The Philosophers' Cocoon

Reader query on jobs at English-speaking institutions in non-English speaking countries

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, 'S' writes:

Can we have a specific thread about the international job market in philosophy in predominantly non-English speaking countries, but for faculty positions at predominantly English-speaking universities? Is PhilJobs the best place to learn about job opportunities abroad for US PhD candidates? Are there any guides or resources that give information about international searches that can't already be extrapolated from guides or resources about national searches? What are some impressions or misimpressions that people have about international searches and working abroad, but in a place where the culture and language are unfamiliar to them?

This is a great query. I actually would have loved to get a faculty job in a non-English speaking country, but didn't have much of a clue how to track them down and be competitive for them. While philjobs does advertise such jobs (I've seen jobs advertised in South America, Asia, etc.), it doesn't list very many of them, and I have to imagine there are far more jobs out there that for one reason or another are not advertised there.

Does anyone have any insight on these things? What's the best place to look for job-ads in non-English speaking countries? And what should job-candidates know about these jobs - about being competitive for them, what they are actually like (if one gets the job), and so on? If you work at such a place and choose to chime in, please feel free to share which country you work in, how you found the job, what the job is like, etc. It would be great to find out! 

Midweek melodies

More below the fold...

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 17: how decisions are made

One thing I often wondered about as a job-candidate is how decisions are made: decisions about who to interview, who to invite to campus, and finally, who to hire. From an outsider's perspective, I suppose it's natural to think that at each stage, search committees come together, agree upon which candidate(s) are best (as researchers, teachers, interview performance, etc.), and then choose to move forward with whichever candidates are ranked 'the best.' Having served on three search committees now, this now strikes me as a vast oversimplification of what actually goes on. In reality, decisions about who to interview, invite to campus, and who to hire are complicated by a variety of other factors. Allow me to explain.

Because my experience on the hiring side of things is limited to my department and my university (a rapidly growing 'teaching' institution that cares increasingly about its research profile), I don't mean to imply that all of my experiences generalize. So, as usual, I think it would be good to hear in the comments section from other people who have been on the hiring side of things. Hopefully, if we hear from enough people, job-candidates reading this can get some idea of how generalizable my experiences are, as well as a picture of the kinds of things that can affect decisionmaking in general. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to deal in this post with decisions at a general level, mostly abstracting away from differences between decisions about who to interview, invite to campus, and hire. While there are some differences in decisionmaking between the three levels (a few of which I will draw attention to), my own experience has been that decisionmaking is pretty similar at the different stages.

At any rate, here are some things I've learned about how decisions can be made:

Reader query on writing referee reports

While I was away last week, a reader wrote in about a facebook discussion on how long referee reports should be. What is too short? What is too long? I think these are really good questions, as philosophers rarely discuss how to write referee reports. In this post, I'd like to solicit answers to the reader's query, and also offer some general tips I think may be helpful for writing good reports.

As an author, I have received referee reports that are just a few sentences or short paragraph long. While I have no idea whether this is because the report itself was so short, or because the editor chose to only forward a small part of the review, I have to confess that I find these types of reviews deeply frustrating. It is difficult to spend weeks, months, or (in some cases) years working on a paper, then wait several months patiently while the paper is under review, only to receive a very short report that merely says (but doesn't show in any clear way) that the paper is worthy of rejection. I think we owe authors better than this, even authors of papers we think are very bad. A good review--even a good review of a bad paper--should substantiate its judgments of the paper's merits. And this is takes a fair number of words.

How many words? Each case is unique of course, but for my part I try to compose really conscientious reports: reports that give a clear editorial recommendation, briefly review the parts of the author's argument I evaluate, and provide clear reasons why I think those parts of the argument warrant the recommendation I give. So, I took a look at some of my recent reports this morning. How long are they on average? My shortest report was 500 words, my longest 3,000 words, and the median length something like 1,500 words. I'm curious how this compares to other people's reports. So, let me ask: how long are your referee reports, on average?

Final CFP: 6th Annual Cocoon Conference

This is just a quick reminder that the submission deadline for the 6th Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference, is less than a week away. The conference will be held at University of Tampa on Saturday October 13th-Sunday October 14th, 2018. If you're curious about what the conference has been like in past years, see here.

