*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 3, Issue 29 Oct. 4, 1995 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. Please direct submissions and questions to Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu , editor for the month of October. Next issue: Wednesday, 11 October. September Editor: Emil Volcheck volcheck@acm.org October Editor: Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu To subscribe: Contact Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Or connect to the YMN homepage on the WWW, the URL: http://math34.gatech.edu:8080/YMN/ymn.html The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the administrative board or membership of the Young Mathematicians' Network. The editorial policy of this newsletter is to encourage discussion of issues, and facilitate the dissemination of information, relevant to the concerns of young mathematicians. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editor's notes 2 New Postdoctoral Award Program 3 My Second Job Search by Edward F. Aboufadel 4 Comments From the 1995 CoYM Employment Survey Compiled by Frank Sottile 5 Closing Credits ______________________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editor's notes: As most of you may have noticed, there was some distribution problems with the newsletter last month. It seems they have been fixed. We received an advertisement for a new postdoctoral awards program in computational biology run jointly by the US department of Energy and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It is our policy to not run advertisements. However, as this is not listed on e-math, we have included a short summary, and an email address at which more information is available. While on the subject of e-math, I would recommend that anyone who is seeking a job, or is otherwise interested in the present state of employment for mathematical scientists, check out the AMS's e-math Web site at: http://e-math.ams.org/employ/ In addition to the expected resources like job ads and how to use the electronic application, there are links to several excellent and thoughtful analyses of the state of employment in the mathematical sciences. In the second article, Ed Aboufadel describes his second job search. He recently left one tenutr track position for another. In last spring's YMN job survey, I was surprised at the number of people who left tenure track jobs for other (often tenure track) positions. This issue finishes with a summary of comments from last Spring's YMN job survey. I hope you find some of the comments interesting or provocative. Coming soon: YMN AMS candidate survey. -Frank Sottile ______________________________________________________________________ Item #2 New Postdoctoral Award Program in Computational Biology The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy are initiating a new postdoctoral awards program designed to give computationally sophisticated young scientists an intensive postdoctoral opportunity in an appropriate molecular biology laboratory. A goal is to increase the number of scientists possessing the cross-disciplinary skills in both molecular biology and computation that are needed to exploit the exceptional scientific potential emerging between molecular biology and modern computational techniques. The focus of this program is upon those aspects of computational molecular biology related to data and information resulting from the study of human and other genomes. The goal is to foster interactions between the mathematical and biological sciences for genome studies and to provide rigorous training for scientists in this new interdisciplinary area. For more information, send email to either trance@sloan.org or to teitelbaum@sloan.org or to use traditional mail: Dr. Michael S. Teitelbaum Sloan-U.S. Department of Energy Joint Postdoctoral Fellowships in Computational Molecular Biology c/o Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 630 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2550 New York, NY 10111-0242 ______________________________________________________________________ Item #3 My Second Job Search by Edward F. Aboufadel aboufade@gvsu.edu As many of you recall, during the academic year '92-'93, FOCUS published "Job Search Diary", which described what I went through looking for an academic position during '91-'92, as I was finishing my dissertation. This past year I hit the job search road again, and although I didn't keep a journal of my journey, I wanted to describe some of the highlights of the process with the hope that it will help those who are preparing to go on the hunt this fall. A year ago I was beginning the third year in a tenure-track position at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven, CT. SCSU would be considered a "teaching school" because of the twelve-credit-hour- per-semester responsibility, and I had come around to living with that and liking it. However, I wasn't happy at SCSU for a number of reasons, the first being the less-than-generous financial support of the school by the state and the subsequent effect of this support on me, both in terms of a salary freeze and in terms of money for a modern working environment. Communications with other young professors over the Internet revealed to me that this was not an uncommon problem, as people from Colorado, Florida, and New York, among others, related similar situations. Nevertheless, I felt that it was time to test the waters. It is a