We’re hiring!
As I write this, we’re about to start interviews for a tenure-track position. Not very long ago, one of our colleagues left for another university (for excellent reasons, and on good terms all around.) We were very lucky: the dean and AVP realized the importance of keeping our complement up, and of getting off to a prompt start: we were authorized to start the process almost the same day.
Due to confidentiality, of course, I can’t tell you who we’re interviewing. I can tell you that the search committee came back with a shortlist of extremely strong candidates, and said that they’d had to leave off others who were almost equally good. As a result, we’re looking forward with considerable optimism to the upcoming visits. The next several days will be busy for the whole department, but fun. And, while I can’t tell you what the candidates will be talking about, we’re expecting three excellent talks to break the January blahs. The only downside, I guess, is that we’ll only be able to hire one of the candidates. (If you’re reading this later in February and you were one of the others, I apologize ahead of time. I’m already sure that it will not be an easy decision.)
Of course, this comes right in the middle of a busy term (aren’t they all?) and will involve several extra hours of work from most of the department, and far more than that from our assiduous search committee. I’m not sure how many hours our secretary has already put in, but I can make an educated guess. And, as chairperson, I’ve had to send just a few memos myself. And nobody seems to mind… which is a measure of how we feel about hiring a new colleague.
The big thing we’ve learned: there are a lot of bright and enthusiastic young mathematicians out there. (But you knew that already, am I right?) And we’re looking forward to recruiting one of them into our department.
