hooray for faculty collegiality

My unit is currently hiring three new faculty members, which means that we’re right in the middle of nine(!) campus visits. We’re all getting well practiced at talking about the strengths of our unit and why people might want to work here. One thing that we’ve said over and over in meetings and interviews with candidates is that we work together well and get along with each other, too (we also acknowledge that this is not true 100% of the time, but that the exceptions prove the rule).

This is easy to say during a meeting with a candidate, but harder to prove is more than just empty talk, so I’ve been tickled to see the way that faculty members have just shown this organically when the candidate happens to be present. During one of last week’s visits, in the minutes before a candidate’s job talk, faculty and staff were joking around and being goofballs in a way that we always do but that (I hope) showed the candidate that we do get along with each other. Before today’s job talk, one of my colleagues was passing out dark chocolate-dipped strawberries that she’d recently picked up. During a hiring cycle four years ago, I remember delaying the start of a “get to know the faculty meeting” because I was too busy trading John Le Carré recommendations with a colleague.

Our unit isn’t perfect, and I don’t mean for this to be a schmaltzy post (or, worse, a crafty marketing ploy for any candidates who have found this on my website). I’m very aware, though, that there are academic units all around the world who do not have this level of collegiality, and I’m grateful that we do get along so well so much of the time in the UK School of Information Science. I’d much rather have this level of rapport with and support from my colleagues than additional academic fame or status, and I genuinely hope that this strength of ours comes through to our potential future colleagues.

• macro
• Work
• University of Kentucky
• School of Information Science

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