How to Use Student Evaluations Wisely

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
How to Use Student Evaluations Wisely June 16, 2015  Image: Scales condemned by Department of Weights and Measures, 1917 (Seattle Municipal Archives) When I was a doctoral student, nervously facing my first set of student evaluations, I turned for advice to my father, who was already a professor when those evaluations were first introduced. “We should be polling students to see what they thought of our classes,” he insisted. “Of course, their evaluations can’t signify the be-all and end-all for what constitutes effective teaching.” His position sounded sensible to me then -- and still does, now that I am a dean. And yet -- as Stacey Patton’s recent essay, “Student Evaluations: Feared, Loathed, and Not Going Anywhere,” demonstrates -- many administrators make the mistake of using those evaluations as the sole, definitive, and objective measure of teacher quality. (more…)...
Read More

The Completion Agenda, Part 2: The Best Defense

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
The Completion Agenda, Part 2: The Best Defense   It probably won’t be harrowing, but you need to be prepared in case it is Neil H. / Creative Commons By David D. Perlmutter Early in my career, I sat on a doctoral committee in a field outside my discipline for the first time. I recall being startled at the dissertation defense when professors in the young man’s department began delivering scorching assessments of his theory, method, cases, and conclusions. As the incendiaries kept flying I grew concerned about his health. He whitened, started sweating visibly, and several times laid his forehead on the table. When it came my turn to speak, I froze and ended up sputtering, "Well, you have answered all my questions!" and fell silent. But then something incredible happened: The candidate was asked to leave the room, and the committee briskly and unanimously voted in favor of passing his dissertation with minimal revisions. He was ushered back in to the accompaniment of back...
Read More

The Completion Agenda, Part 1

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
The Completion Agenda, Part 1   Graduate students should remember that the dissertation is the beginning of their research, not the endpoint Mark Shaver for The Chronicle Enlarge Image By David D. Perlmutter Graduate school, the job market, the tenure track, and every other stage in an academic career are so fraught with challenge that you cannot afford to dawdle too long on foolish ventures or waste time holding out for perfection when "pretty darn good" will do. The first supreme hurdle — the one that scares off many potential academics and cripples the progress of others — is, of course, the dissertation. What counts as a dissertation and how long you should take to complete it vary across disciplines, institutions, and committees. But that you must complete it — and that others must approve it before you can move on — is essential. In this series I will focus on the "getting it done" aspects of the document that are not field-specific. But let’s begin with that...
Read More

Career Lingo: ‘We Will Begin Reviewing Applications …

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Career Lingo: ‘We Will Begin Reviewing Applications ...’ April 13, 2015  Image: Men reading the newspaper, Nanjing, China, by Stougard Job ads in academe often use the same hiring jargon even while the disciplines, institutions, and positions vary widely. The language may be standard but its meaning is anything but. Culture and circumstance govern how each word and phrase is applied. So far in this series we have examined the nuances of the following career lingo found in job ads: “degree completed by,” “in a related field,” and “required” versus “preferred” qualifications.” Now we turn to another ubiquitous phrase that can mean different things to different committees: “applications will begin to be reviewed” or “we will begin reviewing applications” on such and such a date. To begin, what does “begin” mean here? Years ago, when I first saw the phrase in a job ad, I imagined the members of the search committee sitting down on a certain date -- the morning of the “begin” date -- and gazing upon a huge...
Read More

Don’t Fear Fund Raising, Part 5

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Don't Fear Fund Raising, Part 5   How to be a good steward once the gift has been given. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive / Wikimedia Commons By David D. Perlmutter When department chairs, directors, deans, and others embark on academic fund raising for the first time, they naturally focus on "the ask"—that is, on getting the gift. Equally important, however, is the long tail of fund raising: the stewardship of gifts. There’s a lot to absorb about how you satisfy the many legal, ethical, and procedural requirements of a donation, oversee the munificence over time, and keep donors (or their heirs or trustees) apprised of its progress. And it’s crucial that you do learn because: It’s your job. You, as lead academic officer of your department or college, hold the legal and fiduciary obligation to steward gifts responsibly. It’s the ethical thing to do since the gift is in your charge. For some donors, an initial donation may be a "test gift." Handle it well, and...
Read More

Career Lingo: ‘In Related Field.’

