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Questions tagged [professorship]

Queries specific to the duties and responsibilities of professors, as distinct from all other academic staff positions. This tag should not be used for queries that could equally apply to researchers or instructors who are not professors.

24 votes
3 answers
3k views

How do universities deal with loss in productivity post tenure?

A tenure from a good university is generally considered to be the pinnacle of academic achievements. It is packed with so many benefits that it is easy to lose direction in one's research career post ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
16 votes
2 answers
593 views

How intensive is the process of interviewing people for faculty openings?

I'm interested in answers for both the individual faculty member and for the department as a whole. For the individual prospective faculty member - How long does the prospective faculty member's ...
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
24 votes
3 answers
16k views

Should résumés be attached in a mail to a professor?

Say there is a student who writes a mail to a professor asking for a PhD vacancy or a RA-ship position. Should he attach his résumé in a mail to a professor? I have had contradictory viewpoints on ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
15 votes
4 answers
4k views

How do professors usually discover "new" research interests?

Usually, a person starts out with a single primary research interest as a PhD student (closely related to that of their adviser). But then as they move on through the assistant professor stage, they ...
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
20 votes
3 answers
1k views

Should someone who wants tenure (or a research position) have hobbies totally unrelated to their work?

Or in Sean Carroll's words, is it true that "you are better off if your hobbies are nothing like your work"? Carroll, Sean. "How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University: Cosmic Variance." ...
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
19 votes
3 answers
589 views

Number of potential PhD advisors at a school

Past advice suggests that potential PhD students should be wary of attending schools with only one professor in their subfield. If you have problems with your advisor and want to switch, having that ...
JEs9X's user avatar
  • 2,453
16 votes
2 answers
4k views

How important is mathematics in engineering research?

In EE/EC/CS departments, there are certain fields that are theory-based (like the algo or complexity groups), ones that lean towards systems implementation (OS, programming languages, etc) and others ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
24 votes
4 answers
3k views

Why does professor prohibit me talking to people?

I'm considering a PhD and asked a professor at my university. I suggested a topic to him that he accepted. I applied and he offered me a position but I didn't accept yet. Later he changed my project'...
siamii's user avatar
  • 2,365
7 votes
1 answer
3k views

Planning to do PHD, Masters Thesis important? (USA)

I am a master's student in computer science. I have completed my coursework and will be graduating soon, with a project. I am planning to do a PhD in the future: is a master's thesis an important ...
howtechstuffworks's user avatar
35 votes
1 answer
18k views

The etiquette of leaving a faculty position

If a tenure track professor wants to leave their university for another job, how much in advance should they inform their department chair? The standard two weeks notice probably doesn't apply. And ...
ano721's user avatar
  • 353
24 votes
8 answers
10k views

Being harassed by a department chair

How do you cope when a department chair is all out to cause you problems? Especially when he is doing it for personal reasons that I have no control over (e.g. gender, skin color, nationality, ...
justin's user avatar
  • 441
14 votes
2 answers
4k views

What is the usual role of a faculty senate? Does it typically have any real power, or is it a rubber-stamp for the administrators?

Although the presence of a senate suggests that universities nominally are governed somewhat by their faculty, it is frequently stated that there has been a trend towards greater managerialism, which ...
Alex Holcombe's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
976 views

Interview strategies for faculty positions - to focus on their research or your own?

What's the best approach for talking to faculty that are in distant/unrelated areas during a campus visit for a faculty position? Is it preferable to show that you are interested in their research ...
dj444's user avatar
  • 191
52 votes
4 answers
29k views

How to contact professors for PhD vacancies?

I know many master's students who get an opportunity to talk to their potential PhD advisors well before applying. In most cases this opportunity is available by the professors with whom they worked ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
17 votes
2 answers
6k views

Who determines whether or not a professor receives tenure?

Does the department determine it, or does the president determine tenure after the department recommends it? Or does the process go through both ways? And how does this vary from institution to ...
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
19 votes
5 answers
695 views

How should an educational institute woo good faculty?

What steps must an educational institution wanting to recruit good faculty take? There is a cycle in the academia: Good doctorates from top universities invariably join other top universities as ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
19 votes
2 answers
882 views

How good are entrepreneurial opportunities for faculty members?

How easy is it for faculty members working at a reputable university to become entrepreneurs? If the faculty member sees an opportunity for a great product and wants to set up a small office with a ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
16 votes
2 answers
5k views

Business School professors - how different are they?

I recently saw a listing of professor salaries at various departments in Stanford. I found that the folks at GSB earn significantly more than what other Dept. people do. This is the motivation for my ...
Bravo's user avatar
  • 23.1k
10 votes
3 answers
3k views

Who pays travel & per diem costs for invited lecturers?

When an academic is invited to give a talk at another university, are their food and travel expenses usually fully reimbursed by the university that invited the professor?
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
16 votes
1 answer
7k views

What percent of assistant professors generally receive tenure, and how does this percent vary depending on both school and field?

Are new assistant professors more likely to receive tenure in an expanding field, like biology? And are they less likely (percentage-wise) to receive tenure at elite schools?
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
9 votes
3 answers
3k views

How many minutes per day do most professors spend reading and replying to emails? [closed]

I know that the time greatly varies from professor to professor, but what are some good 25th percentile to 75th percentile estimates? And does the time spent reading/replying to emails generally ...
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
12 votes
1 answer
1k views

Does a informative and clear professor webpage often increase the number of prospective PhD students who apply to work for the professor?

Here is what I would call a particularly informative and clear professor webpage. Of course, it's not the most important thing (for me, personally, I mostly discovered professors through asking ...
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k
25 votes
5 answers
15k views

What style questions should I ask potential graduate students interviewing for positions in my lab?

As a converse to this question, as a professor, I find it difficult to conduct a useful interview. What types of questions should I ask which would give me a good idea as to how (1) productive and (2) ...
eykanal's user avatar
  • 48.5k
15 votes
2 answers
1k views

How are the personal assistants for professors usually funded?

As examples, the lab executive assistant at http://www.klab.caltech.edu/people.shtml or the lab administrative assistant over at http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/people.html#admins
InquilineKea's user avatar
  • 10.9k

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