And it's prep work that any candidate needs to be doing anyway-- drawing up a clear and plausible research plan, having an actual answer to the appropriate questions about teaching, etc. There's a little extra burden of customization when applying to multiple places, but that's pretty minimal for the most part-- a paragraph or two is plenty.
I really just don't see this as an unjust imposition on somebody who's looking for a faculty job. It's probably worse to be on the READING end of this, in terms of sheer volume, but I would rather have the information than not. I just don't see any way that knowing LESS about the candidates is going to improve the decision-making process.
One thing we did that I do think was reasonable was only asking for reference letters from long-listed candidates, although I think I appreciate that more as a letter-writer...
I've historically found letters really useful even at the first cut stage, so I tend to want them early. Also, the experience of trying to wrangle letters from some of my references with months of lead time makes me uneasy about the idea of asking for them on a compressed schedule at a later stage of the process.
(I know a few people who don't want letters at all, only phone calls with the references, because they feel they get better information that way. That just makes my skin crawl, though-- anything that somebody isn't willing to sign their name to in print but would tell me on the phone seems to me like the very definition of stuff I shouldn't be using to make decisions that I might be asked to defend in court.)
Yeah, sorry, but I don't buy this "asking them for lots of material is actually a favor to them" self-delusion. As someone periodically looking into senior-rank jobs there are lots of applications that are an enormous pain in the ass. As someone who has been on enough hiring committees that you're not going to be able to bullshit me about how they work, you're not going to convince me that your deeply committed colleagues are more committed than my deeply committed colleagues and are reading every single thing they ask for. And if the committee is not reading every single thing, they are definitionally making people more vulnerable than they are do unnecessary work -- work that by ignoring it they are acknowledging is unnecessary.