Candidate Short List/Final Candidate Selection

Pre-Approval

Before departments can invite a short list of candidates to campus, the department chair must secure prior approval from the Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs. In the request for approval, the department chair should explain the potential impact of the candidates to the department (e.g., relevance of the candidate's research). The very brief report should summarize the applicant pool, the shortlisted set of candidates, and selection of finalists for interview.

Usually, around three to four candidates per search are scheduled for a formal interview.

Budget

Standard practice is for formal interviews to include one visit of 1 or 1.5 days, coverage of economy travel and lodging expenses of up to two nights’ stay, and coverage of up to 5 persons (i.e., candidate and 4 faculty members) for lunch and dinner with a maximum cost of $100 per person per meal. If the need to deviate from standard practice arises, a request should be submitted to the Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs or Vice Dean for Administration for approval prior to the visit, in accordance with current Viterbi practices and policies.

Scheduling Campus Interviews

The annual deadline for requests is January 15.

All T/TT candidates should meet with the Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs for a 20-minute timeslot, unless I’m unavailable for some reason. Usually no more than around three candidates (per search) meet with the Dean unless otherwise approved.  If the Dean is away on travel or unavailable, the Executive Vice Dean might be able to meet with the candidate.  All School of Advanced Computing (SAC) candidates should also be scheduled to meet with the Director of the School of Advanced Computing as well. If a candidate has experimental/lab space needs, the Vice Dean for Administration should be scheduled for a 15-minute timeslot; it would be helpful to inform candidates ahead of time about this meeting so that they will feel prepared for this brief discussion.

In other words, for department administrators coordinating the interview schedules:

• For Vice Dean for Administration - Kim Bregenzer:
  If the candidate being considered is an experimentalist, please contact Marjorie Brownbill (brownbil@usc.edu) to set up a 15-minute meeting between Kim Bregenzer and the candidate so that concerns about space can be addressed. If you’re unsure whether the candidate is an experimentalist, please confirm with your department chair or faculty hiring committee chair.
• For Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs - Timothy Pinkston:
  Timothy meets with all tenure and tenure-track candidates. Please contact Ana Guerrero (anar3027@usc.edu) to set up a 30-minute meeting. If the meeting length needs to be adjusted, she will let you know separately, if she hasn’t already done so. Prior to the meeting, she will need the CV, talk abstract (when available), and complete itinerary (when available).
• For Executive Vice Dean and/or Director of the School of Advanced Computing - Gaurav Sukhatme:
  Gaurav can meet with candidates if the dean is unavailable. All School of Advanced Computing (SAC) candidates should schedule to meet with Gaurav.  Please contact Raymond Duran (duranr@usc.edu) to schedule the meeting and provide her with the materials he needs for the interviews.
• For Yannis Yortsos:
  Yannis meets with as many T/TT candidates as his schedule allows. Please contact Marjorie Brownbill (brownbil@usc.edu) to schedule the meeting and provide her with the materials he needs for the interviews.

Department chairs are encouraged to ask candidates prior to their visit if there are specific faculty members they would like to meet or facilities they would want to see, and it is best to provide the candidate his/her meeting itinerary at least a couple of days prior to the visit so that the candidate has adequate time to prepare for the interview. It is important to include in the interview itinerary faculty from various departments around the School and university whose research areas are related to the candidate’s. Interdepartmental liaisons, mentioned next, can be helpful here.

As encouraged in recent years, if a faculty search is relevant to another department, even partially, there should be coordination on the progress of the search and prospective visits of potential candidates between departments. This can be accomplished, for example, by chairs agreeing on the assignment of an interdepartmental liaison to the relevant search committee, as described in the email below. This would also help with recognizing and handling candidates who apply to multiple searches across departments.