strange position to be in, to be working somewhere knowing that there is a real possibility that you are going to resign at the end of the school year, while at the same time realizing that you are most likely going to stay where you are. I had decided to confide in a few people about my decision. I talked to our Dean and our department Chair, and asked both of them to write letters of recommendation for me. I also asked a third faculty member to write a letter, and I kept a fourth, a friend of mine, abreast of the situation. I continued, though, working in the department as if I was going to be there for the rest of my life, since that was a likely outcome. As I began to look at the want ads in FOCUS, the Notices, the Chronicle, and on e-math, I gave some hard thought for what sort of job I would be happy with, and what sort of job I would be eligible for. Discovering an old diary I wrote while an undergraduate, I found a number of references to wanting a Ph.D. "so that I could teach college mathematics", and that fit with the attitude that had matured in me while at SCSU. Also, since I hadn't established a first-class research career in these 90's, the idea of a position at a "research institution" seemed remote at best. So that made things a lot easier. I began looking for ads that emphasized teaching, that wanted someone with my expertise (either differential equations or applied mathematics), and, because I was interested in living closer to my and my fiance's families in Indiana, I looked primarily for positions in or near the Midwest. (On the other hand, I did apply to a few places in western New York, and the first application I sent out went to Vermont!). With this filter, I found, between October '94 and March '95, about 40 positions that I could consider applying for. Now, given my experience with YMN and on both sides of the job search canyon (I was on a search committee during '93-'94), I knew a couple things that maybe the average job-seeker did not. I knew, for instance, that schools tend to be less specific in advertisements than they mean. For example, a school may be looking in fact for someone to train prospective high-school mathematics teachers and to teach Calculus, while the ad may merely say, "Ph.D. required. Preference given to those with some experience with secondary education." (This happens either because some administrator insists on bland language or because a department doesn't or can't decide on what kind of person they want to hire before they send out the ad.) I knew, too, that a majority of my competitors on the job market would be unwisely creating one application package and sending it out blindly to 200 schools, whether they fit the requirements of each job or not. I knew that these applications would probably be easily dismissed by search committees because the applicant didn't write specifically about how his or her strengths meshed with the department they were applying to. And I knew that getting an interview these days is very, very tough. I committed myself to sending applications only to places that I thought I had a real chance of getting an interview, and, if my background didn't exactly fit what was written in the ad, then I would explain in my cover letter how I could fit their requirements. When an advertisement seemed too vague, I sent e-mail to a search committee, asking questions about the position and the department. Of my inquiries, some schools responded. Some did not. I don't recall applying to any school that would not respond to questions by e-mail. The responses I did get were very helpful in my decision to apply and in the wording of my letter if I did apply. In the end, I applied to only fifteen schools. I gave a lot of thought as to what to put in my application. I decided to write a three-to-four page cover letter which would cover all the issues a search committee would be interested in (teaching experience and philosophy, research and publications, service to the department and the university). The first page of the letter was the typical, "Hello, I want an interview" type of introduction, and the rest of the letter was divided into sections with headings such as "Teaching with Technology." I tried to tailor the letter to the school I was applying to. For example, if a school stated an interest in research activities with undergraduates, I wrote what I could about that, despite not having any direct experience in that area. I even tried to address what I knew about the mission of the department and the school, which led, in retrospect, to a little silliness on my part as I told liberal arts colleges about some the liberal arts courses I took as an undergraduate. I'm sure my knowledge of Dante and the Old Norse language was impressive to those search committees. I discovered it was important in the cover letter to briefly explain why I was looking to leave SCSU. Hiring committees do not want to hire people who have been disasters elsewhere, while at the same time they don't want to read long paragraphs about how you are not happy where you are. All I said in my cover letter is that I wanted to work "in a different environment." I also included in my application a two-page vita and an executive summary of a paper I had recently published in the journal PRIMUS. By mid-February, I was depressed (a month earlier than in '92). No one had invited me for an interview. I did receive indications that I was on a few short lists. In at least two