As in the past, the Cocoon conference will be unique in several respects:

1. Although conference attendance will be open to all, paper presenters must be early-career philosophers (graduate students, post-docs, untenured faculty, independent scholars, etc.). 
2. Because early-career philosophers may have challenges securing travel funding, several sessions will be reserved for Skype presentations.
3. Although commentators and audience members are encouraged to present objections, the conference theme will once again be constructive engagement, where the primary intent is to help authors to improve their work.
4. Because the conference aims to help participants improve their work for publication, the conference welcomes full-length articles (10-30 pages double-spaced). As a rule of thumb, the longer the paper, the higher the standards for acceptance to the conference. Extremely long papers are discouraged.
5. Submission to the conference involves an agreement to serve as a commentator on another paper during the conference should your paper be accepted and you accept your invitation to attend.

To submit a paper to present, please email the following to me at [email protected] by June 1, 2018:

1. An anonymized paper.
2. A separate title page with the author's name, contact information, early-career status (e.g. grad student, post-doc, untenured faculty, independent scholar), and brief paper abstract.
3. A statement concerning whether you intend to attend the conference in person or only via Skype.

Decision emails indicating whether your paper has been accepted should be sent out in July or August. Finally, please bear the following in mind. In order to ensure the conference is well-attended, there will be relatively few Skype sessions -- so the probability that your paper will be accepted is higher should you state in your submission email that you can attend in person.

CFP: Public philosophy awards

Public Philosophy Awards

Note: Submissions are due by September 15th, 2018.

We are pleased to announce that there will be two prizes available this year, one for an unpublished essay, and one for an essay published within a year of the deadline. The deadline for both is 15 September 2018. The award for each prize is $4,500. In addition, the top three unpublished essays will be passed to the Editorial Director and a Senior Editor at Aeon and will be considered carefully for publication. Any essay which is not accepted for publication will be given a written report from the senior editor about its strengths and weaknesses, with suggestions for alternative publication venues. No more than one essay per author will be considered across the two prizes.

To be eligible for the prize for a published essay, please submit a copy of your essay, together with publication details, to [email protected]. An article counts as ‘published’ so long as it is published between the date of 16 September 2017 and the deadline for the award, 15 September 2018. An article featured on a personal website does not count as published. However, an article on a public website may count as published; decisions will be made on a case by case basis; feel free to include any qualifying information in the body of the submission email. Long-form submissions will be preferred, but articles of any length will be considered. There is no restriction to any area of philosophy. Unlike other Marc Sanders Prizes, this prize is not restricted to junior candidates.

Please submit your unpublished essays, anonymized for blind review, to [email protected]. For this prize, we will only consider long-form essays (minimum 2,500 words, maximum 7,000) with significant philosophical content or method by authors with significant philosophical training. The most important condition is that essays should be written to engage the general reader. There is no restriction to any area of philosophy. For this prize, there is no restriction to junior candidates. Philosophers at any career stage are encouraged to submit. Previously published essays will not be considered for this prize.

Committee:
The Award Committee is Chaired by Susan Wolf (UNC Chapel Hill). The committee will also include Ken Taylor (Stanford University and Philosophy Talk), and Barry Maguire (Stanford University).

Deadline:
Please submit your blinded entry to [email protected]
by 15 September 2018. Please include the essay title in the subject line. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by email. Refereeing will be blind; authors should omit all remarks and references that might disclose their identities.

Any inquiries should be sent to Barry Maguire at [email protected].

You can view the criteria through which the papers will be assessed here, and the official call for papers here.

Reader query on lateral moves

In the comments section of our newest "how can we help you?" post, Amanda writes:

It might be a good idea to have a post about moving jobs. Suppose one is a junior professor and wants to move jobs (the situation I know of is someone who wants to move for a spouse.) Does it make sense to do this before tenure or after? And what difference does it make in each of the following situations:

1. at a teaching school trying to move to another teaching school.
2. at a research school trying to move to another research school.
3.at a teaching school trying to move to a research school.
4..at a research school trying to move to a teaching school.

The situation I know of is actually 4. This person is not sure they can move "up", and thinks chances of getting the right location at a teaching school is better.

I think this is a great query, as I have the pretty clear sense that a lot of people are looking to move 'laterally' from one tenure-stream job to another. In fact, I've also encountered a surprising number of cases of people willing to move down in rank (e.g. from tenured Associate to tenure-track Assistant) for various reasons (e.g. better location, moving from a teaching program to an R1, etc.). My sense here comes from several sources, including just talking to people (where I've heard a lot of people say they have 'feelers' out on the market pretty much every year to see if they can move).

