Initial Publication Date: April 13, 2015

Recruiting and Retaining Faculty

Faculty drive the education and research that propel the modern department. Ensuring that your department attracts and keeps energetic and productive faculty members is important in maintaining a vibrant department culture.

Resources

A Flourishing Faculty Environment

This page provides some highlights from a talk given by John Geissmann of the University of New Mexico about what that department has done to create an environment in which faculty members can thrive.

Recruiting a Diverse Faculty

The goal of attaining a diverse faculty that is representative of our students (and of society) has yet to be achieved in the geosciences, despite gains made in recruiting and training of qualified women and students from underrepresented groups. This page provides some practical tips and resources to help you broaden your candidate pool for your next faculty hire.

Creating a Family Friendly Department: Chairs and Deans Toolkit

This document, prepared by a committee at the University of California, details the benefits to academic institutions of having family-friendly policies, best practices in developing a family-friendly department, legal issues surrounding family-friendly accommodations, several case examples, and a resource list.

References and Additional Reading

  • AAUP Faculty Salary Survey. This page from the Chronicle of Higher Learning is a searchable collection of five years of average faculty salaries arranged by academic rank at more than 1,400 colleges, universities, and multi-campus systems.
  • American Association of University Professors Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession.
  • American Association of University Professors, 2010. Recommendations on Partner Accommodation and Dual Career Appointments. This document summarizes recommendations for colleges and universities on developing dual career hiring policies and procedures.
  • Gaye and Cullen, 1995. Empowering the Faculty: Mentoring Redirected and Renewed. ASHE Higher Education Report Series.
  • Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List, 2010. Interviewing Strategies That Search Committees and Chairs Need to Know . A committee's ability to select new hires may be only as good as their skills at interviewing. This article offers guidance in how to interview prospective faculty members and how to teach search committees the basics of interviewing.
  • Wolf-Wendel, Lisa B., Susan Twombly, and Suzanne Rice, 2004. The Two-Body Problem: Dual-Career-Couple Hiring Practices in Higher Education. This book explores the dual career hiring policies and practices used by a variety of colleges and universities. Using data from an extensive survey of public and private universities as well as in-depth case studies of institutions representing distinctive approaches to this problem, the authors find that the type of institution -- its location, size, governance, mission, and resource availability -- is a critical factor in determining dual-career employment options. Knowing the options that have worked for various types of institutions may help you advocate for similar policies at your institution.