Aristocracy or Meritocracy? The Role of Elite Pedigree and Research Performance in New Accounting Faculty Placements

This paper investigates the influences of elitism and merit in new accounting faculty. Building on research showing that search committees value pedigree in hiring new faculty, we theorize both aristocratic (e.g., accessing or reinforcing elite networks) and meritocratic (e.g., signaling stronger future research potential) influences on the hiring of new accounting faculty. Using curriculum vitae from 381 Accounting Ph.D. Rookie Recruiting and Research Camps, we examine whether candidates graduating from elite accounting institutions place disproportionately higher than do their non-elite peers. Results suggest that elite pedigree predicts placement rank among candidates without favorable publication outcomes at top journals (e.g. acceptance or invitation to resubmit) but not among candidates with favorable publication outcomes. The results suggest joint and complex aristocratic (elite-based) and meritocratic (productivity-based) influences in new accounting faculty hiring.

Mass Communication Education

This chapter offers an enlivened mass communication education approach adaptive to traditionally taught, face-to-face, and hybrid delivery systems. Aimed at preparing students for active participatory and responsible global citizenship, this tripartite approach bridges mass communication and social entrepreneurship mediated through service-learning. The proposed teaching application encourages students to challenge status quo arrangements, provoke disruption, and promote societal change using disproportionality in school discipline, K-12, and challenges related to executive-level search committees and the failure to diversify college administrations as illustrations.

Equity Advocates Using Equity-Mindedness to Interrupt Faculty Hiring's Racial Structure

Background/Context Education scholars have recommended steps for college and university leaders to take toward creating a more racially diverse professoriate. However, the majority of the scholarship is neither empirical nor focused on faculty actively negotiating barriers during search committee meetings to create equitable practices. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The study examined faculty within search committees who received formal training to interrogate exclusionary hiring procedures and create race-conscious and equitable hiring practices. My goals were to understand the strategies and efforts to advance racial equity of faculty trained on equity-mindedness to negotiate and use practices to change exclusionary hiring procedures. Thus, I answer the following research questions: (1) How do professors enact their agency to create equitable hiring practices during faculty search committee meetings? (2) What challenges do professors encounter when using equity-minded practices during faculty search committees? How do professors overcome such challenges? Setting The study site was a religiously affiliated private liberal arts university with a predominantly White student and faculty population. Senior administrators invested resources in a ten-month intervention to train 17 faculty to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. Population/Participants/Subjects Study participants consisted of 10 faculty members whose university leadership designated them as advocates of racial equity on search committees. Research Design Data for this critical narrative analysis were collected through eight interviews with faculty equity advocates, observations of two faculty search committees, and documents of hiring materials such as hiring criteria, interview questions, and evaluation rubrics. Findings/Results Ultimately, faculty enacted their agency to deactivate exclusionary practices and inscribe new rules for search committees to follow. The findings illustrate that faculty agency for racial equity is an effort to establish positional power, to use equity-minded practices, and to informally strategize to overcome resistance as members of faculty search committees. Conclusions/Recommendations I conclude that faculty advance racial equity by manipulating and subverting practices (e.g., recruitment strategies, evaluation criteria), rules (e.g., conversations about race), and roles (e.g., legitimate roles as committee members, who have the knowledge to integrate equity-mindedness) that historically excluded racially minoritized professors from the hiring process. Study findings suggest for senior administrators to train faculty search committee members on taking active steps to create an equity-minded evaluation system, including the appointment of people who are explicitly trained to advocate for equity in the evaluation process.

Tips for Navigating the Academic Job Market

There are many unwritten rules in the academy, and much of the advice that doctoral students receive about the academic job search is from their mentors. For many doctoral students, navigating the academic job market can be bewildering. In this article, an associate professor of public health with experience navigating the job market as well as experience on numerous job search committees provides tips on preparing for and navigating the esoteric academic job market for early career professionals seeking academic faculty positions.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance Library Directors: An Exploratory Study of Leadership Development and Attainment

This study examines the managerial and leadership attributes of the 14 library directors of the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s universities prior to being appointed to their current positions. Special attention will be given to the managerial and leadership attributes that the decision-makers (e.g., university presidents, provosts, members of search committees, or members of the board of trustees) considered to be important. This study hopes to provide examples of leadership attributes that aspiring academic library leaders, especially those who desire to lead large academic and research libraries, may want to develop.

Assessing Trustworthiness in Research: A Pilot Study on CV Verification

When scholars express concern about trust in science, they often focus on whether the public trusts research findings. This study explores a different dimension of trust and examines whether and how frequently researchers misrepresent their research accomplishments when applying for a faculty position. We collected all of the vitae submitted for faculty positions at a large research university for 1 year and reviewed a 10% sample for accuracy. Of the 180 applicants whose vitae we analyzed, 141 (78%) claimed to have at least one publication, and 79 of these 141 (56%) listed at least one publication that was unverifiable or inaccurate in a self-promoting way. We discuss the nature and implications of our findings, and suggest best practices for both applicants and search committees in presenting and reviewing vitae.

THE NEW MUSICAL IMAGINARY: DESCRIPTION AS DISTRACTION IN NEW MUSIC

In her book The Philosophical Imaginary, Michèle Le Doeuff claims philosophers use imagery precisely where their argument is at its weakest in order to provide an indistinct rhetorical space which cannot be clearly judged or criticised. Using Le Doeuff's framework, I examine programme notes: descriptive writing from programmes and grant applications that often tie the music to an extra-musical source of meaning. I point out instances where what is at stake in the work shifts from place to place, performing a determined meaning for the genre's outsiders, but indicating semantic superfluity to insiders who will tangibly judge the music on search committees and grant panels. After discussing genre theory and the history of new music, I argue that this imagery has a deeper social function: to gain social capital by performing diversity while maintaining the cultural power afforded by the genre's roots in hegemonic formalism.