Hire The Right Faculty Member Every Time is a concise guide for hiring authorities at colleges and universities. The book provides insight into the state of faculty hiring at colleges and universities today, advice on the best way to design positions, recommendations on how to conduct an interview, guidelines on how to make a decision about whom to hire, perspectives on what to remember when closing the deal, and hints about providing the right kind of orientation and onboarding services to new hires.
The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.
The book provides a concise guide to how academic leaders can manage their time more efficiently and thus better cope with the stresses of their position. Rather than focusing on theory or the “causes” of time and stress pressures for college administrators today, the book focused on field-tested approaches for achieving more of one’s priorities and for dealing with the pressures of academic leadership positions. (Academic leaders already know why they’re running short of time and feeling stressed; they don’t want more analysis and theory, but rather insights into how they can make things better.) The book is designed for use by individual academic leaders, administrative teams in a retreat, leadership workshops or training programs, and courses in higher education leadership.
Faculty recruitment is a major expense for colleges and universities, and schools devote a considerable amount of their resources to the hiring process. But many of these institutions fail to devote the same attention to retaining college professors. We’ve learned through many studies that it’s far less expensive to retain a student you have than to recruit a new one. Why is this lesson not also applied to the college faculty? This book addresses why higher education currently has a faculty retention problem and then explores the strategies needed to address that problem. But now all faculty members are alike. Minority faculty members have their own retention challenges, as do highly competitive researchers, part-time and temporary faculty members who excel at teaching, and other ley groups. The best ways to retain the junior faculty are not necessarily the best ways to retain mid-career and senior faculty. By examining best practices currently in place in higher education, and then combining those insights with research conducted in the corporate world, the book encourages colleges and universities to develop a culture of retention that applies to students and faculty members alike.
This book examines some of the most important challenges facing administrators and other professionals in PreK-12 schools today: safety and security, hiring and evaluating members of the faculty and staff, dealing with students’ academic and behavioral challenges, assessing student performance, responding to disengaged or overly engaged parents, and handling external pressures from the community. It also explores ideas for how to design the types of school our students will need in the future and cope with the realities of trying to develop these schools in a difficult educational environment. Preferring practical advice over unsupported hypotheses and adopting clear, instructive language rather than educational jargon, the authors draw upon their own experience as well as some of the best research currently being conducted in the field of educational leadership. The book is suitable for self-study, workshops, education courses, and in-serve programs. The target audience is current and prospective PreK-12 administrators, teachers, student teachers, and staff.
The book explores how to build an approach to academic leadership based on your own personal values, convictions, and principles. Rather than trying to assert that only certain values (or even virtues) are essential for good leadership, the approach taken is to begin with who you really are, “your true self,” and then to build a leadership framework consistent with that identity that makes your institution or program stronger. We explore why hypocrisy is damaging to any form of leadership, but particularly so in higher education where values of scholarship and research are based on the confidence we have in others’ integrity. As a result, authenticity, even more than such commonly promoted “traits of leaders” as vision, courage, and compassion, becomes the core of effective leadership in the academy today. Through hypothetical case studies and thought experiments, the book challenges administrators to identify a small set of core values that truly define who they are as academic leaders and then to use those values as the basis for a philosophy of leadership that guides them through the turbulent changes occurring in higher education today.
This book applies the concept of mindfulness to the challenges faced by academic leaders such as department chairs, deans, provosts, presidents or chancellors, and faculty leaders. In addition to instructing academic leaders how to become more mindful, the book also provides clear and practical explanations about what mindful leadership means in the setting of higher education. Unlike other books on mindfulness, this work does not assume that the only pathway to becoming more mindful is meditation. Although meditation is discussed as a technique, the book also presents numerous others strategies for becoming a more mindful leader without a meditation practice. The book is designed for use by individual academic leaders, administrative teams in a retreat, leadership workshops or training programs, and courses in higher education leadership.
Accrediting agencies and legislatures have become increasingly insistent that governing boards and upper administrators undergo regular evaluation at colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education have a long history of evaluating faculty members and are familiar with best practices for doing so. Offices of human resources include employees with experience in how staff members should be evaluated because these processes are well developed in the corporate world. But how does a college or university effectively evaluate its governing board, and who performs that process? How are administrators, particularly the chief executive officer and vice presidents, evaluated fairly and effectively? Since a majority of institutions are now required to perform these evaluations, they’re seeking advice and examples of best practices, but there aren’t resources available to provide these insights. This book will address that critical need. The target audience is college faculty and administrators, particularly those who need to develop or improve a system for evaluating governing boards or administrators because of accreditation requirements or legislative mandate.
Introduction -- The varieties of academic experiences: types of institutions -- The fundamental research and teaching experiences needed to be a psychology professor -- Professional service, engagement, and connections -- Searching for and selecting open positions -- Creating a curriculum vita -- Application materials and the application process -- Interviewing -- Job offers and negotiations -- Conclusion.
"Department chairs who have asked themselves the question 'Who knows where the time goes' should ask Christian Hansen for the answer. His book, Time Management for Department Chairs, will help chairs maximize the investment of their most important resources—their time, focus, and energy."—Don Chu, author, The Department Chair Primer "Department chairs take note: Hansen's Time Management for Department Chairs can change your life in just three hours. Written by a seasoned academic chair, the author offers practical ideas and strategic advice about how to increase your day-to-day effectiveness (and sanity) by using proven approaches to managing expectations, organizing tasks, running meetings, monitoring communication, controlling calendars, avoiding interruptions, containing crises, and everything else in between. If you want to learn how to strike a better work-life balance, this book should be at the top of your reading list!"—Christine Licata, senior associate provost, Rochester Institute of Technology "It's about time—the resource department chairs have the least of and what faculty want the most! Christian Hansen's book is filled with insights, techniques, and artful strategies to help chairs maximize their time while working effectively with faculty and balancing their personal and professional lives. This book is a life saver!"—Walter Gmelch, dean, University of San Francisco