So, then, what are the answers to Amanda's questions? 

On not putting your life on hold on the job market

Suppose you are--perhaps you are--someone in your thirties or beyond, and on a temporary contract. Examples include a postdoc, a Visiting Assistant Professor position, a fixed-term lectureship, an adjunct position. 

In my experience, and in the experience of many people I know, it becomes progressively more psychologically difficult to be on temporary contracts as one gets older, especially if one hits thirty, or thirty-five. Inevitably, you start comparing yourself to your peers, or people younger than you, who get hired while still finishing up the dissertation. In Europe it's relatively standard to have multiple postdoc positions. In the US it seems to becoming more common too. 

This uncertainty is exacerbated by our tendency to put our lives on hold, promising ourselves we will do all the things once we get that elusive tenure track or permanent job. Putting one's life on hold means big plans like buying a house, marriage, having children. But it can also mean things like making more time for one's hobbies, or finally learning to play the piano or study Chinese.

How can we help you? (May 2018)

Because I will be traveling abroad for a conference, comments and posts this week may be a bit slow to appear. Still, I hope to get a few new posts up and will approve comments at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, I thought it might be good to run another 'how can we help you?' post, as we haven't run one in a while!

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss (and hopefully help you with!) your query.

Possible topics include (but are by no means limited to):

• The academic job-market
• Non-academic jobs
• Graduate school (e.g. writing a dissertation, etc.)
• Research & publishing
• Teaching
• Etc.

Fire away: we're here to help! (Also, a quick side-note to other commenters: please don't weigh in preemptively on people's queries in the thread below. Just wait for the new thread I post on the person's query so that everyone can join the discussion!).

Fire away: we're here to help! (Also, a quick side-note to other commenters: please don't weigh in preemptively on people's queries in the thread below. Just wait for the new thread I post on the person's query so that everyone can join the discussion!).

Sunday sounds

Summer reading suggestions?

UPDATED

Now that it's summer, I finally have some time to read some new things! So I thought it might be fun (and productive) for us to share reading suggestions. Have you read any papers or books that you think are especially worth reading?

Here's a bunch of papers I've read recently that I found interesting (listed in alphabetical order by author):

New paper on programming ethical A.I.

This is just a quick note that my new paper, 'Mental Time-Travel, Semantic Flexibility, and A.I. Ethics' is now out. Here is the abstract:

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. 

You can download a preprint at the above link, and can view (but not download) the final published version here. Hope you all find it interesting!

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 16: job-talks at teaching schools

A reader wrote in yesterday:

I’m trying to mentor a former student who has an upcoming campus visit at a SLAC. This student has been asked to give a job talk, the parameters of which seem a little unusual. The search committee has said that it wants to hear about the candidate’s research interests and projects in this talk -- but that they also want the talk to reveal how the candidate presents scholarly material to a lay audience, for the purpose of assessing teaching. In effect, it seems that the committee wants one talk to serve both as a research presentation and also as a teaching demonstration. The candidate has one hour in total (including q&a). At my university, we always have candidates do a research talk and a teaching demonstration, and while there are of course important connections between them, they are fundamentally different requirements that are judged by very different criteria.

Have you ever had a thread on this particular kind of requirement? If not, would you be interested in starting one? I’d be very interested to hear thoughts and advice from others on how to prepare for, and succeed in, such a talk.

This is a great query. As I explained to the reader via email, this sort of thing is not at all unusual at SLACs. Indeed, my department has done something very similar for our recent TT hires, telling candidates to pitch their job-talk to undergrads. Allow me to explain the reasons for this. I'll then share some quick tips and open things up for discussion.

Making sense of student evaluations

I'm at a bit of a crossroads as a teacher, and want to see what you all think. Here's the story in a nutshell. I've historically had really good student evaluations, well above my university averages and usually accompanied by very positive written comments. I also had a number of students take class after class with me, and was able to get these results in a way that I thought had a lot of integrity (e.g. my courses were not easy, but rather rated by students as significantly more challenging than other courses). Indeed, my methods played into my teaching philosophy, which has always been to bring out the best in as many students as possible, 'leaving no one behind.' One feature of this philosophy - which I still utilize - is to allow and encourage students to revise-and-resubmit at least one of their term-papers as many times as they wish (which I've found to be very important pedagogically). While my courses were rated as quite challenging (students often received very low grades on early paper drafts), the methods I used often resulted in fairly high average final grades (e.g. in the 'B' range) - something which I expect led most of my students to walk away from my courses pretty happy. 

