Faculty Hiring and Success 
Guest Editor: Daniel Wakelee 

Attracting highly qualified faculty is a matter of importance to metropolitan 
universities. Faculty hiring is a significant activity on any campus, but at many 
institutions facing declining resources, faculty hires now offer particularly precious 
opportunities to strengthen departments and reinforce areas of institutional priority. 
Although the results of faculty hiring processes have significant impacts on 
universities, many of the processes related to this activity have been the subject of 
relatively modest detailed examination. While this issue of Metropolitan Universities 
focuses on faculty hiring and success, it is not a comprehensive study of faculty hiring. 
The articles in this issue offer perspectives about how candidate and faculty 
expectations, along with institutional resources and processes, can impact the long-
term success of those hired to teach on our campuses. 

Building a faculty of successful teachers and scholars involves more than making good 
decisions in the hiring process. It may be useful to consider faculty hiring less as an 
institutional function that begins and ends in any given academic year, and more as a 
multiyear process that requires the integration of hires into their new institutions by 
providing adequate resources to help new faculty succeed after they have accepted 
offers of employment, as well as acknowledging the broader goals of both new faculty 
members and their institutions. 

Both candidates and those involved in hiring decisions must determine whether the 
skills and interests of candidates fit with the mission of the institution. It is important 
that candidates have a clear understanding of institutional expectations before 
committing to join the faculty at an institution where they (if successful) could spend 
much, or all, of their professional career. In "Looking for the Scholar-Teacher," 
Elizabeth Say and Stella Theodoulou examine the critical importance of institutional 
mission in the hiring process. 

While faculty hiring can seem to be a routine, almost mundane activity, it is important 
to consider that hiring today occurs in the context of an academic labor market that is 
changing in a variety of ways. Institutional expectations of new faculty in the key areas 
of service, teaching, and scholarship continue to evolve. Similarly, if they wish to attract 
and retain new faculty members, departments and institutions need to be alert to 
changing expectations of newly hired colleagues about their experiences as members of 
the faculty. Cathy Trower and Anne Gallagher draw on data from the Collaborative on 
Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) database on job satisfaction and 
interviews with faculty at COACHE institutions to identify elements that are most 
important to the success of newly hired faculty in "Trekking toward Tenure." Trower 
and Susan Walzer use data and interview responses from several sources to examine the 
tensions new faculty members face navigating between the demands of their faculty 

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roles and their own values and expectations in "Crossing Generational Divides." They 
offer recommendations that institutions might pursue to reduce these tensions. 

Other changes may influence the way searches are conducted. From the methods used 
to announce positions and recruit potential applicants to electronic systems used to 
receive applications, the physical (or electronic) technologies associated with hiring 
have undergone significant change in the past ten years. John Ikenberry, Andrew Hibel, 
and Robert Freedman describe these changes as they examine the question of "How 
Technology Has Changed (and Will Change) Higher Education Employee 
Recruitment." Once a search is underway, the process used to conduct the search can 
have a substantial impact on its success. Marilyn Levine and Martin Schimpf examine 
recruitment strategies and best practices in "Faculty Recruitment in an Era of Change." 

For a variety of reasons, the on-campus processes used by institutions to select 
successful candidates appear to have changed less than other aspects of faculty hiring. 
"Faculty Hiring: One New Campus Approach" provides an opportunity to consider a 
process that differs from the traditional, departmentally based search processes that are 
the norm on most campuses. 

Discussions of successful faculty hiring sometimes conclude at the point where a 
candidate has accepted an offer from the hiring institution. As several of the articles in 
this issue suggest, it is important to measure success using a longer-term lens. Hiring 
new faculty colleagues means more than just completing the hiring process; it 
represents a significant, multiyear investment on the part of each department, the 
department's faculty, and the institution. Beyond just attracting highly qualified 
candidates or even securing their hire, faculty success involves creating settings and 
resources that facilitate a successful transition from candidates to long-term productive 
teachers and scholars. Tom Otieno, Paula Lutz, and Andrew Schoolmaster examine the 
design and implementation of mentoring programs in "Enhancing Recruitment, 
Professional Development, and Socialization of Junior Faculty through Formal 
Mentoring Programs." Drawing on the experience of a faculty development program 
on their campus, J ace Hargis and Phil Gilbertson describe how a faculty center can 
assist with mentoring and orientation activities, as well as the faculty recruitment 
process itself. Ed Nuhfer, Michael Blodgett, Steve Fleisher, and John Griffin focus on 
ways to support the teaching of non-tenure track faculty. Although often overlooked, 
non-tenure track instructors conduct much of the teaching at many institutions. 
Recognizing non-tenure-track faculty and finding ways to contribute to their 
development and success is important, given their important role on most campuses. 

As the information in the following articles demonstrates, the authors in this issue offer 
a range of ideas, information, and practical experiences that contribute to our 
understanding of faculty hiring experiences and how they can prove successful, for 
hiring institutions as well as for those who are selected to join the ranks of their faculty. 



Author Information 
Daniel Wakelee is Associate Dean of the Faculty at California State University 
Channel Islands. He serves as chair of the Committee on Liberal Arts Institutions of 
the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences. 

Daniel Wakelee, Ph.D. 
Associate Dean of the Faculty 
California State University Channel Islands 
One University Drive 
Camarillo, CA 93012 
E-mail: dan.wakelee@csuci.edu 
Telephone: 805-437-8542 
Fax: 805-437-8864 

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