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. The interview pool is expected to be a diverse set of outstanding candidates. In the department chair's memo, please address actions taken for diversifying the interview pool.

The Provost’s Office offers its Provost’s Assistant Professor Fellowship program which provides one year at USC for selected junior faculty hires to pursue scholarship before their tenure probationary period begins. Candidates who can further diversify Viterbi's faculty are especially targeted. Department chairs are encouraged to put forward any eligible candidate(s) recommended by their respective departments so that the nomination package can be prepared and submitted to the Provost’s Office for consideration by early April timeframe.

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.

Detailed information about the Faculty Recruitment Expense Guidelines are available here. (Last updated January 2020)

Scheduling Campus Interviews

WiSE provides support to facilitate diversity in faculty searches. The annual deadline for requests is January 15. WiSE representation is highly recommended when intervewing potential WiSE faculty.

Usually no more than three to four 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. The Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs should also meet with all T/TT candidates unless he is unavailable. 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 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 Linda Rock 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 Timothy Pinkston:
  Timothy meets with all tenure and tenure-track candidates. Please contact Raymond Duran (duran@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 Yannis Yortsos:
  Yannis meets with as many T/TT candidates as his schedule allows. Please contact Christina Plateado  (cloredo@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.