10-29-09: Stanford: Budget cuts affect faculty recruitment

Budget cuts will have an effect on faculty recruitment this year, but early indicators are emerging about where new members will be welcomed.

The School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) has initiated about two dozen searches for new faculty, according to H&S Dean Richard Saller.

“They are scattered across the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, depending on need and recent retirements,” Saller said.

The reduction of available spots has affected the type of faculty members the University seeks to acquire, with preference given at times to more experienced scholars.

“The net result of fewer searches is simply that we will be hiring fewer spectacular young faculty,” said Engineering Dean Jim Plummer.

The School of Engineering, according to Plummer, “has been doing about half as many searches this year as we have done historically.”

Because of the decreased funds normally used to aid the hiring process, schools have been forced to come up with alternative methods to fund recruitment.

“Current searches are using billets that were not frozen as part of our budget cuts last spring,” Plummer said. “The billets that were frozen will be refunded over time through raising new endowed chairs.”

For Engineering, once funding is in place to fund a search, no exact position or type of academic discipline is actively sought.

“We generally do broad area searches, not searches in specific disciplines,” Plummer said. “We hire the best available person in searches, not someone fulfilling a specific need.”

Other schools, like Education, were able to attain a comfortable number of faculty members while struggling to manage budget cuts. Education is making five hires.

“One is paid for with funds from an endowed chair,” said School of Education Dean Deborah Stipek. “The other four are replacements of faculty who have retired or left Stanford.”

Yet the budget cuts also adversely affected the search to fill two integral parts of the School of Education.

“We did have to cancel one search and put on hold another,” Stipek said. “Both are in important areas of international higher education and neuroscience and education.”

The School of Education’s new faculty members include H. Samy Alim, an addition to the Social Sciences, Policy and Educational Practice (SSPEP) program faculty and David Plank, executive director of the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) policy research center;

Additionally, Geoffrey Cohen will be joining the Psychological Studies in Education (PSE) program faculty as the James G. March Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business. Jelena Obradović, a new PSE associate professor, and Susan O’Hara, associate professor of the Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education (CTE) program, will also be joining the department.

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