The chair at Boise called yesterday and their offer’s been accepted by someone else, so that means no Boise job for me. I really hope it went to one of my friends. It’s a bit of a bummer, but in the greater scheme of things, it’s okay.
Hello all and here’s another update from the job search chronicles. My visit last week to Claremont McKenna College in southern California went well. It was a more intense process, though, and a harder interview in general. However, it was great to escape the February gray and stroll among the jasmine, birds of paradise, and cacti.
Originally an all men’s school, Claremont McKenna is a very good liberal arts college with a specific mission: to prepare its students for business and public affairs. Indeed, its motto reads: crescit cum commercio civitas, or “civilization prospers with commerce,� giving it a decidedly practical feel. CMC students tend to dress in jackets and ties to come to class! CMC is a part of the Claremont colleges, five schools including Scripps, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Claremont McKenna. This gives a bigger feel to the college itself because the combined student population is upwards of 5000.
Despite being outside of L.A., Claremont is a really charming college town. It was like four or five blocks of Madison set down in southern California, with little coffee shops, boutiques, parks, and, oh yeah, those $400,000 California bungalows!
So, I should be finding out my options sometime this week or next. Whether or not I land a job this time round, it’s been great practice, and I have an excellent backup plan, to stay home with bébé for the first year and get some articles published.
I’m writing this on the flight from Boise back to Madison. Wyoming’s mountains are beneath me and I’m reminded of what a great big country I live in.
The two and a half day interview went well, although it was really tiring to be “on� for that amount of time. My research presentation the first day was well received and the class I taught the second day was full of active participation, which was great. I liked everyone I met (I’m not kidding), faculty, students, and staff.
The people in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures are a genuinely nice and laid-back lot. They seem to get along well and have a good time at work, which is important. They were also supportive when I let them know about my pregnancy. Several of the women professors are also raising children there and attested to a family-friendly environment. That too is encouraging.
Boise State University was originally a junior college but over the past few decades has changed into a teaching-research institution, not prestigious but known in the area for a quality education. The students are majority non-traditional, many are married, hold jobs, and consequently, are very motivated to get the most of their education. I perceived this right away in the class I taught. Aside from the Taco Bell debacle (the president of BSU sold the naming rights to their athletic pavilion to Taco Bell and it’s now called the “Taco Bell Pavilion”), BSU looks like it’s going in the right direction.
Boise itself is not dissimilar to Madison: a capitol city and a university town. It has a ballet, an opera, an art museum, a co-op, several movie theaters. Instead of lakes, though, it is surrounded by the foothills of the Sawtooth Mountains. (Now, these looked like mountains to me, but I was assured that they were indeed only foothills.) There are hiking paths and mountain bike trails that lead in and out of the city, and several ski resorts about a half hour up into the mountains.
So, there’s the report. There are three other candidates up for the position, though, and two of them are my friends, both extremely gifted teachers and researchers. It’s stiff competition out there.
Now it’s off to Claremont for another couple days on stage. Looks like great weather there.
….and baby is doing great.
Sage has a campus visit at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, CA the week after her Boise interview. Looks like the west is calling!
Sage will be traveling to Boise, Idaho, at the end of this month for an on-campus interview at Boise State University. She plans to visit the football field to see the legendary blue Astroturf of the Broncos.
MLA was tiring (seven interviews in two days) but all went well. There were no weirdo search committees and Sage was buoyed up by her friends during downtime between meetings. She’ll know about the second round of interviews (the campus visits) by the end of the month. Now she’s watching a lot of TV and taking multiple naps a day to recuperate. Happy New Year.
Sage is off to Philadelphia on Monday for the Modern Language Association conference where she’ll interview with the following schools. We wish her the best of luck!
Hmmm… let’s see here… nothing much happened in 2004…
We soaked up the rays in the Dominican Republic in April, attended the wedding of Sage’s fabulous uncles in Toronto in May, ate our way through France after going to our friend Sophie’s wedding in October, and then Sage and Gerri snorkeled with some Texas Republicans on a cruise to Mexico in November…
And this spring, with the help of some generous and very strong backs (you know who you are), we built a patio in our backyard and it turned out great. It was almost worth it. We’re sure after a few more barbeques and late summer evenings with a good book we just might step onto it without an involuntary back spasm…
So, we both worked hard this year, especially Sage, who successfully defended her dissertation on December 13th! So you can call her “Dr. Sage� from now on. Ben continues as Active Media Director at Planet Propaganda and enjoys his work as much as ever…
We adopted a second dog in May, a red male Shiba Inu named Kai and he’s our darling “Pupser Lupsers.� He gets along great with Kocho (“Koter Poties�) and only chases Kitty sometimes. But with two dogs and a cat, we found the humans of our pack outnumbered. So, we decided to do something about that, and the baby’s due in June!
Lots of love from Ben, Sage, Kocho, Kai, and Kitty