Increasingly, the campus visit combines the purpose of enhancing the attractiveness of the position and the College with the traditional goal of evaluating candidates. All participants in such visits should try to present as positive an image of the campus as possible. Favorable impressions of the campus by both successful and unsuccessful candidates are important for the College.
- Visits of candidates for full-time positions usually involve one night’s stay and portions of two days. Care should be taken to make the visits of all candidates for the position as nearly equal in duration and schedule as possible. Prior to arranging a visit date with the candidate, and ideally 4-6 weeks in advance of anticipated campus visits, contact the Provost’s Office and President’s Office to verify dates when the Provost and President will be available for interviews.
- The Search Committee Chair is responsible for arranging and circulating the schedule of a candidate’s visit. Everyone meeting with a candidate should have a copy of the visit schedule except, perhaps, those participating only in larger group sessions. Invitations to faculty and staff to meet the candidate at a presentation are issued by the Search Committee Chair. The home department should distribute the notice of a candidate’s visit; the Search Committee prepares the text of the notice.
- Visits should include:
- interviews with department faculty, individually and collectively;
- time with department majors and other interested students;
- interview with the Provost;
- interview with the President (if available);
- interview with the Human Resources Director;
- interviews with the Search Committee;
- a public presentation to a general College audience;
- a classroom presentation.
In some instances, the presentations above may be combined into a single presentation. For all candidates, consideration should be given to scheduling meetings with individuals or groups that they request, beyond the normal meetings listed above. Any needs or preferences regarding diet or accommodation should be made known to all who need to know such as the Search Committee and Dining Services.
Presentations are an important component of any visit and for most members of the College community it is their major or only contact with the candidate. It also gives the candidate a sense of the general college interest in their visit. Thus, the Search Committee Chair must make an extra effort to ensure an audience containing students and faculty members outside of the Department and Search Committee. Along with timely announcements there should be personal invitations to relevant students and faculty, and announcements of the candidate’s visit should be made in classes in the Department with strong encouragement for students to attend.
A recommended strategy in setting up interviews is to assign specific topics or issues to each member of the department and Search Committee seeing the candidate. For example, one person might talk about research interests, another might investigate teaching experience and philosophy, and a third might explore intellectual interests in other disciplines. This assures that important issues are covered with a minimum of redundancy across interviews and that all candidates will be asked similar questions.
- The schedule of the visit should note who will greet the candidate at the airport, railroad station, or other location if travel is by automobile. Similarly, the schedule should note who will take the candidate to the point of departure. These assignments should fall to a member of the Search Committee or department.
- Early in the schedule, the Search Committee Chair should meet to review the visit with the candidate, and again toward the end of the schedule, so as to be able to answer any remaining questions and get an idea of the candidate’s impressions of the visit.
- The Search Committee Chair should inform the Provost of any relevant expectations or concerns of the candidate, e.g., on salary, research facilities, or term of appointment, prior to the Provost’s meeting the candidate. The Chair should update the Provost as necessary, subsequently.