However, several years ago during my pretenure review I was encouraged to change my practices in a couple of ways:

1. Expand my methods of evaluating student work beyond the primarily essay-focused exams, reading responses, and term-papers I was giving (e.g. to include things like multiple-choice quizzes, etc.).
2. Make it more difficult to get B-or-higher final grades (ostensibly, to increase the overall challenge of my courses).

While I was a bit hesitant to change practices that seemed to be working, I not only wanted to get tenure - I also wanted to trust my senior colleagues (the department and college pretenure committees). So I went out of my way to change my teaching methods in the ways suggested...and the consequences of the changes I have made are both interesting and challenging. So much so in fact that I feel torn about what kind of teacher to be moving forward. Allow me to explain.

Thursday tunes

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 15: recommendation letters

As a candidate, so many things about the academic job-market seemed hopelessly opaque to me. What were search committees looking for? How did they read and evaluate dossiers? How did they decide who to interview, invite to campus, or hire? I've tried to shed some light on these things so far in this series, at least from my particular standpoint (having served on several search committees and having spoken to people at other institutions who have as well). I hope you are all finding the series helpful.

In any case, one of the things that seemed the most opaque to me as a job-candidate was the role that letters of recommendation play in the process. How are letters of recommendation read? What are search committee members looking for in them? What looks good? What doesn't? As I explain below, my own experience--which once again may be idiosyncratic--is that there is no simple answer to any of these questions. It's no wonder the role that letters play seems so opaque from the candidate's side of the process: it seems hardly less opaque to me on the hiring side (though I do think there may be a few areas of consistency that candidates may find helpful). Allow me to explain.

Tuesday tunes

CFP: 1,000-word philosophy!

Nathan Nobis (Morehouse College) asked that I post a call for essays for 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, a project he is helping coordinate. Here's Nathan's call:

I'm hoping that some of the people involved in the Cocoon would be interested in developing something excellent for this page since it results in (a) an ideal short writing sample for non-philosophers (and many non-philosophers are often involved in hiring philosophers at many schools, of course), (b) these papers reveal something about teaching and general audience-communication abilities, (c) some of these essays get 10's of thousands of views and (d) it's an otherwise worthwhile project to contribute to, I think!

General info is here:

https://1000wordphilosophy.com/

And a 'submissions' page is here:

https://1000wordphilosophy.com/submissions/

Looks cool!

Job-market mentoring program update - part 2: mentee feedback

Last week, I shared mentor feedback from this past year's iteration of the Cocoon's job-market mentoring program. In today's post, I am going to share feedback from this year's mentees. Helen and I hope that sharing this feedback will encourage more people to sign up for this year's program, which will open for signups on June 1st. Our hope, again, is that this program will help make the market a tiny bit more equitable, by helping more candidates--particularly those with special challenges--go on the market with the kind of mentoring they need to be competitive.

Here, then, is the feedback we have received thus far from this past year's mentees:

Question 1: Types of mentoring received?

"specific and detailed feedback on job application materials. In general, plenty of useful advice on aspects of the job market process that one wouldn’t have gotten from any other source." - Anonymous mentee

"Provided sample dossier materials; Help constructing CVs, Cover Letters, Teaching Statement, Research Statement, and a Teaching Portfolio; and interview training, including sample questions, mock interviews, and detailed feedback." - Anonymous mentee

"Dossier Materials" - Anonymous mentee

"[Redacted] read some materials, and also gave advice on what to apply for." - Anonymous mentee

"General discussion, reviewing application materials." - Anonymous mentee

"Dossier Materials." - Anonymous mentee

"dossier material." - Anonymous mentee

"general advice." - Anonymous mentee

"dossier materials." - Anonymous mentee

"reviewed many of my application materials, discussed tailoring strategies with me, and provided a much-needed external perspective on my market process." - Cat St. Croix

"Dossier materials (including CV, cover letter, research statement, etc.) Interviewing tips." - Anonymous mentee

"Dossier Materials." - Anonymous mentee

"Reviewing materials, strategizing which jobs to seek, discussion of interview prep. My own preference was not seek much in the way of moral/ emotional support, but to keep the relationship focused on the task of finding a job." - Anonymous mentee

