THE TWO-YEAR TRACK

What Community Colleges Want, Part 2

More advice for candidates on what hiring committees are searching for in a faculty member

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By ROB JENKINS

When those of us at two-year colleges go looking for new faculty members, we first seek applicants who fit the job requirements and who are top-notch teachers (The Chronicle, October 14).

But that's not all we're looking for in a new hire. In this month's column, I'd like to focus on three additional characteristics we seek in a faculty candidate: an understanding of the community-college mission, a willingness to work that extends beyond the classroom, and a healthy respect for collegiality.

Speaking as someone who has served on more than a few search committees, I would have to say the main problem with most applicants is that they seem to have no idea what a community college is all about. That ignorance can manifest itself in the candidate's application materials — for instance, a cover letter written for a job at a research university — and again during the interview process.

Nothing turns off our hiring committees like a candidate who is obviously looking for a research job but has applied to one or two community colleges as a fallback position.

And yes, we can tell. Usually your cover letter is long and generic, doesn't mention our college at all (or only briefly at the beginning), and waxes verbose about your research agenda.

It's even more obvious when such candidates make it to the campus interview, where they are peppered with questions about their teaching philosophy, their views on developmental education, and their experience with diverse student populations. Suddenly, the ill-prepared applicant begins to sound like a shady politician under the lights, trying desperately to change the subject: "Um, did I mention that I was a research assistant for Professor So-and-So?"

The best applicants — the ones whose files make it into the "definitely interview" pile and who continue to impress in person — know exactly what they're getting into in seeking the job.

They have done their research, not only on our campus but on community colleges in general. They realize that most two-year colleges have open-door policies, admitting basically anyone with a high-school diploma or the equivalent. They understand that, while they may well teach some students with SAT scores of 1,950, they will also have students sitting in those same classrooms who never took the college boards and wouldn't have scored high if they had.

Most important, the best applicants seem to embrace the fundamental truth of community-college teaching — that our job as faculty members is to serve all students to the best of our ability, to challenge the gifted just as they would be challenged at a university, and to enable the underprepared, as much as humanly possible, to attain the same level. That's why someone whose cover letter devotes three paragraphs to a detailed exegesis of a dissertation, but not a single paragraph to teaching, doesn't interest us.

Another quality that search committees look for is a willingness to jump right into the life of the institution beyond the classroom and share in the myriad tasks that go hand in hand with teaching at a community college.

It's doubtful that someone who's never taught at a two-year college can fully understand the amount of grunt work involved: the countless committees to be staffed, student organizations to be sponsored, departmental exams to be scored, adjunct faculty members to be supervised. So the need to find worker bees is partly institutional: Our colleges need people who are willing to help out. Otherwise, important things won't get done.

But our interest is also personal. By the time we sit on a search committee, most of us have been at a community college for years, perhaps even decades. Year after year, we have done all the grunt work. Quite frankly, we're looking for someone to take on some of those responsibilities and perhaps give us a much-needed break.

We don't expect applicants, especially those fresh from graduate programs, to have experience in all of those areas. But candidates who have some experience — who have worked with an undergraduate organization or taken on some departmental duties in graduate school, for instance — and who, beyond that, demonstrate in their cover letter a willingness to pitch in, well, those are the people we want to talk to.

Finally, the experienced faculty members who make up the search committee are looking, individually and collectively, for good colleagues. We want people who will not only help shoulder some of the burden but who plan on staying, and around whom we will be comfortable for years to come. We're not necessarily looking for friends or allies, but we also aren't interested in sharing the copy room for the next 10 years with a whiner, a prima donna (or, as one of my freshman-comp students once wrote, a "pre-Madonna"), or someone who's clearly high maintenance.

If you're thinking that the last criterion turns the whole hiring process into a bit of a popularity contest, you're right — to an extent. Professors at two-year colleges are like any other academics. Assuming candidates' qualifications and experience are roughly equal, we want to interview those whose application materials make the best impression, and hire those we like the best during the interview.

You may also think that this is the point at which academic politics enter into the equation and you're right about that, too — but, again, only to an extent.

On the one hand, what Kissinger famously said about university politics — that they're so vicious because the stakes are so low — certainly holds true to some degree for community colleges. On the other hand, because academic departments at two-year colleges don't incorporate nearly as many subspecialties, we don't usually have the kinds of sharp ideological and intellectual divisions frequently found at four-year institutions.

That said, it's still possible for a job candidate to "step in it" during an interview (or even in a cover letter), effectively alienating one side or the other in a longstanding internal debate (process or product? Western canon or world cultures?).

The best candidates avoid such pitfalls by staying away from politically or emotionally charged issues in their application materials, focusing instead on academic preparation, teaching experience, and other pertinent information. They also, even if they're not Dale Carnegie graduates, manage to come across in their interviews as cordial, likeable, humble — basically, people that other professionals would want to work with. Surprisingly, some candidates don't even make an effort to present themselves that way.

The successful applicants recognize what it takes to land a tenure-track job at a community college. They've made sure they're well qualified before applying and learned how to emphasize their teaching experience. They also understand and embrace the community-college mission, display a willingness to roll up their sleeves and get to work, and practice good people skills. And that's why they get hired.

Contrary to popular mythology, it's rarely just dumb luck.

Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English and director of the Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College. He writes occasionally for our community-college column. If you would like to write for our regular column on faculty and administrative careers at two-year colleges, or have a topic to propose, we would like to hear from you. Send your ideas to careers@chronicle.com. For an archive of previous columns in The Two-Year Track series, see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/ archives/columns/the_twoyear_track.