In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I am hoping to do a bit of crowdsourcing in order to get a sense of the norms of other departments when it comes to non-tenure stream faculty being involved and voting in tenure stream job searches. As a bit of context, I am in my first year as a teaching assistant professor in a fancy R1 department. This year, my department is running two tenure stream searches and one search to hire another teaching assistant professor. Our jobs are intended to be teaching-only with some service expectations (so, no research support, research funding for conferences, grad student supervision, etc.).
These teaching assistant prof. positions are relatively new to our department, and my concern is that the tenure stream (TS) faculty are expecting us to take on many of the downsides of being a TS faculty without any of the accompanying upsides. Our (very small) teaching faculty subset is already expected to run the teaching faculty search on our own (with the addition of the chair, who will presumably be quite busy with everything else going on). We are then also expected to meet individually with all 8 of the flyout candidates for roughly an hour interview, attend all 8 job talks, and pore through all of the 8 (mostly senior) candidates' materials. This will all be happening over the span of about a month, during which time we'll also need to be conducting interviews (and later flyout) for our own job search).
When I think of what TS faculty at previous departments tended to complain to me the most about, it's often been faculty meetings and the work that comes along with job searches. We are already expected to be at the faculty meetings (even if many of them have to do with things that don’t concern us and that we don’t functionally have a say over), which is fine. My thinking, though, is that I am not hired to be a researcher and I do not have any of the associated perks (chance for tenure, research funding, dedicated research time, the option to not always be teaching during department works in progress meetings, etc.) that come with being an R1 TS faculty member who was primarily hired to be a researcher. We are now being asked, however, to take part in one of the more unpleasant duties that would typically come with being hired into one of these positions. 99.9% of the conversations in our meetings so far on the candidates, after all, have to do with assessing the candidates' research. Given the fact that we are not hired (or in any way valued) as researchers, it's hard not to feel like we're expected to shoulder many of the negatives of the TS role without any of the positives (or the pay, prestige, etc.). If we’re being honest, it’s also not the case that any research-related input we might provide when assessing these candidates would be taken seriously.
The reason I am providing so much detail is that our chair seems open to hearing me out on this, and I am hoping to convince him to let us sit the two TS searches out when it comes to voting (which would then release us from some of the aforementioned burdens). I’ve already brought up in passing that the departments I've been a part of have not had NTT faculty vote on faculty hires, but I realize that sample size is small. So, I am curious: Do NTT faculty vote on tenure stream faculty hires at your department? If so, what are the associated expectations? Out of curiosity, I'm also curious how typical it is for NTT faculty to be running their own search (with flyouts and the whole nine yards), but that's the least of my worries at the moment!
I apologize for the long post! I suppose the last relevant detail is that I am legitimately worried about being able to juggle our own search and flyouts, these 8 TS flyouts, and my teaching duties this semester, as I am teaching an entirely new prep with three sections and over 100 students to grade. So, thank you in advance for any advice and/or insight!
I am curious to hear about norms here too. My university's faculty handbook reads, "The departmental service expectations, if any, are expected to be related to a Teaching Professor or Lecturer’s area of teaching. Any additional service expectations must be made clear and explicit by the department Chair and communicated to the Teaching Professor/Lecturer and the Dean." While this in principle leaves it open for non-TT faculty to be asked to do service like that described by the OP, the language is clearly intended to limit service expectations for non-TT faculty, and for my part, I can't remember non-TT members of our department ever being required to serve on a search committee. Hiring recommendations are also made by votes of search committees, not the entire department (though search committees may of course ask what other faculty think of finalists).
What are norms like elsewhere?
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