"Reviewing dossier materials, mock interview, general job market advice." - Anonymous mentee

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 14: CVs

UPDATED 5/11 - 5:40pm

In this series' post on cover letters, there was some discussion of whether to include a 'Works in Progress' section on one's CV in, which is apparently something people are routinely advised to do. In rough outline, my experience--which another search committee member echoed--is that Work in Progress sections are unlikely to make any difference. When it comes to research, people on the hiring side of things are more interested in demonstrated ability to actually publish. Since merely having work in preparation or even work under review doesn't demonstrate that, as Amanda notes my sense is WIP sections are probably a 'wash': include one, or don't - it probably won't make a difference.

In any case, that discussion got me thinking about CVs more generally. Given that this series is intended to give candidates an inside look of how search committees actually think and do things, what 'secrets of search committees' are there regarding CVs? My sense is that there are some unsurprising secrets, as well as some more surprising ones - though please bear in mind that the following remarks are based on my experiences at a teaching-focused institution (as well as discussion with people who have hired at other similar institutions):

Get your AOS & AOC right: Every search committee member I've talked to looks at CVs first, before anything else. Why? Because they are the easiest way to check the first thing that matters in any application: whether the candidate is qualified for the job being advertised. The easiest way to check this is to pull out the candidate's CV and check their AOS/AOC lines. If the candidate's AOS/AOC fit the job ad, then the rest of their CV will be looked at. If not? In that case, my experience is their application goes straight to the 'trash.' Maybe this isn't the case for all jobs (research jobs?) - but, at places like mine, when we advertise a given AOS/AOC, those are the areas we have to hire in. If you don't have the right ones, my sense is that applying is simply a waste of time. Which brings me to two other important issues:

    1. Don't 'bend'/exaggerate your AOS/AOC: if you don't really have any background in the area advertised, don't include it on your CV just to make you 'look' like you're qualified. It will become very clear from the rest of your CV whether you are or not - so don't bother trying to be deceptive. At best, it will accomplish nothing - at worst, it can look dishonest.

    2. Don't list four AOS and eight AOCs: this one is surprisingly common, and also looks bad. Almost no early-career philosopher legitimately has more than one or at most two AOS. If you did your dissertation in X, then that's a legit AOS. If you did your comprehensive exams in areas X and Y, and have written some papers in both areas, then maybe list both as AOS. But do not list more than that. You don't have four legit AOS. Making it look on your CV like you do reeks of dishonesty or self-deception. The same goes for AOCs. You don't have an AOC in area Z simply because you took a grad seminar in it. You need to have some more substantial experience than that. As a rough rule of thumb, you should only list an area as an AOC if you have a pretty substantial background in the area--something like multiple grad courses and real teaching/TA experience in the area. Two or three AOCs is legit, maybe 4 (EDITED). Anything more is seriously pushing it. Indeed, far from helping you, listing too many AOS/AOCs are likely to hurt you, making you look out of touch with professional norms.

Humpday harmonies

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 13: teaching dossiers

I have talked about teaching statements and teaching portfolios several times in two previous series. I still stand by the things I wrote there, particularly about how important it is for teaching statements to use concrete examples of teaching practices rather than broad generalizations and emotive language. However, my recent experiences on search committees and discussion with other people who have served on search committees elsewhere have driven home a few other important things I think candidates should know:

Too many teaching portfolios are indistinguishable: As I mentioned here and here, one of the most important things candidates need to do is "stand out" from the crowd. Your dossier is one of dozens or even hundreds of others the search committee is looking at. Particularly if you are applying for a job at a teaching school, the committee is looking for something that distinguishes you as a teacher - something that makes you "jump off the page" as someone particularly worth interviewing. Alas, in my experience, roughly 8 in 10 teaching portfolios are more or less indistinguishable from one another, saying similar things (such as stating that they diagram arguments, have students do group work, engage in Socratic dialogue, etc.), having similar teaching evaluations (basically, fairly happy students), similar looking syllabi, and so on. Unfortunately, it's a simple fact: if you're doing what everyone else is doing, you're going to have a hard time standing out. So, either you need to develop a more original pedagogy, or you have to show in some clear way how you are particularly good at what you do. In the teaching statement, concrete examples of in-class discussions, assignments, etc. are helpful, as in my experience hardly anyone actually does things the same way in the classroom (even those who do Socratic dialogue typically do so in distinct ways). On a similar note, I think it's important to not only include syllabi in the teaching portfolio, but also examples of term-paper assignments, rubrics, etc.

