Demystifying the Tenure-Track Faculty Search in Computer Science at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions A Handbook of Advice for Job Seekers Janet Davis Computer Science Whitman College Walla Walla, WA, USA davisj@whitman.edu Andrea Tartaro Computer Science Furman University Greenville, SC, USA andrea.tartaro@furman.edu Tammy VanDeGrift Shiley School of Engineering University of Portland Portland, OR, USA vandegri@up.edu ABSTRACT Primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs), including liberal arts colleges, provide a faculty career path distinct from that of faculty at research universities. Since PhD advisors often lack PUI experience, and PhD students may lack access to mentors at PUIs, this paper serves as a resource for those who want to pursue a tenure-track position at a primarily undergraduate institution. The paper includes information about the benefits and challenges of PUI careers, why departments hire, how to interpret the job advertisement, how applications are read by the search committee, the interview stages, offers, and negotiations. While this paper does not address computing education directly, it addresses the R1 to PUI pipeline which impacts undergraduate education in computer science. The advice presented in the paper is based on common attributes of the tenure-track search process at four PUIs. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics • Professional Topics • Computing education • Computing education programs KEYWORDS undergraduate institutions, faculty position, application, interviews ACM Reference format: Janet Davis, Andrea Tartaro, and Tammy VanDeGrift. 2021. Demystifying the Tenure-Track Faculty Search in Computer Science at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. In Proceedings of 2021 ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21). March 13-20, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432512 1 Introduction “America’s got talent, talent, just not enough in IT” (The Wall Street Journal [9]); “Tech companies are hiring more liberal-arts majors than you think” (The Washington Post [5]); and “What can you do with a Computer Science Degree?... there are computer science jobs in nearly every major U.S. industry” (US News & World Report [7]). The word is out that students educated in computer science and related disciplines (CS) at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) are hot commodities in the technology sector: they receive a liberal education that combines exploration of diverse disciplines and modes of inquiry with in- depth focus on their CS major. PUI graduates are critical thinkers, effective communicators, and excellent problem solvers. Yet CS scholars seeking to start their academic careers may know little about the career path and application process for PUI tenure-track faculty. The authors, who have a combined 40 years teaching at PUIs, find the work rewarding, invigorating, and enjoyable. In this article, we demystify the PUI hiring process to support future faculty, who play critical roles in maintaining and expanding the computing education pipeline. We are not experts nor scholars with respect to hiring. Instead, we provide advice from our experiences serving on a total of 19 search committees across four 1 PUIs. Though CS enrollment growth has been climbing since 2012 [3], global economies are also struggling to respond financially to COVID-19, and PUIs are freezing many positions. Thus, job candidates may want to differentiate themselves for a successful job search. In addition, those who are advising Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral researchers may want a better understanding of the PUI hiring process to better advise their students. Building from previous advice [8,14], the authors provide insight and advice on the PUI faculty job search from the perspective of the search committee. The paper is organized by the search timeline, starting with the formulation of the open position and the search committee, then to applications and interviews, and finally to offers and negotiations. Each section presents logistics, hiring perspectives, and advice. 1.1 Computer Science at PUIs Scholars in the final year of their graduate studies or in a postdoctoral position are likely familiar with “Research 1” (R1) Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. SIGCSE ‘21, March 13–20, 2021, Virtual Event, USA © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8062-1/21/03…$15.00 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432512 1 Davis started her PUI career at Grinnell College. Paper Session: Faculty SIGCSE ’21, March 13–20, 2021, Virtual Event, USA 844