Applying Myself
copyright 2017 by Dave Van
Domelen
This isn't really an essay, it's a series of lists. During my job hunts
starting in 2012, I kept track of my applications on Post-It™ notes so
that I wouldn't accidentally apply to the same position twice. When a school
shows up more than once, either they had two different jobs (a tenure track
position early in the season, and then instructor positions a few months
later), or they re-listed the position after not finding anyone the first
time. This piece is basically an attempt to reconstruct the timeline of this
process, before I forget all the details. I also went back to the 2010-2011
searches prior to the handwritten notes.
If I got an interview out of the application, it will be noted as "phone" for
an interview over the phone or Skype, and "site" if they actually had me come
out there. I'm not entirely sure of my own scribbled notations, so I may be
mis-remembering some of the phone/Skype interviews, I put a question mark in
those cases. An "X" afterwards means they did me the courtesy of
specifically telling me I didn't get the job, rather than letting me assume
it (although I may not have consistently scribbled out the ones that told me,
especially the ones near the end of a search phase where I didn't see much
reason in continuing the notes after accepting a position. If I list a date,
it's when the application was due, otherwise it was an "open until filled"
ad. "Underway" means I found out about the job a bit late but applied
anyway. The lists are in order of application, as far as I can
reconstruct. I think that when I put a checkmark next to something it
meant I got a phone or Skype interview, but some of them I don't recall
having ever talked to, hence the ? next to them. I do remember all the ones
I physically visited, though.
It's worth noting that I never got to choose between two offers, each year I
had either one or zero offers. And when you see a Big Name school in this
list, odds are I was applying for a Lecturer position (aka a Professor uses
grant money to pay someone to teach his classes). I rarely applied for
anything explicitly adjunct or part-time, and those usually only in the
desperation times of June and July.
2010-2011 Season
These are pre-sticky-note applications, and I'm going on the cover letters I
have saved. So any job that didn't require a cover letter will be missing
from this list. I also don't have any notation of phone interviews, but I'm
pretty sure I remember the site ones. They're in order of the dates of
writing the letters. I have no records of the application due dates on any
of these, they weren't all "open until filled". Similarly, I don't have any
notes about which ones specifically told me I wasn't getting the job, but I'm
assuming that the ones that gave me site interviews did so.
In this round, I got a position without a cover letter, a one-year instructor
position at University of Nebraska at Kearney. I applied July 1 because me
about-to-be-former boss had gotten a request from the UNK Physics department
head asking if he had anyone who could drop everything and drive up, I
interviewed on July 19, was offered the job by the time I got home, drove
back up to apartment-hunt on August 1-2, moved August 14, started classes
August 22. That...was a hectic month.
- Denison College
- Trinity University (San Antonio)
- Drury University
- Juniata College
- Amherst College (discovered later I was punching WAY out of my class)
- Texas State San Marcos
- University of Wisconsin at Plattville
- Widener University
- Augusta State University
- University of Central Arkansas - Site, X (Kinda sad I didn't get this
one, it looked decent)
- Roger Williams University
- Arizona State University at Fulton
- University of Maine
- Oregon Institute of Technology
- University of Northern Colorado
- Elon University
- Western State College of Colorado
- Rhode Island College
- Murray State
- US Coast Guard Academy
- West Virginia State University
- Siena College
- Bunker Hill Community College - Site, X (A friend told me about this
position and showed me around town after the interview, but dealing with
Boston traffic was a bit intimidating a prospect)
- College of St. Benedict
- Park University (no cover letter, but I have a "Try 2" on a 2011-12
sticky note)
2011-2012 Season
I got overconfident and was certain I'd get the permanent position at UNK, so
I applied there and nowhere else until it was WAY too late in the season to
have much of a chance. Unlike "real world" jobs, the hiring cycle in
academia runs mostly on an annual basis, with most jobs hiring for the Fall
and taking from October through the next July to hire people (more
prestigious positions hire first, "panicked temp hires to fill gaps" in late
Spring and even Summer as I experienced in 2011). Once the due dates drift
into August, I was already applying for jobs in the 2012-13 season, but these
were jobs I applied for while I was still actually employed at UNK. UNK is
not listed below, but I did apply and got a phone interview but not a site
interview.