Cocoon job-market mentoring program update - part 1: mentor feedback

The past two years, Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes) and I have run the Cocoon's Job Market Mentoring Project, a program designed to provide job-market mentoring to all those in need (regardless of background) who cannot utilize the Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy. This year our program provided mentors for 30 candidates in need, and over the past two years we have provided mentors to 55 candidates. We intend to continue the program again this year, and our plan is to open signups again on June 1st, so stay tuned!

With the aim of encouraging people to participate (we always have more mentees in need than mentors!), we would like to once again share feedback we received from mentors and mentees. For last year's feedback, see here and here. In today's post, I will share feedback we have received so far from this year's mentors - and I will update the post if when I receive more. In my next post, I will share feedback from this year's mentees.

FEEDBACK FROM MENTORS

Question #1: Types of mentoring provided?

"I first examined [redacted]'s application materials – copyediting, comments, feedback. We talked on Skype about between three and five times over the course of the job market. When we did talk we got along very well, and so tended to talk for more than two hours. We also sent each other random little emails, e.g. when I would email asking for updates. We planned to meet at the Eastern, but that was scuppered by the snow." - Anonymous Mentor  

"We met several times and I gave detailed feedback on his dossier. My mentee is also looking for jobs outside of the academy, so I looked at his non-academic resume as well. Because my aunt is head of HR at a major corporation and my mother taught resume writing at a non-profit for many years, I sent them his resume as well and forwarded him their feedback. I also offered to introduce him to a family member in the city he's moving to, in order to help with non-academic networking." - Anonymous Mentor

"I gave feedback on [redacted]’s dossier materials and was available to discuss interviews, etc., if he had any questions (which in the end he didn’t, at least ones to ask me)." - Anonymous Mentor

"Reviewing materials & answering questions about applications and interviews." - Anonymous Mentor

"Reviewing dossier materials, mock interview, general job market advice." - Bob Fischer (Texas State)

"I reviewed his dossier materials (some multiple times), advised him on skype interviews, advised him on campus interviews, and lent general encouragement." -  Anonymous Mentor

"Consultation on dossier materials and realistic job market possibilities." - Carlos Mariscal (University of Nevada Reno)

"dossier materials" - Anonymous Mentor

Sunday sounds

Long-time readers of the Cocoon may recall that I tend to share music I like every summer. Now that my semester's over, it's that time again. Hope you all had a great school year and enjoy your break! :)

The Secret Lives of Search Committees - Part 12: cover letters

Thus far in this series I focused on number of general issues that in my experience on the hiring side of things can make a real difference in candidate competitiveness: fit, originality, staleness, career stage, choice of research project(s), teaching experience, and online presence. Then, in my last post, I jumped ahead to interviews. However, I'd now like to step back and discuss dossiers: cover letters, CVs, teaching portfolios, recommendation letters, and so on. For while I've covered dossier materials in two previous series, it occurred to me that I think I've learned a lot more about what search committees look for, both because I've served on more search committees, but also because I've talked to more people on search committees elsewhere.

I still stand by basically everything I wrote about dossier materials in the previous two series, which I would encourage grad students and candidates to check out. One of the most striking things that has stood out to me--and has stood out to many people I've talked to, both on search committees and in our mentoring program--is just how poorly many people on the market appear to be mentored. Quite frankly, many people's dossiers need a lot of work. The same problems arise again and again: overly vague and emotive teaching statements, overly self-laudatory cover letters, CVs listing articles merely under review under the heading of "publications", etc. People--both candidates and the grad programs preparing them--need to be aware of and avoid these problems. But let me share a few new things...

In my recent experience and discussion with others, there are basically three things that search committee members at teaching schools tend to focus on in cover letters (note: so far as I have heard, people at research programs could mostly care less about cover letters):

1. Knowing one's audience
2. Showing knowledge and thoughtfulness about where one is applying.
3. Professionalism/tone

2nd CFP: 6th Annual Cocoon Conference

This is just a quick reminder that the submission deadline for the 6th Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference, is just a month away. The conference will be held at University of Tampa on Saturday October 13th-Sunday October 14th, 2018. If you're curious about what the conference has been like in past years, see here.