Q: How often should I remind my Dean about the letter of recommendation that he said he would write for me? It's been almost a month since he said he would write it. I've been reminding him once a week ever since. On the face-value, he seemed pretty enthusiastic to write one. However...
Well, you'll want to remove that apostrophe in your header; it's unnecessary for plurals.
ReplyDeleteAnd you'll want to ask him directly: has he come to the conclusion that he cannot write a positive letter for you, or would he be able to complete the letter by X date? I always ask colleagues and students for the deadline by which they need a recommendation and put it on my calendar.
Was there an edit? I don't see a plural in the header now.
DeleteAsk him also (in addition to F&T's suggestion) if it would be okay if you gave his name as a reference. It may be that he's willing to write a letter to some future employer who's asking for one, but doesn't want to write one to give directly to you.
No edit. There never was a plural to begin with.
DeleteI corrected "letter's" after F&T's comment.
DeleteEMH, there was indeed a plural: "Letters of recommendation," i.e., more than one of them. The headline read "Letter's of Recommendation."
DeleteSorry to be noodgy, but I myself could not recommend someone for a faculty position who could not distinguish between plurals and possessives, whatever their field.
I am grading, and very grumpy about the lack of 5th grade grammar skills in my students, supposedly the top 12% of the public schools in my state.
That's odd. I don't recall having made such a silly error. Oh well. Perhaps I was still waking up.
DeleteThat's a reminder that we all make mistakes here. If it's a post, pointing out the edit is sufficient, and our fabulous Fab made the correction so you didn't have to!
DeleteThe writing may be on the wall my good hologram. Ignoring emails, phone calls, or people seems to be a popular way for academics to get problems to go away. I'm not saying you are a problem, but maybe the dean said that never intending to follow up on actually writing the letter.
ReplyDeleteOr the dean may be busy doing dean things.
I'd say one more try, especially if you need the letter for a deadline. After that you might want to find a new letter writer.
Many times academics will avoid writing recs for lazy reasons. And then write lazy recs. I guess the question is, how reassuring has the dean been in his answers to your requests? It's only been a month--that's actually not a long time.
ReplyDeleteIf when you ask, he responds kindly, saying "I'm still working on it because I want to make sure I highlight all your attributes! You'll have it within a week!" then there is nothing to fear.
But if he is avoiding you, or not answering emails to remind him, you are pretty much dead in the water. You don't want the rec he would write anyway.
When I don't feel comfortable writing a rec for a student, I say "I don't feel like I'm the one to testify to your strengths." The dean may have a hard time really saying that, because if anyone would be, he is. He may be attempting to avoid a confrontation with you if he outright refuses. He just may not want to recommend you.
Have you waived your right to see the rec? He may not like the idea that you will have access to it, and truthfully if that's the case it won't be worth much anyway to any new institution. I would never consider a letter of recommendation that had been vetted by the applicant.
Letters vetted by applicants are commonplace, as far as I have seen.
DeleteStella, you've hired faculty before? Just curious. Being new to the field, I am wondering if this is something that full-timers often get asked to do.
I know that when I was putting together my application for my program I discussed the applicant-vetting thing with my professors. My inclination was to waive the right to see the letters as it would indicate how seriously I took the process. My professors made a point of telling me that I made a good decision there.
DeleteThen two of them sent me their letters after I was accepted because they really wanted me to see what they had written.
But yes, waive the right to see the recommendation. It reassures the people viewing the recommendations that you had no hand in the final form of the letter.
I've also always waived the right to see my letters. I actually have seen two of them (one from a former department chair, one from a colleague who observed my class), but that's because the writers chose to give me copies (the colleague needed to anyway as part of a department evaluation process, and I asked her after seeing it if she'd turn it into a more general teaching recc., which she was glad to do; the former chair simply gave me a copy without my asking, even though I'd given her a waiver form with "does waive" checked).
