Service – Studying Religion in Culture

More Isn’t Necessarily Better: Some Thoughts on the Job Search Process

September 25, 2018 by Russell McCutcheon

Another job search season is upon us and, not yet knowing if our Department will be lucky enough to search for a new tenure track line (this year I submitted requests for two, in fact), I thought I’d offer a little unsolicited advice to people on the job market (and simultaneously solicit anyone else with experience on search committees in our field to contact me to consider writing a guest blog for our site, reflecting on these very issues from […]

Taco Insights on Faculty Service

August 11, 2018 by Russell McCutcheon

With the start of another school year right around the corner I’m thinking about service — one of those three main areas into which scholars usually divide up their work (the others being research and teaching, of course — and the order in which they’re written is not insignificant). It’s not hard to find faculty posting on social media bemoaning committee work, as if it gets in the way of a professor’s real work, but I’m here to say how […]

And I nominate…

September 26, 2016 by Russell McCutcheon

It’s not news that, over the years, I’ve critiqued our main professional organization on various occasions. I’ve been a member for a while now, and it seems to me that having a stake in the profession, and in an association that one’s membership dues helps to fund, means that one is free to offer commentary where one thinks things could (and should) be otherwise. Maybe we could even go so far as say it’s an engaged member’s duty. […]

Baby Steps

March 14, 2014 by Russell McCutcheon

If you’re reading this blog then you may know that we’re a small undergraduate degree-granting Department that has a number of things going on — from a couple of longstanding lecture series to a newly invented annual undergrad research symposium, from an active student association and Facebook page, to some faculty who actively collaborate with one another on their own research. We bring grads back to talk about their post-B.A. lives and careers, we have this blog with posts from […]

Isn’t That Special

October 27, 2013 by Russell McCutcheon

Did you see the post from last year at The Chronicle‘s site, on widespread dissatisfaction of mid-career profs? I’d not, so thanks to a Facebook friend for re-posting it the other day. The researcher who conducted the survey of over 13,510 faculty comments: […]