- Park University - 2/15/12, X
- University of Memphis - 6/15/12, X
- Rochester Institute of Technology - 5/25/12
- Mississippi State - 6/8/12, X
- Austin Peay - underway, X
- College of Charleston - underway
- Manhattanville College - underway
- University of Tennessee at Chattanooga - underway, X
- Purdue University Calumet - 3/15/12, X
- Rutgers - 4/15/12
- North Carolina State University - "now"
- Michigan State University - 4/15/12
- SUNY at Stony Brook - 5/1/12
- South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics (high
school)
- University of Texas Austin
- University of Nebraska Lincoln
- Texas A&M University at Galveston - Site, X (I thought the interview went
pretty well, but I guess it went better for someone else. This was my best
shot at not being unemployed the next year.)
- University of Virgina - 4/13/12, X
- University of Wisconsin at Whitewater - 4/30/12
- Rice University - X
- University of Illinois Urbana Champaign - 4/18/12
- Western Kentucky - 6/20/12
- Sapling (educational tech job) - 7/1/12
- Oklahoma State University at Stillwater - 7/9/12, X
- New York City Hall of Science - 7/2/12, Phone, X
- Christopher Newport - 7/10/12
- Stevens Institute of Technology
- Florida International University - 8/1/12
- Montana State - 9/15/12 (for Spring term, IIRC)
- Modular Robotics - 8/15/12
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities - Phone
- Earlham College - 11/5/12
- Lafayette College - 11/1/12, X
- St. Mary's University (TX) - immediate, X
- University of Tennessee at Martin - 9/17/12, X
- Rhodes College - 11/5/12, X
- Grand Valley State University - 11/9/12, X
2012-2013 Season
This year, frankly, sucked. I was unemployed, had to worry about accepting
Spring-only positions that would require moving in the Winter and then going
back on the job hunt for Fall, and I ended up teaching a single course at UNK
in the Spring because a former colleague failed to get tenure and just left
in mid-semester (I didn't earn enough to exceed unemployment benefits,
though).
- CUNY Queensborough - 11/26/12
- Mohawk Valley Community College (Spring-only) - 10/29/12, Phone (they
never did get back to me, but by the time Spring semester started it was
pretty obvious I wasn't getting that job...I was VERY nervous in late
December about the prospect of being offered the job with one week to move or
something, though).
- Florida Southern College - 11/30/12
- Virginia Tech - 12/1/12, X
- Illinois State University - 11/14/12
- University of Tulsa - 12/15/12, X
- Cottey College (tenure track) - 12/5/12
- Rockhurst University - 10/16/12, X
- California State University East Bay - 12/1/12
- Colorado School of Mines - 12/15/12, Phone, X (Still the only time I can
recall someone using profanity during an interview, and it was in describing
the quality of housing in Golden.)
- University of the Pacific - 12/13/12
- University of Texas Permian Basin
- US Merchant Marine Academy - 11/1/12, Phone, X
- Georgia Southern University - 10/31/12, Site, X (Decent enough place and
position, learned about the "Gnat Line" during the interview, they actually
had a local realtor do the tour of town.)
- University of Richmond - 11/1/12, X
- Brooklyn College - 10/30/12, Skype, X
- Pennsylvania State University Worthington-Scranton - 10/30/12, X
- DePauw University - 11/1/12, X
- Duquesne University - 12/15/12, X
- University of Southern Indiana - 11/15/12
- Saginaw Valley State - X
- Doane University - 11/1/12, X
- University of Nebraska Kearney (Math faculty position, in retrospect
accreditation probably wouldn't let them consider me)
- Educational Testing Services - immediate
- University of Wisconsin Eau Claire - 12/10/12
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory (outreach)
- Shippensburg University - 1/22/13
- Lewiston-Clarkston State College - 1/18/13, Site, X (I got some nice
rocks out of the visit, at least.)
