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Obtaining dual appointments?

In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

How does one come by a dual-appointment? In my undergrad days at a major R1, I remember some of my professors split time between philosophy and elsewhere (the history dept, the law school, environmental and soil sciences, etc.). Sometimes they were prestigious scholars with wide-ranging expertise, but some weren't; some weren't even tenured. I've always been curious how one lands a job where they can teach in multiple areas/disciplines. Is such an option seen in the original job posting? Is it navigated in the interview process? Is it a recognition of scholarly merit way down the line?

I've seen jobs advertising dual-appointments, but beyond that I'm not sure. 

Do readers have any helpful tips to share?

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4 responses to “Obtaining dual appointments?”

  1. joint appointee

    This varies tremendously from institution to institution. Sometimes donors specify that an endowed position be split across two or more departments, sometimes a dean offers half a line to two departments in an attempt to increase “interdisciplinarity” and sometimes senior figures negotiate it.
    One thing to note – any untenured/junior faculty should be extremely hesitant to accept a joint appointment where both departments have a say in tenure. At the very least, try to negotiate a “tenure home”, a single department that will determine whether you achieve tenure. In several cases, I have seen faculty in my (quite interdisciplinary field) denied tenure or promotion because the two departments had different tenure standards (and in one case it was simply impossible to simultaneously meet both standards)

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  2. Trevor Hedberg

    I have had multiple dual (or joint) appointments, including my current job, and interviewed for other such appointments as well. In every case, the split between departments and/or colleges was clear in the job description and then elaborated on interview process. Typically, both units are funding part of the position, and the duties associated with your position are related to how much of the costs each unit is covering. My current post is officially a 51% / 49% split (essentially an even split, but one unit has to be designated as “primary” for HR and promotion purposes), but in one of my postdocs, one unit funded over 80% of the salary associated with the position, so all of my teaching duties were for that unit.
    There are cases where a person with a singular appointment switches to a joint appointment at the same university, but that requires a very fortuitous set of circumstances: the original department has to be okay with losing some of the teaching and service that faculty member provided, and the new department has to be okay with hiring essentially a part-time faculty member instead of a full-time one.

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  3. grant

    My institution has a few joint positions. They were created as joint positions between two departments and were advertised so. In most cases, they are equally split: same number of search committee members from both departments, same number of tenure committee members, split teach load, and split research load.
    The split research load can be difficult. After all, part of the motive for joint positions is to promote interdisciplinary research, and then your research would still be assessed by individual disciplines. I heard that someone needed to justify why they counted a paper as research in this but not that discipline. I also heard a story that when one’s research was assessed holistically, one department thought it was good enough but the other department thought not. Another possible challenge is when the other unit of the joint position is not a traditional discipline but still demands some separate research (I am thinking about some interdisciplinary centers, honors colleges, etc.). You may need to do some research in some not well defined “areas”.
    The service load is a different story. From what I learned, those joint appointees at my institution are basically doing two full-load of service, one for each department, even if when their service is said to be equally “split”.

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  4. Mike Titelbaum

    Sometimes a joint appointment results from a partner hire. One department wants to hire someone, the dean is excited about making it happen and hiring that person’s partner, so the dean splits the partner’s appointment across budgets of multiple departments.
    With that said, if OP is just interested in teaching across multiple departments, you don’t need to come in with a joint appointment for that to happen. You can start in just philosophy (say) but get to know folks in another department. That department could eventually vote to make you an affiliate, perhaps with the ability to teach courses listed (or cross-listed) on their books.

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