Dealing with a new faculty member

[Ruralguy]

Also, some advisers probably don't want to say too much about things like regional differences unless they had a very negative or very positive experience. Even if they said something like "oh, New Yorkers can be a bit brusk, but once they know you, they're fairly nice" or "lots of southerners are racists"  it may or may not relate to their advisees actual experiences once they arrive on scene.

[AJ_Katz]

+1 to Ruralguy's comment.

I've often found these regional generalizations to be so wrong that they're not worth repeating.  Everybody likes something different.  There are places and institutions that I strongly disliked and yet other people love it there, and vice versa.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

I have not blamed the advisor. I just speculated that the advisor could have picked up on her narcissism and decided to do the bare minimum required from her.

She also talked ill of all her past classmates and described the professors as idiots who do not hold standards. When I asked how she reached this conclusion, she said that the professor tells all students, "you are doing great." I was puzzled as to how she understands what she hears. I tried to explain that the university she graduated from is located in the Midwest (she also didn't know that). People are kind and polite, especially that she was enrolled as a student at their university. It is not uncommon for a professor to tell the new doctoral students you are doing great to encourage their students. It fell on deaf ears because of her narcissism. This conversation was disturbing on so many levels. It felt that I am talking to a mentally disturbed person.
I decided to maintain my distance as I have been doing for the past few months and walk away entirely from her. I will only come in contact to fulfill the necessary work duties if and when it will happen. Thank you all for the support and the words of encouragement. It was a dilemma that I had on my mind for some time, and I think that I have decided on how to handle this situation while I am looking for a job somewhere better than this university.

Besides, I realized that her dissertation advisor in her former university in the US never advised her about anything, neither the university she is going to nor the region or state that she is going to. I find myself flabbergasted about why an advisor would not advise her advisee to learn about the region if she must accept a job in that region. The advisor must have an excellent reason why s/he would not have a chat with her doctoral student about a significant issue like that.

I wouldn't jump to blaming her advisor given the interpersonal communication issues you described.

[mleok]

I think you need to spend less time obsessing about this, and attempting to justify your actions on this forum. Focus on your work instead, so that you can hopefully leave an institution which has such hiring practices.

[Ruralguy]

Ah, I see your colleague fell back on the old "everybody else is an idiot" chestnut. I can't tell you how many times I heard that from my inferior colleagues and how little I heard it from the most successful of them.

[Caracal]

Ah, I see your colleague fell back on the old "everybody else is an idiot" chestnut. I can't tell you how many times I heard that from my inferior colleagues and how little I heard it from the most successful of them.

Its like when someone is eager to tell a prospective date how terrible their former partner was. Basically the person is telling you, "I look with contempt upon everyone who crosses my path and have conflicts with almost all of them. As you're discovering, there's a reason for that.

[apl68]

Ah, I see your colleague fell back on the old "everybody else is an idiot" chestnut. I can't tell you how many times I heard that from my inferior colleagues and how little I heard it from the most successful of them.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect no doubt has something to do with that.

[mamselle]

Ah, I see your colleague fell back on the old "everybody else is an idiot" chestnut. I can't tell you how many times I heard that from my inferior colleagues and how little I heard it from the most successful of them.

Its like when someone is eager to tell a prospective date how terrible their former partner was. Basically the person is telling you, "I look with contempt upon everyone who crosses my path and have conflicts with almost all of them. As you're discovering, there's a reason for that.

Indeed.

I once stood up halfway through a tearoom date (having made sure to finish my tea first), left a tenner on the table to cover the bill, and said, "I'm sorry, I have go now," after the fellow--having just finished telling my how lovely it was living with his mother--started telling me how awful his wife had been.

One could sort of see where that was going....

M.

[Caracal]

Ah, I see your colleague fell back on the old "everybody else is an idiot" chestnut. I can't tell you how many times I heard that from my inferior colleagues and how little I heard it from the most successful of them.