cases, schools were going to invite three people to campus, and I was #4 or #8 or something. Meanwhile, the new governor of Connecticut was fighting with the employee unions (including ours) over raises, and things looked bleak. By the beginning of March, though, I was getting over it and starting to accept that I was going to be at SCSU for at least another year or maybe for the rest of my life. Now, if you look over my Job Search Diary, there was a week in March '92 when I started seriously considering doing something with my life other than being a professor. That job search was going quite badly. It was in that moment of despair that I was contacted by SCSU about an interview. The same thing happened this time. During my spring break, I received a message from the search committee of Grand Valley State University (GVSU), which is near Grand Rapids, Michigan. They were interested. Here's what happened: I returned a call from Ted Sundstrom, the head of the search committee. He told me that they were interested in me and that the committee was going to soon discuss who they were going to invite for an interview. He asked me if I had any questions about GVSU. I was rather tired that night and not feeling so well, so I said that I did not, and he said that I should call him if I did. That night, I slept poorly, and I realized in the middle of the night that I really did need to talk to him and ask him about GVSU if I was going to get an interview. The next morning I did my homework, researching GVSU through the library and and the Internet and preparing a list of questions about issues such as computing resources, number of majors, mission of the department, anything that was not perfectly clear from reading Barron's Guide to the Colleges. That evening, Ted and I talked for an hour, and I got a good understanding of what GVSU was like, and Ted got a good understanding that I was sincerely interested. And I was! GVSU sounded like a really good place to work. The next day, Ted called and invited me for an interview. While all this was going on, I was being reviewed at SCSU for a contract renewal. I wasn't worried about the review, because I had been doing a good job at SCSU, but I was concerned about the evaluation committee somehow finding out what was going on. For instance, I had to get a substitute to teach for me on a Monday night while I was in Michigan, and the evaluation committee was considering coming to visit my class that evening, although I talked them out of it and got them to come on Wednesday. Later, at the interview with the evaluation committee, I was asked to describe what I thought I would be doing (in the department) in five years. I struggled not to answer, "I might be teaching elsewhere." The interviews at GVSU were a bit grueling. I arrived in Michigan on a Sunday afternoon, tired from a long day of flying and delays. That evening, I had dinner with two faculty members, and I did not eat much, because I was nervous. On Monday, I was picked up around 7AM by another faculty member for breakfast. The rest of the day is kind of a blur. There were several interviews, usually with two or three faculty members and myself. I gave a seminar talk entitled, "Save the Turtles!", which describes an application of linear algebra to population dynamics. After the talk, in a situation I can best describe as a news conference, I was peppered with questions from GVSU faculty on all sorts of subjects, including the always-troubling, "What do you consider your biggest weakness as a faculty member?" That evening, tired, I flew back to New Haven, and didn't get back to my apartment until after midnight. Very soon after, Ted called to tell me that they wanted to hire me. After a few weeks of waiting for paperwork and a salary offer, I accepted the position. I am now working at GVSU and I was able to bring in my years at SCSU towards tenure. I was not invited to any other school for an interview, and a few schools didn't get rejection letters to me until late July. There were a few schools that I never heard from. What else is new? My experience of the past few years has convinced me that there is no easy way to get a job these days. You must work hard and expect many rejections, and the job market is still tough. (One search committee chair told me that they are getting an increasing number of *tenured* faculty sending out applications.) Be prepared for anything. ______________________________________________________________________ Item #4 Comments From the 1995 CoYM Employment Survey Compiled by Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Last May, we ran an informal survey of asking our readers who were on the job market last year to share their experiences with us. Earlier, we published two articles; one consisting of anecdotes about how others were faring at their institutions, and one containing a compilation of the responses. In this article, I have included a selection of the additional comments made by the respondents to the survey. I have loosely grouped these comments together and different comments are separated by blank lines. I ended the survey with what seemed to me to be a joke: "...one is leaving mathematics for divinity school", but the joke was on me: That was me - accepted at a seminary in Philly - until I got the 11th hour offers! Actually I once was in a seminary, and it's not so bad. The more serious comments follow: The job market is in worse shape than is being portrayed by the various mathematical organizations. This is a fact. It is hard to gauge whether the job market is better or worse than when I was on the market 2 years ago. I have heard of people who have had no luck whatsoever in looking for a job, so it's hard to imagine that things are better. I think the job market is getting better for those who are not in pure mathematics, but the supply pool is still so bloated that it will be several years before the situation eases up. In spite of the success I had, I think that the job market is worse now than 2 years ago. I think I was successful for all of the following reasons: 1. Well-written resume and cover letter. 