On Campus Blog

 “Please note, if you have another development and don’t want to come to Hamline on a full-time basis, you can always teach next spring as an adjunct to get your feet wet and embark on a teaching career.” — A note that jilted teaching candidate Tom Emmer says came from Anne McCarthy, dean of Hamline…
What role should personal politics play in the hiring of faculty?
In writing about the Hamline-Emmer hiring controversy, I asked dozens of faculty and administrators in our Public Insight Network how much of a role personal politics should, and does, play in the hiring of tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty. (Emmer was reportedly rejected over his political views, including his vocal opposition to same-sex marriage.) The general…
When is an oral job offer as good as a written one?
Concordia University – St. Paul faculty member David Mennicke joined a minority of Public Insight Network folks who’ve commented on the Emmer-Hamline job-offer flap in saying that it wouldn’t be fair to dump a candidate after an oral offer is extended. He adds: An oral offer should be extended only if the formal written offer…
“She’s smart as a whip. She could look three, four days into the future and know exactly how things were going to come out and get everybody ready for what was going to happen.” —  University of Minnesota CFO Richard Pfutzenreuter on the U’s chief lobbyist, Donna Peterson, who’s retiring next month after 20 years on…
What Is College For? Our support for higher education makes sense only if we regard intellectual culture as essential to our society.  Otherwise, we could provide job-training and basic social and moral formation for young adults far more efficiently and cheaply, through, say, a combination of professional and trade schools, and public service programs.  (The New…
This Old University of Minnesota House: The Northrop edition
University of Minnesota officials are in the mood for open houses recently.  A few weeks ago they invited the media to tour Eastcliff, the official residence of U of M president Eric Kaler. On Friday the doors swung open for the media again, this time at Northrop Auditorium, which is in the middle of an…
A comparison showing how much harder it is to pay for college now
In an essay on the Occupy Wall Street movement, Minnesota state Senator John Marty (DFL-Roseville) writes about the cost of college today vs. the cost in 1968: Hamline University professor David Davies provides an illustration of how much harder it is to get by today: Davies pointed out that in 1968, a University of Minnesota…
At what point is it fair to abandon the hiring of a faculty candidate?
After posting about the hiring flap between Hamline University and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, I wanted to get some views on a few elements. I asked several hundred college faculty and administrators in MPR’s Public Insight Network what they thought about college faculty hiring practices and the role that job candidates’ politics (or…