Its like when someone is eager to tell a prospective date how terrible their former partner was. Basically the person is telling you, "I look with contempt upon everyone who crosses my path and have conflicts with almost all of them. As you're discovering, there's a reason for that.

Indeed.

I once stood up halfway through a tearoom date (having made sure to finish my tea first), left a tenner on the table to cover the bill, and said, "I'm sorry, I have go now," after the fellow--having just finished telling my how lovely it was living with his mother--started telling me how awful his wife had been.

One could sort of see where that was going....

M.

Its really the lack of judgement and awareness of the audience that makes running the right choice there. I remember realizing this years ago when I was in a mixed group of close friends and acquaintances and started ranting about an unpleasant grad school colleague. I stand by my opinions about this guy, who was a real piece of work, but it suddenly occurred to me that if you didn't know him, and barely knew me, you were likely to think I might well be the jerk.

[Ruralguy]

Mamselle,

It sounds like you may have missed out on a life of wonderful activities like storming the Capitol !

[the-tenure-track-prof]

When I look from a macro perspective at the recruitment, hiring, and administration of the program, the person behind the low quality and dysfunctionality is the chair. The chair never attempted to search for candidates, never posted the vacant positions on higher ed websites, and was interested in hiring her kind only. If this was a good chair, a lot of things would have been handled differnetly.
On top of this, the higher-ups lumped 7 departments together and eliminated another chair position to save money and she accepted that. The former chair did not accept that!. This happened only because she accepted this kind of offer and compromising the quality of the 7 departments. This situation's results are that the quality of faculty is low, teaching standards are a joke, and students' selection process is flawed.
Anybody who applies to the program is accepted, period. This goes for both students and faculty. I mean anybody. The minimum GPA and personal statements are useless and do not guide students' admission criteria to the program. Right now I am teaching students who I reviewed their applications and saw their records. The majority did not submit letters of recommendation, very bad quality statements, and GPA 2 or even 1.9, rarely I saw GPA 3 which is the "official" minimum GPA score. I reviewed the application and commented about these kinds of applicants, but it meant nothing and had no impact on the admission of the applicants. The policy is to accept everybody because the program directed by the chair wants to show numbers. It does not take you a lot of time to see through that. As someone said on the forum here, "where is the vetting process", the answer is there are none!.
Since I found out about the low standards that they hold, the cheating of results to pretend that there is teaching going on (and that's why no one publishes!), I started to focus on my research. Since summer and until now, I had published 5 scientific peer-reviewed publications and 5 conference papers, 4 of them have been presented, and one is currently under review. I plan to continue my focus on my research work and I am hopeful that I can get interviews to leave this place.

[polly_mer]

Just apply out and move on.  If you're in a field that requires standalone accreditation , would run a search that has single digits of TT applicants, and yet still lends itself to writing single author scientific articles, then you should have a good shot at another TT position elsewhere.  I'm thinking social work, but there's no need to confirm.

Why didn't your advisor point out that teaching institutions don't tend to lend themselves to being research-supportive places and that someone who wants to be a researcher with a little teaching should not take teaching-mostly jobs, especially in a field where the job market isn't saturated?

[Mobius]

If I worked at this university, I'd certainly distance myself from someone.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

My field is far away from social science. Besides, I have two colleagues at the same university from vastly different disciplines than mine, and they both have the same issue of a tiny pool of applicants for each post (1-2). The three of us started simultaneously, the same year. Still, they both have more severe plights with their respective departments and higher administration to the point that one of them is being excluded from the department`s meetings. The other one had an open conflict with the dean. The dominator between the three of us is that we are hardworking faculty, want to work, and all come from research universities. We also are considered outsiders "out of town."  I quickly handled the issue once I realized the low quality of faculty I work with and changed strategy and expectations. Now they think that everything is going well and students love my classes. Now I am sincere at whatever I do, but I am passionate about research. I never heard about the number of applicants in these fields so I do not know if their pools of applicants are routinely small or not. As for publications, I do not recall that I said that I am a single author on the publications that I recently published.

[Mobius]

My guess it's a creative writing department.