Well, this weekend I've been reading scholarship in preparation for the hiring conference at the end of the week. I'm always astonished at how thoughtful emerging scholars are. And I'm inspired to attempt to write deeper work after reading their terrific scholarship.
It's been a while since we had an open thread here — I think the last one was back in July. So perhaps it's past time that we ask you to tell us what's on your mind.
As a candidate heading to the hiring conference and researching the schools with which I'll be interviewing, what's on my mind is how poorly some schools' websites are set up. Most of the time the number one piece of information I want is to know who teaches in my general area at that school. Some schools have a list for journalists that organizes professors by areas of expertise, which is incredibly helpful. For some schools I can go to the page for the academic concentration/journal/society and click through to affiliated faculty members. For one school I can think of, scholarship is arranged by topic, which is fantastic. But the rest of the time I am googling, or clicking on every individual faculty bio, or downloading a course catalogue just to see who is teaching the relevant courses this year so I can then view their bios. In those cases I don't know when I'm done– e.g. I found 3 people who teach in my field, but there might be 2 more I didn't find. Information on adjuncts is also typically incomplete or cryptic.
Are schools actually trying to hide the ball so that prospective students don't say "I want to study X and only one FT faculty member teaches it there," or is this just a low priority for schools?
"Gwen," I'm not sure the folks who design the websites for law schools ever actually talk to the professors at the schools to see what kind of information they think should be available. But for what it's worth, I agree with you that information about teaching by subject area is great. I think it's also really helpful to have a listing of assistant professors, associate professors, full professors, etc.