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[steuard]

Well, here's the confirmation email from one of the last faculty applications I'm sending out this year. I don't know if they actually want a second "string theorist with a recent Ph.D. from the University of Chicago", but it can't hurt to ask. I've applied for quite a few other good positions as well, and I've been offered the option of staying here at Joint Science for another year if I'm not happy with any of the offers I get this spring, so I'm optimistic no matter what happens. But yeah, this one would be awesome^TM.

Dear Steuard,

We have received your application for a position in the physics department at Harvey Mudd College. After members of the department have had a chance to go through the applications, I will notify you as to where your application stands.

All applicants will be notified when the position has been filled.

Thank you for your interest in Harvey Mudd College.

Comments

[steuard.livejournal.com]

The physics department received 1200 applications for the 2 spaces on the physics department staff. It was, shall we say, competitive.

Yeah, I fully expect it to be competitive: Mudd may have the best physics department at an undergraduate school in the country (or so suggested a recent external review of the department). It's likely that everyone on the job market this year will apply; it's even possible that some folks who already have jobs elsewhere will take a shot. I honestly have no idea how I stack up in that list (among other things, John Townsend mentioned the other day that quite a few other string theorists have already applied).

My one big advantage is that I'm on friendly terms with all of the faculty (and I see them pretty regularly these days when I attend the department colloquium): I'm a known quantity (and hopefully that translates into a good thing), and they know that I've always cared about teaching in addition to research. I'm hoping that that will be enough to at least nudge me onto a short list... but perhaps they'll decide that they really do want a biophysicist after all (or, for that matter, that they'd prefer a string theorist who's had a postdoctoral research position). We'll see.

One idea to point out to them, if they already have a string theorist on staff, is that two people with the same speciality can often collaborate and get ideas from each other.

A bit of that was already implicit in their job ad, actually: they said that people who could join in an established faculty research area were encouraged to apply (as well as people who would start an entirely new research program). It may not hurt that in my cover letter I pointed out that my first summer research project at the University of Chicago was a followup project related to Vatche Sahakian's thesis (he's the Mudd string theorist right now; we overlapped at Chicago for a year, though we didn't really get to know each other there). I haven't worked in precisely that area for a while, but there's a lot of room for good collaboration there.