DeleteThe logistics are usually handled by maintaining a dossier of letters somewhere. Back in the dark ages one's grad department did that for one (which also allowed a job placement advisor to vet the letters without showing them to the applicant); these days I believe interfolio's dossier service is the most common approach (at least in the humanities; I, too, belong to that side of things). In my experience, soon after getting an initial "yes" to the "will you write me a letter?" question, one turns over to the letter-writer a signed waiver form (they were known as "Buckley forms" in my day, after the Buckley amendment) and, if the letter needs to be sent somewhere to be put in a dossier (or to go directly to a hiring department), a stamped, self-addressed envelope in which to send the letter. I'm sure that's all electronic now, but the principle is probably similar: your recommender needs to know whether you waive your rights, and where the letter should be sent (and "to you" is probably not the right answer).
In my day, the workaround if you didn't trust your recommenders and/or the job placement advisor was to get a trusted friend who already held a hiring-level position in a department in your field to request the dossier (or you requested the dossier to be sent to hir), and (s)he took a look at the letters, and either offered advice based on the contents (without actually revealing the specifics) or simply turned them over to you, depending on what you both felt was ethical. Whether it's ethical to do this once you've signed a waiver is, indeed, a valid question, but it was standard-enough advice among grad students in my day that I can't believe the faculty didn't have some idea that it could happen. At the very least, people tended to feel justified in doing it after several failed years on the market (though more often than not they realized that the real problem was the market, not their letters).
I've also had a hiring committee tell me that one of my letters spoke only of my scholarly potential, limiting my chances for a teaching-oriented job; I pulled that letter (which was well-meant, and written by someone who'd left my department before I started teaching) from the dossier.
I'd suggest taking a look at www.interfolio.com, and also checking ads in your discipline to see if it's mentioned as an option. As far as I know, it serves all disciplines, and is an increasingly common solution -- which would probably make the Dean comfortable dealing with it. But yes, you need to make sure the Dean would write you a genuinely strong letter before you press for one. A colleague or chair who knows the full range of your work (as opposed to mostly your relationships with problem students) might be a better choice. In my experience, chairs and colleagues (and advisors), not Deans, write letters, but that may vary by school.
Letters vetted by applicants are commonplace, as far as I have seen.
ReplyDeleteNot in my neck of the woods, in the humanities. All recs worth anything are anonymous, and the recipient waives their right to see them. Otherwise, the recommendee could just toss out the bad ones, and the recommender would not feel free to be totally honest. I seriously can't believe things are any different in your discipline---you're in math? Maybe other mathemetician can weigh in. But from grad school through every hire I've ever been a part of, the recs are absolutely not seen by the person applying. When you applied to grad school, didn't you have to submit anonymous recs?
Stella, you've hired faculty before? Just curious. Being new to the field, I am wondering if this is something that full-timers often get asked to do.
I've been on hiring committees since 1990. It's definitely a required part of the job.
I remember a similar conversation we had on here about someone on a search committee being angry that people hadn't uploaded copies of letters, as per their request. And the majority of folks on here indicated that their recent experience on search committees showed a distrust of people with vetted letters (sent straight to the bottom of the pile, if I recall). Do you recall who initiated that thread?
DeleteHaving served on a search committee or two (Yes, EMH, it's part of a faculty load), we put more weight on letters that were not vetted (for obvious reasons), but that's not to say it would hurt to have a letter in hand (especially for part time gigs).
That said, I wonder if the dean thought you meant "Will you write me a letter, should I ever need one?" or if he thought you meant, "Will you write a general letter I can take with me and copy to give to prospective employers." If he isn't clear on that, you might want to clarify for him a deadline and specifics of what KIND of letter. I'm assuming you made that clear to him, but sometimes people read what they want to read. If the dean was clear on that and has just blown you off, then perhaps it's his way of hoping you'll go away.
Here's a link to the post from the person (Nella from New England, who I don't think has ever been heard from again, at least under that name) whose department wanted job seekers to upload their own letters, in a single PDF (searching on that remembered detail turned it up): http://collegemisery.blogspot.com/2011/10/nella-in-new-england-wants-job-seekers.html . There's lots on that thread about expectations for how letters should be handled, in various disciplines.
DeleteSearching related topics such as "job misery" and "letters of rec" also turns up plenty on the subject, from various perspectives (including those of the letter-seeker, letter-writer, and letter-reader).
Thanks, CC. I wonder if we scared Nella off (with our conspiracy to restrict academic freedom).
DeleteI have students write a recommendation letter for me to sign, and if I agree with it, I sign it.
ReplyDelete