Guidance for Faculty Applicants

More information on submitting your application:

We are pleased you are applying to our open tenure-track faculty position and know that you may be crafting many such applications. On our end, as we read through your materials, we are trying to assess how your past skills and experiences, along with your career interests and goals, would translate into effective teaching, research, and service here at Oberlin College. To assist in this process, below is some more information about what we are looking for in terms of the requested teaching and research statements as well as the cover letter.

Teaching statement, typically 2-3 pages:

In your teaching statement, we would like to know about your past teaching experiences in formal classroom settings, mentoring students or through outreach activities. Have you attended pedagogical workshops/conferences or read science education literature? What have you learned from these experiences-what was the most rewarding, the most challenging? How would you characterize your approach to teaching and working with students? How do you handle or anticipate handing the range of student backgrounds, needs, and goals?

At Oberlin, all faculty in our department teach courses throughout the curriculum: general audience courses with no pre-requisites (PHYS 0xx, or a first-year seminar FYSP), our introductory physics course sequences for majors or other science majors (PHYS 103/104 or PHYS 110/111), core requirements for the major, and upper-level electives. What classes do you feel most prepared to teach or are most interested in teaching? What would be more challenging, and why? Ideas for general audience or first-year seminar classes or other electives?

You will probably not be able to answer all of these questions in a reasonable statement length, so give us what information you think is most relevant in helping us to imagine your teaching here at Oberlin.

Research statement, typically 3-5 pages:

In your research statement, we would like to know about your plans for research and how undergraduate students can contribute meaningfully. While some of us may be in a research area related to yours, it is most likely that your file will be read by others who are in very different fields of physics/astronomy. In that respect, please provide some context for the work (why are people interested in this research area?), what skills and insights do you bring to your research, as well as an outline of what would be involved in your research program—especially while you are on the tenure track.

What types of projects do you envisage? What would be your initial goals in setting up a research lab? How would students be involved and how might that change over time? Students often begin research with faculty in Winter Term, a project-based month in January without standard classes; many research students continue on in semesters, the summer, or for year-long senior honors projects. Can you talk about student involvement in these different contexts? What would be your expectations about students’ past course, lab or coding experience?

Are there major pieces of equipment necessary for your work? (Do we have any of them already on campus?) Do you anticipate having collaborations with others--what is the nature of these collaborations (already established from graduate work or newly formed)?

We are especially interested in learning what equipment and facilities requirements you might have and how they might be met at Oberlin. The College will provide start-up funds but there are financial constraints, so it is useful if you could provide ballpark budgetary information: e.g., an XYZ machine costing $$ is essential, with a more advanced ABC system possibly attainable from external grants, supplies of $ would be needed, closed-cycle cooling is required by the XYZ, access to a high-performance cluster, etc.

Department faculty have significant experience and success in external grant funding with awards from Research Corporation, NSF and other sources. Do you envision grant proposals that will help you establish your research program? If so, what are the scope and nature of those proposals and the expected timeline for submitting the grant proposals?

Again, answering all of these questions will probably exceed the page guideline--address what you feel is most important in allowing us to envisage what your research program would look like at Oberlin.

Cover letter, typically 1-2 pages:

Teaching and research are the cornerstone components for this position, but Oberlin faculty members are also expected to engage with the wider College community. For instance, department members have served on the admission, athletics, 3-2 engineering, musical studies and student life committees. In your cover letter, let us know if there are other interests or skills you might like to highlight or things about Oberlin that particularly attract you.

We look forward to reading your application!