2. Teaching experience beyond graduate school at a first-rate teaching school with good letters to back this up. 3. My research area(s) are applied. 4. I believe that being female helps get you noticed (but I don't think it helps you to get the job.) Judging from my experience, it is possible to spend 4 years at a liberal arts college that doesn't emphasize research as much as I would like and then move on to a tenure track job at a much better liberal arts school where research matters. I suspect that being female helped me, but probably only at the last stage of the game. I've been told that it works as a tie breaker at the place to which I am going. I believe my success on the job market was due in part to several factors: 1. Well defined goals and a carefully selected list of colleges to apply that seemed well matched to my goals/interests. 2. Strong publishing record, albeit mostly in conference proceedings. 3. Unusual background: I worked in industry as a research and design software engineer, and taught high school before attending graduate school. 4. An advisor who went to great lengths to prepare me to be competitive on the job market (encouraging me to give talks at conferences, financially supporting me at conferences, and nominating me for various awards). If someone really wants a job, there may be community colleges around in one's area. Granted, you don't need a Ph.D. for these, but some of them pay rather well--sometimes better than major universities. I didn't look hard for the job I got. I talked to a few people who asked for my resume and then invited me for interviews. Everything up to the interview stage was casual. My point is, NETWORKING is vital to private sector employment, and most grads don't seem to understand that. People ought to be encouraged to apply more outside the U.S. There seem to be a lot of temporary positions available in Europe. Most opportunities never get advertised because postdocs are often funded by someone's personal grant. I have received offers for postdocs simply by writing to well-known European professors in my field whom I knew only through reading their papers. The availability of permanent positions varies from country to country. In most countries a large part of the scientific life is conducted in English so language should not be automatically assumed a barrier. One of my on-site interviews was in the U.K., where interviews seem to be handled quite differently from North America. All candidates visit on the same day and are questioned by a committee that makes an offer within a day or so of the interviews (candidates are expected to say yes or no equally promptly). So here's what I am seeing [at my institution]. A significant number of grad students are leaving school with master's degrees. For those staying in grad school, it seems to be taking longer to finish. And when they do finish, the new Ph.D.'s are finding employment outside academics. All this in a department where significant education reform projects are underway which could translate into attractive job candidates for colleges and universities that emphasize teaching. I find these statistics very disturbing, especially since those [from my institution] looking in academia had very strong teaching records in addition to their research qualifications. I have heard this story repeatedly. A university will fly some candidates out to interview. None accept the position and then the university is forced either to not hire or has a very difficult time flying out other candidates. This would not be an issue except I have heard that some interviewees admit during the interview that the have already accepted another offer. To interview at a place that one is not seriously considering (given they have an alternative) is not reasonable behavior. Lyon College fills about the equivalent of one full-time math position with two or more part-time MA's teaching College Algebra and (next year) elementary functions, both for college credit. The only reason I received an interview (I made the short list) at one of the schools I applied to was simply because I knew someone there. The same was true for my competitor. Neither of us got the job. Due to irregularities in the selection procedure by the hiring committee, the tenure-track positions which the school had advertised (4 in total) all were withdrawn. I noticed an effort on the part of many schools to interview and hire earlier in the season than in past years. (I was in the market in 1992, 94, and 95.) Interviews and job offers seemed to go out in three "waves" this year. The first wave occured in February, when many of the larger state universities made their offers. A second wave occured in late March and early April, when smaller private universities seemed to make their moves. There seemed