After over two years of budget cuts and an only recently lifted hiring freeze, many University officials say they are pleased with the resumption of a number of searches for new faculty members in departments and schools across Grounds.
The majority of the faculty members being recruited will replace retiring faculty or fill positions left vacant during the hiring freeze, resulting in the need for little additional funds for the new hires, University officials said.
The College of Arts and Sciences, one of the hardest hit schools from the recent budget slashing, will initiate a total of roughly 34 faculty searches for the 2004-05 academic year, according to Associate Dean for the Sciences George Hornberger and Karen Ryan, associate dean for the arts, humanities and social sciences.
While faculty recruitment requires a tremendous investment of time and monetary resources, Hornberger said the 10 searches being conducted for new science faculty is great news for the departments he represents.
"This is a giant step toward really improving things," Hornberger said. "I'm very, very optimistic over it."
Physics Department Chair Thomas Gallagher said his department was authorized to begin two new faculty searches for next year. In a typical year, the physics department searches for one new faculty member.
"Having new people come in brings in new research ideas, new ideas about how things should be taught -- it's just new and I think this is essential," Gallagher said. "Everybody's happy that we're hiring people."
In the College's arts, humanities and social sciences departments, 24 searches have been authorized, with the majority of those being tenure track, Ryan said. She added that this number is relatively consistent with the number of searches typically authorized annually before the budget cuts hit.
"We have authorized searches in the majority of departments," she said. "We've tried to spread the wealth around."
Robert Pate, associate dean for administrative services for the Curry School of Education, said requests from department officials for new faculty searches currently are being reviewed, and that this signals the beginning of a return to normalcy for the school's annual faculty recruitment activities.
"It is a beginning certainly when tenure-track positions have been in a freeze for a significant period," Pate said.
He warned, however, that even with the anticipated new hires for next year, the Education school still will have a smaller faculty than it did before the budget cuts hit.
At the Architecture School, which has been relying on a number of adjunct faculty members for the past few years, searches for two new positions in the Department of architecture and landscape architecture have commenced, said Bill Sherman, chair of the department of architecture and landscape architecture.
"I think the two positions will go a long way in the recovery from lost positions over the past several years," Sherman said. "What [they will] allow us to do is return to staffing our full time positions with members of the tenure-track faculty."
Bill Thurneck, assistant dean for administrative and academic affairs for the School of Engineering and Applied Science, painted a less optimistic picture of his school's hiring situation. Only five searches for new faculty have commenced this year, as compared to about 10 during what he described as a typical year for recruitment.
"We're probably looking at two fairly lean [upcoming] years as far as bringing [in] new people," Thurneck said.
Nonetheless, officials from all schools agreed that the coming infusion of new faces will play a large role in helping to improve faculty morale on Grounds.
"Any opportunity that faculty have to add new colleagues [raises faculty spirits] -- that's part of the lifeblood of an academic enterprise," Pate said. "We have been in a sense stalled for three years."
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