Faculty Search Committee = Sorority Recruitment
 

Seriously folks... I've come to the realization that university faculty search committees are an awful lot like sorority recruitment... review of CVs pretty similar to review of RIFs/recs, cover letters and teaching statements comprable to Ice Water rounds... we get phone interviews (by invitation!) AND house tours... errrr, campus interviews for the folks that make it to "preference"

::squeal::

OMG I wanna make t-shirts!

Medical school and residency admissions committees are alarmingly like sorority recruitment. We even use basically the same software for the residency match as Panhellenics do for bid matching!

(And we do have t-shirts!)

My sister (she's a residency faculty member and ZTA alum) said exactly the same thing when she was explaining to me how residency matches work! I'll have to ask her if her program has t-shirts.

Thanks for pointing this out. It never dawned on me when my son was seeking admission to film school-at least graduate level- that his experience was similar to sorority recruitment. He got in and he got the T-shirt!

Amen...I ran my program's post match scramble one year. It was remarkably like COB. ;) We didn't have shirts, though.

I think there are lots of things in life that stealthily prepare you for things to come.

Rush is also much like any job interview and running a sorority is much like running any corporation.

I used to do music contests that were similar to the Juries I had to do in college...I don't think that was an accident. Also, auditioning for school plays prepare people who are serious about theatre for life outside school...because, let's face it, besides a few random people who come out of left field, most shows are pretty much cast before it's even announced what show is happening.

I'm in the middle of this process right now, and I agree completely. It's definitely given me flashbacks to my recruitment. I just hope my residency match works out as well as my recruitment did!

You know the men that developed the match won a Nobel Prize this year?

Some fraternity member on the U of Arkansas newspaper staff wrote an article back in the day saying that he thought it'd be fun if all the departments had rush for choosing your major.

He pictured rush in the English Department, claiming that as you walked down the department halls, all the faculty members would be chanting, "HEY HEY HEY HEY" and then they'd break into, "Drink beer! Drink beer! Drink beer, gadzooks, drink beer! I won't drink beer with any old man who won't drink beer with a medieval lit man, go to hell! Oddsbodkins!" Then there would be dirty rush: "no, you don't want to pledge Ag, they're a bunch of nerds," etc.

For weeks, every Greek on campus made up versions of how his or her own department would rush-- with the cheers they'd do, how they'd dirty rush, and so on.

That would make it more fun to choose a major!

Oh, Ag Department Greek-style recruitment would have been so much fun! We would've definitely had to leave certain professors in the kitchen because they would've gotten out of hand! They would have been evil about dirty rushing too; one of their favorite tricks at Arkansas was to leave cabbages with soft rot under the tables of other universities at conventions. Worst. Smell. Ever.

Plant Sciences would probably skip out on formal rush and just have informal events. Half the people in the department wear socks with sandals to deliver presentations; I can't image them tolerating outfit checks :D

So true... this is my first semester as a tenure track faculty member and I love the subtle overlap between my current experiences and those of my sorority experiences. Aside from the search committee, I'm also serving on a committee that organizes and hosts the annual undergraduate research conference every spring and I think my sorority life (both as an undergrad and as an advisor) has prepared me quite well. I don't have any specific training in complex event planning per se... but it's not like we weren't constantly planning sorority events... the skill set transfers almost seamlessly.

I get a bit of a chuckle out of this too because I've mentioned my sorority membership to a few other faculty, some of whom were rather surprised by my "sorority girl" status. It doesn't take me long to really show them how those experiences shaped me positively and continue to benefit me today :)

Yes if you can plan a formal (and make 100 people happy)- a wedding is easy!

Being social chair definitely prepped me for easy wedding planning. My mom still talks about how easy my wedding was, compared to my sister's, because I knew how to take care of everything with the vendors.