to be another wave in early May. This surprised me, I had come to expect that most schools would try to complete their hiring as early as possible. This is the second year that I've received an e-mail mass rejection that contains the addresses of everyone being rejected. Some rejection letters I received pointed out that search committees were surprised at the volume of "excellent" applications they received this year. I was surprised at the number of schools which sent me letters saying that the funding anticipated for the advertised position was no longer available. Is it common practise to advertise a position when there is uncertainty about its funding? I was impressed with the efforts made by several schools to keep their applicants informed as the decision process moved along. The time that they spent doing that was very much appreciated by those of us who were waiting anxiously. Here are my (depressing) responses to your survey: I am thinking of committing suicide at the Winter joint meeting. .......Incidentally, I probably will not commit suicide, but I enjoy thinking about doing it at the Winter joint meeting. (At one of the really big lectures.) As I see it, I just wasted half a decade overworking to get a degree necessary for the job I wanted, and now can't get. I have received no responses to a flood of applications, and have come to terms with the fact that no academic offer will be made. I shall leave academia PERMANENTLY when an industry job crops up. Most of the Chinese students who came here [my home institution] for a PhD in math 5-7 years ago have gotten masters degrees in computer science and seem to be doing quite well getting jobs in industry. I taught two years at XXXX State (Big Ten), and as far as I know, the new PhD's from there are doing terribly. Some people may be going into their 3rd year as a lecturer, a position offered to new graduates unable to find employment. I received a tenure-track job offer, but turned it down since some of the faculty there told me I'd never get any research done there. Our profession is badly in need of a change in attitude as far as industrial employment and teaching go, and I heartily support the work YMN is doing to raise awareness of these issues. Thanks for taking your time to compile this!!! It's always good to get some information given how frustrating it is looking for jobs. Thank you very much for taking the time to put these answers together. I really benefited from reading the results of last year's survey, and I look forward to seeing this year's. Thank you for all the service that you provide to our community. Good luck with the survey!!! Thanks for all the work you are doing with this! Finally, I'd just like to express my appreciation to the YMN Board for getting out the information on the job market, and for providing a forum for sharing our experiences in it. I've found that the job scene has changed so much in the past few years that most established mathematicians really have no idea as to how to deal with it. The Newsletter was an invaluable aid to me in dealing with this difficult situation. Thanks. It appears that schools prefer someone who has a Ph.D. in hand, making it more difficult for new Ph.D.'s entering the market. I was lucky. I'm leaving my current jobs for personal reasons (2 body problem), and moving to a sparsely populated state with very few universities or colleges. Things look pretty bleak for future academic employment, but my goal since beginning graduate school has been academia. It is quite possible that I would not have gotten the offer that I did if my wife had not already accepted a tenure track offer from the same institution. It took me three times on the market for a permanent position to land one. In the end, I am very happy about the position I accepted. I feel that I really lucked out [winning an NSERC research grant]. I guess I could say that hard work has paid off. I'm four years beyond my PhD and every year I've done a little better on the market than the year before. This winter I finally got my first tenure track offer. Since I didn't know if I would be able to finish my PhD research this year I only applied to a couple of jobs, just in case something would work out. It did! I applied only to jobs that I really wanted, since otherwise it would make sense to stay in graduate school for another year. I focused my job search to the three jobs most appropriate to my math education interests. This worked for me. I was able to tell the people at my favorite job that their position was, indeed, my main choice. ______________________________________________________________________ Item #5 Closing Credits Charles Yeomans cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead mwwinst@bilbo.pic.net Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu Emil Volcheck volcheck@acm.org Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Vic Perera vicum@math.ohio-state.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Kevin Madigan madkev@aol.com Leigh Lunsford lunsford@math.uah.edu Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@pi.math.wsu.edu Silvia Heubach silvi@cinenet.net Greg Dresden dresden@fireant.ma.utexas.edu Bob Dobrow bdobrow@cs-sun1.nemostate.edu Lyle Cochran lcochran@fresno.edu Kevin Charlwood charlwk@snoopy.tblc.lib.fl.us Wendy Brunzie brunzie@mathfs.math.montana.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@gvsu.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues