Hi All.
If anyone is interested on an inside perspective of this, feel free to
reach out.
I'm at a non-tenure-track position at Columbia right now, though the tenure
track reasons here are probably more difficult and related to me personally.
I do everything a tenure track position would entail from what I can tell,
not only teaching.
Titus: I'd be happy to hear your unfiltered thoughts about what kind of
position
not to take (and count of how many of those I already tried).
Cheers,
Andreas
On 6/16/18 11:25 AM, C. Titus Brown wrote:
Hi all,
as someone who gets to see this particular kind of process work its way through
the academic
bureaucracy from an insider’s position, I can say a few hopefully useful
things, some of which
you probably all suspect already ;). I don’t endorse the current situation and
am actively
invested in changing it (like many of us in the Carpentries, I suspect) so
hopefully I can
help provide some understanding of what we’re up against!
First, there is a general move away from tenure track positions in academia,
because they are
expensive and it’s really, really hard to fire tenured faculty. (Google
“adjunctification”.)
Second, tenure track positions at R1 institutions are typically research
centered, so any position
that emerges from a teaching/training perspective is generally considered “non
tenure track” by the
current holders of tenure, from whom the administrators setting up these
positions and institutes often emerge.
Here at UC Davis we have some positions that are teaching+tenure, in effect,
and I know that
some of the people on the list have experience with this kind of position -
would love to hear more!
Third, I agree with Yuan that there is a lot of uncertainty about what data
science is,
who it belongs to, and so on. Hiring new tenure track faculty into such an
uncertain
situation is actually very problematic - the department is often the first line
of evaluation
and what *they* think you should be doing matters a great deal.
For example: 9 years ago, I was hired into a CS department
in an Engineering college as my tenure home, and it was a really, really,
really, bad fit
in many ways. (Oddly, Veterinary Medicine, which is a Professional School, has
been
an excellent home for me so far - not sure how Davis specific that is, but we
do a great
deal more community engagement here than in my previous colleges, and we care a
great
deal more about teaching because of our DVM program, so people not only “get”
my passions
but they fit in with college-level interests. Open source scientific software
is a bit of a harder
sell but not much.)
I have very strong personal recommendations about what kinds of jobs you should
AVOID taking
if you are a Carpentry-inclined person… but it would take more tact and
diplomacy than I have
available at the moment (perhaps ever…) to write them down clearly :)
Fourth (and I am very much speaking from a position of privilege here), tenure
track profs spend
a lot of time doing things that aren’t that interesting and the life of an
assistant professor is pretty
miserable in my personal experience and also my broader observation. We do
people a real
disservice in academia by mindlessly promoting academically focused careers
over other careers.
I do my best to support my students, postdocs, and other mentees in developing
a clear-eyed
appraisal of what various jobs actually entail, and I’m proud to say that as
far as I can tell, no one has
been too negatively surprised by the actual content of the job they ended up
with.
(I personally strongly recommend against entering academia at this point in
time.)
best,
—titus
On Jun 15, 2018, at 1:31 PM, Yuan An <y...@drexel.edu> wrote:
I have similar feeling and would like to ask the same question: why do
many institutes start DS programs while only want to hire non-tenure
track teaching faculty? I also have a little experience. We at Drexel
University started a Bachelor in DS two yeas ago and will start MSDS
this fall. We tried to hire two teaching faculty to lead the
curriculum since last year, very similar to what this Northeastern ad
describes. However, we haven't filled the positions yet. The hiring
process will continue this year. I have found that many other
universities are also hiring teaching faculty in DS. One thing I can
share about the mentality was that people were still unsure what
exactly DS is as a independent scientific discipline. People from a
variety of background claim they are doing DS research (CS, AI,
Machine Learning, Statistics, Math, Business Analytics,
Bioinformatics, you name it...) Are there any other thoughts? By the
way, if anybody is interested in teaching and leading the DS programs
at Drexel's College of Computing and Informatics in Philadelphia,
please feel free to contact me or look for the job ad.
Best Regards,
Yuan An
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 9:49 AM Hetherington, James
<j.hethering...@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
It looks like a great job, but do we need to discuss within the movement about
why roles like this tend to be pure-teaching non-research non-tenure-track
roles, rather than combined with research?
Our findings at RSE4DS18 considered career structures for data scientists working on the open software
stacks that underpin research
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.software.ac.uk_index.php_blog_2018-2D04-2D05-2Dso-2Dyou-2Dwant-2Dstart-2Ddata-2Dscience-2Dinstitute-2Dachieving-2Dsustainability&d=DwIFaQ&c=nE__W8dFE-shTxStwXtp0A&r=SYmX1-nsUDOfo9qO3rPQ3w&m=LB5gV9QTVtYCTzk1JJKJ1VNSuI9I1k_e5sB6Ne-Rpvs&s=M_h34MPeJwdXq4jT7xTPElMAI4TYn8OXKQ1T6i2cyek&e=
and there’s clearly more lobbying needed.
--
Dr James Hetherington FBCS
Director of Research Engineering
The Alan Turing Institute
From: Laurent Gatto <lg...@cam.ac.uk>
Reply-To: discuss <discuss@lists.carpentries.org>
Date: Thursday, 14 June 2018 at 21:03
To: discuss <discuss@lists.carpentries.org>
Subject: [discuss] Job: Assistant/Associate/Teaching Professor & Director -
Data Science Program
Der all,
I would like to draw you attention to this position at Northeastern University
in Boston, MA.
The College of Computer & Information Science and College of Engineering invites
applications for the position of Assistant, Associate, or Full Teaching Professor &
Director of the Data Science Program beginning in Spring or Summer 2018. This is a
full-time, benefits-eligible, non-tenure track position. Primary responsibilities
include teaching and overseeing all aspects of the professional MS program in Data
Science.
From what I know, the successful faculty can take this program in different
directions (e.g., strengthening R/open source), and to have the wider
carpentries community involved.
For more information and application :
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__neu.peopleadmin.com_postings_52293&d=DwIFaQ&c=nE__W8dFE-shTxStwXtp0A&r=SYmX1-nsUDOfo9qO3rPQ3w&m=LB5gV9QTVtYCTzk1JJKJ1VNSuI9I1k_e5sB6Ne-Rpvs&s=xt4MUTQhcIud8wRiCcNKxx7dS3y9SpZ6c8hfjLJTzw4&e=
Best wishes,
Laurent
--
Laurent Gatto | @lgatt0
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lgatto.github.io_&d=DwIFaQ&c=nE__W8dFE-shTxStwXtp0A&r=SYmX1-nsUDOfo9qO3rPQ3w&m=LB5gV9QTVtYCTzk1JJKJ1VNSuI9I1k_e5sB6Ne-Rpvs&s=l9rVndmk_TSlcYlCOt5cKVVklEUMtnaHPPbtJmANSj4&e=
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