Landing a tenure-track teaching job
My husband has applied to a tenure track teaching position at a local college; this is a very rare, very good opportunity. He applied three weeks ago and he wants to follow up on it to see if they got it, to see if they are interested in him, to see if he is in the running for it. But he isn’t sure the right way to go about it, should he call, email etc… The problem is he feels there is so much riding on this that he doesn’t want to seem too desperate or put them off in some way. Any advice regarding this kind of situation would be appreciated.
They will get 3000 applications, so he needs to stop thinking he has so much riding on the position. Getting a position like that is like winning a lottery ticket. He needs a better plan than winning the lottery.
That said, he can call the secretary of the department to make sure they received the application. But what would be much better is to have someone in a prestigious academic position at another university but the same field call the department head with an unsolicited recommendation.
Penelope
As an academic, tenure-track positions are filled by PhD’s. To get a job like this, your husband would need the chair of his dissertation committee (who would hopefully be a well-respected individual in this relevant field) contact the hiring committee.
Realistically, if you have to ask this kind of question, your husband does not have the qualifications needed for this type of work.
In all my years in academia, I have NEVER once heard of a single case of a professor without a PhD receiving a tenure-track job. Also, most major (decent) universities now require a PhD for a non-tenure track teaching position (aka Lecturer).