All faculty appointments must be requested and approved by the Committee on Appointments and Promotions (CAP). To facilitate the process, the CAP distribute a memo to all department and program chairs each January. The normal schedule for making requests is March 1 for tenure-track positions and mid-April for all others. The CAP collects all requests and makes staffing decisions in May or June. Authorized positions almost always result in a national search open to all qualified candidates. Searches are launched later in the summer, for new appointments to begin the following July. So from start to finish the hiring process typically takes at least a year and a half. Advance planning is therefore necessary, even prior to making a staffing request, and the schedule allows for thoughtful recruiting and search strategies.
On rare occasions, a department or program requests authorization not to run a national search and instead to hire a new colleague as an Opportunity Appointment (OA). An OA hiring request is initiated by the department or program when it finds–either on our own campus or at another institution–a person of such outstanding quality that the appointment will bring the College distinction in the areas of teaching and research, as well as service that may include a particularly significant contribution to the mentoring and advising of a diverse student body. The proposal must go to the CAP, which will judge the merits of the request, in consultation with the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, and will make a decision whether to authorize the appointment. An OA request is approved if the College sees the hiring of this particular person as being in its strategic interest, and it has come to the view that a national search would jeopardize this hire. Please consult with the Dean of the Faculty about the details of this process.