Faculty recruitment update

As we begin our next academic year I thought it would be useful to update the university community about where we are with our ongoing efforts to recruit new faculty. As you know, for the last two years we have used an open recruitment process, in which all candidates are evaluated by a single committee of faculty. In its first year, this system led to the appointment of two tenure-track faculty members, Sean Brady and Howard Hang. Both of these excellent scientists have now established active laboratories in the third floor of the Rockefeller Research Building.

The second cycle was run this past year by Cori Bargmann. Cori led a very effective search that led to the identification of two highly promising candidates at the assistant professor level. For personal and geographic reasons both of these candidates decided not to join us, but both emphasized that they had been enormously impressed by the university and the recruitment process. One said that she could not think of a more supportive and intellectually rich environment for junior faculty.

Two scientists at the associate professor level were also identified in the open recruitment process and discussions are under way now with these candidates. In a parallel search, clinical research candidates have visited the university, and follow-up visits are being arranged for the fall.

I am pleased to announce that Jeff Friedman has agreed to chair the faculty search committee for next year. I want to emphasize how grateful we all are to those who chair this committee; recruiting new scientists is one of the most important tasks of the university and it is also a great deal of work.

Jeff will be experimenting with some modifications of the procedures used to date, which I hope will help the search process work even better. Though a single search committee, chaired by Jeff, will still evaluate a “shortlist” of finalists, the work of screening initial candidates and generating the shortlist will be carried out by eight subcommittees, searching in specific research areas that together cover all the interests of the university. The objective of this hub-and-spokes model is to encourage faculty and other members of the community to search for the best candidates in their particular research areas who will then be discussed in the more specialist subcommittees. The most qualified candidates will then be assessed by the full committee, to identify who would be the best hires for the university as a whole.

We are introducing this year a second closing date for applications. In addition to the regular November deadline, there will be an April deadline. The goal here is to be constantly on the lookout for potential candidates, so we can explore promising applications at any time throughout the year. Although we still expect most applications to come in before November, this shift means that effectively the university will be conducting a continual search for potential recruits.

The emphasis for recruitment will continue to be on junior-level faculty looking to become assistant professors, but as before we will also search for associate professor-level and early-career tenured full professor-level candidates who are outstanding research workers. As in the last two years, all candidates will visit the university and give research seminars, generally in the Monday Lecture Series. I very much encourage everyone to attend these lectures; not only do they expose us to new and exciting work going on elsewhere, but a large turnout at these lectures has an enormously positive effect on our candidates. Good attendance at these lectures in the past has greatly helped our recruitment efforts.

I want to end this column on recruitment by reminding you that as outlined in the strategic plan, the university will occasionally appoint visiting part-time professors. The administration has been talking over the summer to an established professor, identified by several of our physics and theoretically minded biology faculty, about coming here for a quarter-time appointment. If these discussions are successful, his appointment would begin this fall; I will tell you more about this in a future issue of BenchMarks.