Students preparing to register last spring were frustrated to discover that a large number of faculty leaves, sabbaticals and retirements left many departments in limbo. “The loss of the Early European History seminar sent me scrambling,” recalled Tommy Jamison ’09. “I never imagined a dearth of professors in the subject.” Similar problems occurred across departments, and as a result, Academic Affairs began this semester with a high priority on filling faculty vacancies.
Currently, the college has 13 tenure-track positions open to applicants, varying in subject from Medieval English Literature to Film History and Theory. With the exception of one—the Art Department’s search for a painting professor—every position’s application period ends before the new year. And while, like many other school, Grinnell is not accepted by its top choices, the faculty is optimistic about current results.
“It’s always important to fill any vacancies on the faculty and we don’t generally have trouble,” said Jim Swartz, vice president for Academic Affairs. “There aren’t any budget restrictions or anything like that, it’s just a question of finding superb additions to the faculty.”
Generally, if the college cannot fill a tenure-track position in time, they will hire term professors and then carry over the search the following year. Positions are usually posted on the college website. That there was only a single carryover search coming into this year speaks of the college’s recruiting success.
Each department seeking candidates seems to have a strong grasp of the sort of candidates needed to fill the positions being left. “We’ve had an extraordinarily strong pool of applicants from top graduate programs,” said Chair of Faculty Eliza Willis, Political Science. “That’s usually the case but this year has been particularly strong.”
In addition to the strength of the applicant pool, Willis said she is encouraged by the enthusiasm of the candidates. “I have been really impressed with the candidates that we’ve been talking to, how excited they are about Grinnell College,” she said. “They know a lot about [the school] and they seem very, very interested. People always show interest in a job but I feel that Grinnell’s reputation is growing in a big way.”
This enthusiasm will undoubtedly be reassuring to student and faculty of departments that have suffered from sudden faculty shifts throughout the last several semesters.
For Willis, however, renewed interest from professors has paralleled an increased engagement in the process by students. “People want to teach good students and I think that our endowment, competitive salaries and good benefits are convincing,” Willis said, “but the main thing that helps us are the students, truly.”
