AEI Connects Ph.D.s with Recruiters

In 2004, the American Chemical Society's Office of Graduate Education and Department of Career Services started the Academic Employment Initiative (AEI). The aims of the program are to give colleges and universities exposure to a larger pool of candidates for faculty positions than is possible through current recruitment practices and to provide candidates the opportunity to convey their teaching and research goals to a wider audience. The heart of the program is a poster session held during the ACS fall national meetings. Candidates for academic positions have the opportunity to present themselves, their research, and their aspirations to members of search committees from universities and colleges throughout the U.S.

It appears to be a great success, says Charles P. Casey, immediate past-president of ACS and one of the champions of this program. In 2004, during the ACS national meeting in Philadelphia, 120 candidates presented posters. In August, in Washington, D.C., there were more than 170. The National Science Foundation provided financial support to assist with promoting the first event. But now it appears to be self-sustaining, Casey says.

This year's poster session, held in conjunction with Sci-Mix—a combined mixer and interdivisional poster session—was well-attended. The aisles between the posters were full as members of search committees moved from poster to poster talking with candidates who identified the types of positions they were interested in with colored stickers on their posters. A green sticker indicated interest in a position with a focus on teaching at a four-year college. Candidates with orange stickers were aiming for faculty positions at research universities. We initially focused on recruitment for the research universities, Casey says, but we received a lot of applications from candidates interested in teaching positions, so we decided to expand the program.

Christopher Thomas was one of those with a green sticker, and he was quite clear about his career objectives. I love to teach and to learn, and I hope to communicate this enthusiasm to students, he said during a brief pause in activity at his poster. I have tutored students in organic chemistry and assisted in inorganic lectures and laboratory courses and will be teaching general and bioinorganic chemistry in the coming year. It seems that you always need to balance teaching and research. If I were at a school that emphasized research, it would take away too much time from my teaching. Big or small, my aim is to find a school where the students are excited about doing chemistry.

Daniel Grohol, who had an orange sticker, also knew what he was looking for. I want to focus on research. There are some important problems to solve in condensed-matter science. Physicists are good at measuring properties, but they do not have the training to make new materials—there is a crucial role for chemistry here, he said, while handing out reprints of his papers. Grohol's poster described the success he had already achieved during his first postdoctoral position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his current postdoctoral position at the University of Wyoming.

Yiying Wu, who participated in the 2004 AEI poster session, recalls: It was very interesting. I met professors from many different recruiting universities, including Susan V. Olesik from Ohio State University. After the meeting, I sent a follow-up e-mail to Susan, and she replied that she had a positive impression of me and had sent my materials to the department. So AEI helped me to get an interview opportunity at OSU. Wu's interview was a success, and he joined the OSU faculty this summer. But, as he points out, the AEI event is only part of the process.

OSU has more open positions this year. Heather C. Allen, chair of this year's search committee, was at the Washington AEI poster session. She agrees with Wu. These events are useful, she says. They provide an opportunity to see the candidates' ability to communicate and to present their science. Sometimes I ask questions, and sometimes I just stand back and listen to the candidates as they present to someone else. I take notes and then wait for the applications to come in. If the candidates do a good job of presenting their work at the AEI session, I hope that they send in a strong application, she adds. Because although communication skills are important, the application needs to be strong before we consider inviting a candidate to interview.

The challenge, Allen says, is that with so many candidates, she can't spend time with each one. Hiring committee members had access to information about the candidates in advance of the meeting via the AEI website. They also received a booklet of biographical sketches during a reception immediately before the poster session. Since the number of participants has already grown to more than 170, it will become increasingly important for search committee members to do homework' to take full advantage of the AEI poster session, Casey says. Several search committee members said they found it very valuable to look over the short [curriculum vitae] and research interests of the faculty candidates before coming to this year's event. It allowed them to focus their attention on the 15 or so candidates that appeared closest to their needs.

The AEI program will be continued next year with a poster session at the 232nd ACS national meeting in San Francisco, Sept. 1014, 2006.

This article was written by Fiona Case. She is an ACS member and freelance writer based in Vermont.