- Stevenson University - 1/25/13
- Truman State University (the person I filled in for was also applying for
this one) - 2/18/13
- Mississippi State University - 2/11/13, X
- Ventura Community College - 2/23/13, X
- College of DuPage - "mid-February" 2013, X
- William Woods University - 3/1/13
- Davidson College - 3/1/13, X
- College of Marin - 4/8/13, X
- Sauk Valley Community College - 4/30/13, Phone
- Kansas Wesleyan
- Ivy Tech
- Claflin University
- Metropolitan State University Denver - 5/20/13
- Roane State Community College
- Trinity Valley School (High School) - 5/14/13, X
- West Virginia Wesleyan
- University of Memphis Lambuth - 5/15/13
- Linn-Benton Community - 7/1/13
- University of Toledo - 5/30/13
- Rochester Institute of Technology - 6/10/13
- Norwich University - "now", Phone?
- Cottey College Adjunct - "now", Site (Got job and had it upgraded to full
time but not tenure-track. I drove 6.5 hours each way for this one.)
- University of Michigan "CRLT" (no longer remember what that stands for,
presumably the job title) - 6/24/13
- Rice University - Site, X (This was explicitly "do the scutwork parts of
teaching a tenured professor's class, and lecture on short notice if he has
a schedule conflict" position with expectation of the person moving on to
teach at a Houston area community college after a couple years.)
- Texas A&M University College Station - Site, X (Took place in Spring
2014, very long process here apparently, it was mostly a "get all the labs on
the same page" sort of position and it would have required some
intra-departmental political wrangling to accomplish that.)
- Hawkeye Community College - 6/21/13, Phone?
- American University - 7/1/13, Phone?
2013-2014 Season
While I (falsely) felt good about getting the permanent position at Cottey,
having been burned at UNK did get me motivated to apply for jobs as soon as
the season started. This was an unusually small group of applications
leading to an offer, but it was also the first job since 2002 I'd been
offered during Spring as opposed to getting an offer during the Summer
term. It helped a lot that Cottey has a two-week Spring Break, I spent it
almost entirely on job interviews (two site, two phone/Skype).
- University of Nebraska at Kearney - 1/13/14, X
- Roosevelt (College? University?) - 11/22/13
- University of Southern Indiana - 10/31/13, X
- Knox College - 12/1/13, X
- Cottey College (permanent position) - 1/7/14, X (no, I didn't even get a
phone interview)
- Reed College - 1/25/14, X
- University of Wisconsin at Plattville - 2/24/14, Phone?, X
- Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (high school) - 2/10/14
- Florida Polytechnic - "now"
- New Mexico State University - 2/14/14, Site, X (Lab Equipment Supervisor,
very little potential for teaching, unfortunately, so I wasn't too let down
by not getting offered this.)
- Erie College - X
- Florida State University Jacksonville - 2/19/14, X
- Auburn University - 2/28/14, Phone?, X
- Wellesly - 3/1/14, Phone?, X
- Lane College - "now", X
- Sauk Valley Community College - 2/28/14, X
- St. Clair Community College - 2/28/14, X
- Mercer University - "now", X
- Wayne State College - 3/17/14, Site, X (Another long drive one, nearly
got killed a few times in the snowstorm that popped up...I think I had the AC
offer by the time I drove up there and it would have been a hard choice had I
been offered this position. Smaller school, smaller town, but a four year
program with upper division physics.)
- Central Oregon Community College - 3/6/14
- Mississippi State University - 3/15/14, Phone, X (Yes, I applied there
three years in a row, they always have short-term instructor jobs.)
- James Madison College at Michigan State University - 3/10/14
- Willamette University - 3/3/14
- Amarillo College - Skype, got job. Still have it as of this typing.
Going for tenure in the 2017-8 school year.
- Virginia Commonwealth University - 3/15/14, Phone
- University of Northern Colorado - "now" (I never did find out if this was
an unrelated opening, or if the hire from 2010 didn't work out.)
And that's it. There's generally a lull in postings in March-April, and
Amarillo College moved fast on my application, hence the paucity of
applications after AC. If this seems like a really long list of applications
to get two one-year jobs and finally a permanent position...then you're
probably not in academia. While my experience may be on the crappy end for
Physics, it's probably still better than a lot of college educators have
had.
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