I don't officially make the hiring decisions but the chair likes me to screen people before she meets with them. People constantly walk in off the street (literally) with thin and/or incoherent resumes (thrown together within the 24 hours since they impulsively stormed out of an industrial position) and expect us to take them and their zero-teaching-experience and make them professors. Not only do they expect us to hire them on the spot (regardless of whether or not we're currently hiring), but they anticipate that we'll be grateful to have someone like them. I mean a real chemist who's worked in industry and everything - like wow - how often in a lifetime do we lowly academics get an opportunity to work with someone like that?
Those silly adjuncts we already have, who also have PhDs, but additionally have 10-30 years of teaching experience... we've got tons of them and the ONLY reason we haven't made room for them on the tenure track is because we've been hoping against hope that someone with 4 years of industrial experience who has never taught or even written a research grant, would walk in off the street and shake things up for us.
I want to tell them we have an orientation video just for them, make them watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LCggmsCXk4
--WotC
I wonder how such candidates would respond if you suggested they gain some experience teaching at the high school level first? There are, of course, greater barriers to that, but those barriers are in place precisely because teaching is actually a skill, requiring at the very least supervised practice, and probably also some instruction, to do well. They probably realize that, so do they think something magically happens to students when they receive a high school diploma, rendering them teachable by anyone who knows something about the subject?
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious how many of them are still interested in the job after they learn how much it pays (and just how long many people remain at the "entry" level).
I found an uptick years ago of regular civilians who say things to me like: “I think I’d like to be a professor. I have a degree and all this real world experience.” And it never occurs to them that any more would ever be required.
ReplyDeleteWe used to get this at Batshit U, but not so much now. Probably less to do with people researching what the job actually entails, and more to do with our unstoppable slide into a horrendous mess of our president's making. It's his last year, but he's done a pretty good job of making sure the next one will be similarly slimy.
ReplyDeleteIn English, we get people with no advanced degree who write in their cover letters that they got an A in English in college! At a great school(much better than ours)!! So, I mean, how hard could it be (seems to be their suggestion).
ReplyDeleteAll. The. Time.
OMG
DeleteThat's hysterical/terrible. That makes my lot look better. None of them have mentioned an A in Gen Chem.
By the way, I speak English, almost every day. You're not hiring, are you?