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Career Lingo: ‘In Related Field.’ March 16, 2015  Image: "Rapala lures 1," by Fanny Schertzer Context and audience matter in understanding a foreign language. The same is true of academia’s “career lingo.” Comprehending the nuances of job-market terms can help you with your application materials, presentations, and interviews -- indeed, with every aspect of your candidacy. So far in this series we’ve defined “required” versus “preferred” qualifications and the meaning of “degree completed by.” Now we turn to a phrase seen in many a job advertisement: “in related field” (or “related discipline”). For example, an ad might state that a position requires candidates to have a “Ph.D. in Geology or in related field.” Seems pretty straightforward, right? But as usual the words and descriptions used in job ads often have variants and complexities that need unpacking. First off, this particular phrase in an ad does not mean: “We don’t care what field your Ph.D. is in.” Neither does it mean: “All disciplines are pretty much the same to us; anyone with...
Read More

Avoiding PTDS: Post-Tenure Depression Syndrome

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Avoiding PTDS: Post-Tenure Depression Syndrome   Why are the years after academics have ‘made it’ so gloomy for so many? Marc Worrell / Creative Commons By David D. Perlmutter Iknow about two dozen academics who were tenured and promoted to associate professor last year. They traverse the spectrum of the academy, from engineers to language scholars to sociologists. They work at community colleges, research universities, and small liberal-arts colleges. They range in personality type from the quiet and studious to the brash and outspoken. None of them are visibly happy. I mean the kind of career-related elation thatwe’re familiar with in popular culture and in the lives of nonacademics: the giddy joy of football players doing back flips and high fives after winning a big game or, more equivalently, the champagne-popping business professional who has just gotten a major promotion. In contrast, most of the new associate professors I know were so low-key about their promotions that I found out only via a title change on their...
Read More

Don’t Kill the Conference Interview

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Don't Kill the Conference Interview January 20, 2015  Image: Tommy Kirk as Travis Coates in Old Yeller (1957), directed by Robert Stevenson Rebecca Schuman recently called for the death of the conference interview for faculty jobs. A key reason she listed was the expense, citing the Modern Language Association’s recent convention in Vancouver as a case in point. In fact, she went to considerable length to prove that anyone traveling to Vancouver for the meeting would need to spend more than $1,000. Case closed -- on Vancouver and MLA. But a data point is not a universal. Many faculty members with full-time jobs and many graduate students seeking employment still think the conference interview is a useful enterprise. First, academia is not a monolith. A Ph.D. holder in German (Schuman’s field) might view the job market as a Kesselschlacht (a confused cauldron battle). But my own area of communications is in the fifth year of a boom in tenure-track hiring. We get only 20 to 40 applicants for...
Read More

Career Lingo: ‘Required’ versus ‘Preferred

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Career Lingo: ‘Required’ versus ‘Preferred’ January 6, 2015 Image: Men reading the want advertisements for jobs, Melinda Street, Toronto, Canada, 1919, by William James (City of Toronto Archives) Academic fields are renowned for their jargon -- terms and concepts common among students and scholars in an area of specialization but unknown to outsiders. An aeronautical engineer might refer to a “coffin corner,” a communication researcher to the “spiral of silence,” or a molecular biologist to a “knockout mouse” with their colleagues knowing exactly what they mean without explanation. Academe has another layer of jargon for people navigating its career ladder. From graduate school to job hunting to the tenure track and beyond, there is a host of terms that are crucial to understand. The problems for newcomers in deciphering them are: Keywords are often used loosely and may mean more than one thing depending on the situation, context, or audience. Many of the people using the terms have little experience with all their behind-the-scenes facets and applications. Career-related...
Read More
12