Incoming faculty for 2025-2026 academic year
Photo courtesy of Geneseo.edu
For the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, SUNY Geneseo is hiring a wide range of fields including math, biology, sociology, sustainability, and geography.
As the academic year ends, preparations must begin for next year. From processing incoming students to scheduling available courses, SUNY Geneseo must adhere to a tight schedule to complete everything in a timely manner with minimal delays. Alongside student body management, hiring new faculty is imperative. For the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, this involves hiring across a wide range of fields, including math, biology, sociology, sustainability, and geography.
The interview process for new faculty can take months-worth of time, so it begins as early as possible during each new semester. Colleges have a more complex system, unlike a typical company, which relies on the Human Resources (HR) department and a hiring manager to post job openings and find candidates.
The feedback from current faculty and staff is vital when deciding on an applicant. This comes in the form of a search committee, which at Geneseo is composed of three to five faculty or staff members, with one having to be from a different department than that which is hiring if they are looking to fill an Assistant Professor position or higher.
Once the committee is formed, the HR department creates the job posting. The committee then reviews the hiring criteria, such as deciding on approved questions, evaluating each applicant, and making any possible recommendations. Only then does the interviewing process begin. Many of the applicants also work/interact directly with students as part of the hiring process, and here, student feedback is collected and considered when the ultimate decision to hire or not is made.
After the interview, evaluations must be made to decide whether the applicant is extended an offer. Once this process is complete, the position is filled for the upcoming semester.
While this process may seem tedious, it is crucial for the university's success in delivering high-quality education. This is especially true for non-tenure track positions, of which the college is hiring a significant number. Due to the college's structure, the application process may appear strenuous for candidates.
Due to how many positions need to be filled, it can mean that each candidate is not given the needed support or thorough background check to guarantee the applicant's ability to perform the job successfully. Although this may not be the case at Geneseo specifically, the overall hiring process tends to favor a tenure-track faculty, often leaving professors with a possible lack of acknowledgment or even a lack of compensation for the amount of work they put in to help build their college’s faculty.
The time and effort put into hiring faculty is important, but so is the treatment of the faculty doing the sometimes thankless jobs they’re given. The work they will have to do will only increase. This is especially because the reports of enrollment increasing for SUNY schools, so much so that some of the college’s deficit has been cut. This will mean more faculty will need to be hired for easier access to the classrooms and a better, more balanced education for all students.
For the 2025-2026 school year, the college is expected to fill two openings in the mathematics, biology, and sociology departments, along with additional openings in the geography and sustainability departments.