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Colleges Solving Problems Idea Lab Faculty Recruitment THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IDEA LAB FACULTY RECRUITMENT CHRONICLE.COM Colleges Solving Idea Lab Problems Faculty Recruitment n a competitive marketplace, how Strategies do you recruit the I The Foolproof Recruiting Tool best scholars? What strategies work to 4 Why endowed chairs often succeed in luring faculty talent. attract a diverse pool of candidates? And The Promise and Peril of Cluster Hiring how can offering 11 Recruiting multiple scholars can bolster interdisciplinary work and benefits, like spousal diversity. But be sure to consult professors each step of the way. hiring, both help and hurt recruitment Trouble Recruiting Top Faculty? Promote Collaboration efforts? 16 A university leader explains how his public institution hires scholars away The Chronicle’s from highly ranked private colleges. editors have selected a series of articles and The Impact of Academic Poaching essays to inform 18 How an arms race for talent can affect academe. higher-education administrators as they try to appeal to top scholars and develop Diversity plans for faculty How to Close the Gender Gap in Hiring STEM Faculty hiring. 22 During a four-year period, half of all STEM hires at Montana State U. were women. A Drive to Diversify the Faculty Yields Results 25 Innovative recruiting has helped the Rochester Institute of Technology hire more minority professors. Benefits Rethink Spousal Hiring 28 The benefits of recruiting dual-career couples are clear; what’s less so is how to manage the practice fairly. What to Avoid in Hiring Faculty Couples 31 The practice of hiring couples can create a tangled web of relationships that overwhelms a department. Helping New Faculty Get Housing 37 Such assistance can help recruit professors. But why is it so scarce? Cover photo from iStock ©2018 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. All rights the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain forwarded (even for internal use), hosted online, distributed, or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, bulk orders or special requests, contact The Chronicle at recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without [email protected]. Strategies The Foolproof Recruiting Tool Why endowed chairs often succeed in luring faculty talent By AUDREY WILLIAMS JUNE hen a full professor retired two years ago, the department of urban and environmental policy at Occiden- tal College was faced with a choice. The small, tight-knit department could hire a junior faculty member, as is typical in such situations, or go after a senior scholar, someone who could im- mediately help chart its direction and shape its future. But that would mean trying to pry someone looseW from a place where he or she was already well established. The search committee advertised the job, and members personally contacted well-known scholars to urge them to apply. One of them was Virginia L. Parks, an associate professor at the University of Chicago. She had been a faculty member at the elite research institution for more than a decade. Persuading her to move would take a powerful incentive. STUART BRADFORD FOR THE CHRONICLE FACULTY RECRUITMENT 4 the chronicle of higher education “We knew that she was a hot ticket,” said Peter Dreier, chair of the department and head of the What MakesMakes It It an an search committee. For Ms. Parks, an urban geographer, the possibili- Endowed Chair? Chair? ty of moving to Los Angeles, where Occidental is lo- cated, was an intriguing one. She had gone to grad- Endowed chairs and professorships are uate school at the University of California campus valuable currency that colleges use to recruit and there. It would be a natural backdrop for her work retain top professors. The chairs are typically on labor, immigration, residential segregation, and offered to scholars who are leaders in their fields. racial, economic, and gender inequality in cities. Ms. The endowment money can be used to pay or sub- Parks also knew that her background in community sidize their salaries as well as to develop innovative organizing would be an asset to a department with a research and teaching ideas. It’s one of the highest scholar-activist bent. honors a university can bestow upon a professor. Still, none of that was enough to get Ms. Parks to leave Chicago behind. Part of recruiting a senior professor, Mr. Dreier says, is that “you have to go But just what is an endowed chair anyway? out and convince somebody who is happy where they An endowed chair is an appointed faculty position, are that they’ll be happier where you are.” typically for a full professor, that is supported by a And that often means offering top candidates payout from a privately funded endowment. Usually