Timeline for Would it make sense to have someone write separate teaching and non-teaching letters of reference for one candidate?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 31, 2011 at 4:07 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | Furthermore, people expect teaching letters to be written by people who do not know the candidate well, and who cannot comment on other aspects of their career. | |
| Jan 31, 2011 at 4:06 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | Joel- I'm with Pete on this one. You're right that someone with an extremely negative teaching letter will have trouble getting a job, but that's very different from saying that you should put information that you want committees to see on a casual browse in the letter marked teaching. As Pete points out, there's a real danger that your application would be in the trash long before we get to the stage of sorting where people reading teaching letters. I've also gotten the sense that many people who want to hire good teachers are skeptical of the value of teaching letters for assessing that. | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 19:04 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Joel: I don't really disagree with you, but here are two points in response: (i) even if you replace "many" with "some, bounded away from none", it is a legitimate concern for applicants, especially in the current job market. (ii) Speaking for myself (and I think I am towards the thorough end of the spectrum here, though of course I can't really know this), if I am interested in a candidate I will read all of her application eventually. But to screen out the vast majority of candidates -- a very necessary step -- I will look more selectively, and probably not at the teaching letters. | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 16:29 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | You say that "many" people on search committees don't read the teaching letters, but I would find this to be an exaggeration. Sure, research is a priority, but someone with a letter saying "terrible teacher" is going to have a hard time for most positions, even at the top schools. For tenure-track positions almost anywhere, teaching is at least a part of the consideration. Personally, I take teaching ability as a measure also of one's ability to communicate mathematical ideas to researchers in other areas, and this would be a relevant consideration even for a pure-research post-doc position. | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 16:04 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | Incidentally, I've had extremely good luck thus far in getting things fixed about MathJobs by complaining about them on the Internet. There's a decent chance that if someone points this thread out to the MathJobs people, they will make this easier. | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 16:02 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | Yes, but my friend does not have a job yet. Signs point to the majority of the people I know on the job market being on the job market again next year,so it's particularly important for them to know how to improve their applications. | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 14:58 | answer | added | Mike Usher | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 7:50 | comment | added | KConrad | What I was wondering about logistically is how things will work from the side of the letter writer. If the professor's email address is used twice, is the MathJobs system going to provide the professor with two valid passwords to use (one for each letter), or would the second password that's generated override the other one? In any case, Ben, you say your friend is on the market now. So surely your friend has already made a decision about who is writing each letter and I think it's too late in the hiring season for the friend to go back and ask the professor, say, to turn one letter into two. | |
| Jan 30, 2011 at 0:00 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | For posting two letters from the same person, couldn't you just enter their name twice on the reference list? | |
| Jan 29, 2011 at 23:58 | comment | added | Ben Webster♦ | @K- My friend is on the market now, but I didn't know about this issue until a couple of days ago. I believe he is not teaching at the moment. | |
| Jan 29, 2011 at 23:20 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @K: I wondered that too: does anyone know whether it's technically possible to post more than one letter for the same candidate on mathjobs? | |
| Jan 29, 2011 at 23:06 | comment | added | KConrad | It is a bit late to start applying for jobs for next year. When is this person going on the market? I don't see why someone else can't be found to write a good teaching letter if the friend of yours is currently teaching. Also, logistically is it going to be hard for someone to post two letters at the same time on mathjobs for one person? | |
| Jan 29, 2011 at 22:56 | answer | added | Pete L. Clark | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jan 29, 2011 at 22:30 | history | asked | Ben Webster♦ | CC BY-SA 2.5 |