an endowed chair, as Occidental did for Ms. Parks. a chair is created by a donor or donors who contrib- These age-old symbols of academic status are an in- ute money outright or pledge money for that purpose. dispensable means for luring prized faculty mem- That money, called the “principal,” is invested into bers. Professors are attracted to endowed chairs a fund managed by professionals. because they provide prestige, consistent financial support, and validation of their scholarship and teaching. Administrators see them as an almost fail- How much money does it take to create an proof recruitment tool that can help reshape depart- endowed chair? ments and campuses, and bring in fund-raising dol- It depends on the institution and the lars. discipline. The University of Illinois Foundation has a The endowed chair helped ease Ms. Parks’s am- $2-million minimum for a named endowed chair, while bivalence about moving. She joined the faculty last Cornell University’s School of Chemical and Biomolec- academic year as the inaugural Madeline McKin- ular Engineering requires $5 million for a named chair nie Endowed Professor. “This gives me a little bit that will support the salary and start-up costs of a more breathing room,” says Ms. Parks, now a full “midcareer faculty star” charged with spurring growth professor. With the endowment money, she can in biomolecular engineering. cover research expenses and ramp up her travel to scholarly meetings. Her new position also makes a statement. How are endowed chairs named, and who “When you come in with an endowed chair,” she decides what academic field a chair belongs to? says, “it’s evident that you’re coming in at a cer- Chairs are almost always named after the tain level.” donor or after someone the donor wants to honor. Donors also usually designate the academic field of ndowed chairs have been a mark of dis- the chair holder and the subject area they want the tinction in higher education for centu- endowment to support. ries. In 1502 the mother of Henry VII established the Lady Margaret Profes- sorship of Divinity at the University of How does an endowed chair financially support ECambridge. The first endowed chair in America faculty members? came about in 1721, with the Hollis Professorship The money in the endowed fund generates of Divinity at Harvard College. interest income annually. That income can be used to Now they are widespread, with colleges of all cover the chair holder’s full or partial salary, or pay for types amassing them in hopes of bolstering the things like scholarly travel, research materials, and number of top scholars in their ranks. Michi- graduate-assistant researchers. gan State University is raising money for 100 endowed positions. Southern Methodist University has nearly doubled its number of endowed chairs How long can a faculty member hold an endowed since 2008, to 116. Tougaloo College, in Missis- chair? sippi, wants to create an endowed chair in civ- Some endowed chairs rotate among professors ev- il rights, and Saint Anselm College is filling the ery few years, others are permanent appointments, second endowed chair in its existence. With col- and some are renewable for successive terms. FACULTY RECRUITMENT 5 The funding that comes with an endowed chair provides some “breathing room,” says Virginia Parks, an urban geographer who moved from the U. of Chicago to Occidental College last year. DAVID ZENTZ FOR THE CHRONICLE FACULTY RECRUITMENT 6 the chronicle of higher education What Works in Faculty Recruitment Endowed chairs are just one key tool for faculty recruitment and retention. Colleges also lure or keep top scholars by offering: A FACULTY OR STAFF JOB FOR THE its newly formed BioScience Research is now the first permanent director of SPOUSE OR PARTNER. Collaborative. Peter G. Wolynes, the Institute for Biomedical Informatics With so many academics married a chemist, and José Onuchic and at Penn’s medical school and is to other academics, an increasing Herbert Levine, both physicists, were leading its push to be a national and number of institutions have policies offered “prime space (to be built to our international player in the field. A top and programs in place to facilitate specs),” Mr. Levine wrote in an email neuroscientist, Randy Dean Blakely, spousal accommodation. For to The San Diego Union-Tribune at the was lured from Vanderbilt University to instance, a commitment to making time. Colleges know that the quality of Florida Atlantic University, where this dual-career hires has helped the lab space is important to junior faculty year he started work as the founding University of Florida recruit prominent members as well. Loyola University executive director of the FAU Brain professors as part of its new New Orleans, in a job advertisement Institute.

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