Have you published 25 books? Been an editor at Forbes ASAP? Demonstrated expertise in both microprocessing and water conservation? Better yet, is your name Michael S. Malone? Good news: You’re eligible to apply to a quarterly adjunct-lecturer position in Santa Clara University’s department of English.
If you think this sounds a little off, you’re not alone. The academic Twittersphere was buzzing today after an oddly-specific job advertisement began making the rounds online. (It has now been deleted from the university’s Web site, but it lives on at HigherEdJobs.com.)
The listing details an adjunct gig that involves teaching between one and four courses, “spread over one to three quarters,” at a rate of $6,000 per course. “The primary responsibility,” it goes on to say, “will be to teach nonfiction writing to undergraduates and to help arrange internships for students in a variety of media.”
Simple enough, but Santa Clara’s looking for a real renaissance candidate. A successful applicant, the advertisement reads, will have “at least 25 books on topics ranging from the history of Silicon Valley to the biography of microprocessing to interviews with entrepreneurs to the history of human and mechanical memory.” Those books “will have been published by presses such as Harper/Collins, Doubleday, Random House, St. Martin’s, and SUNY Press.”
There’s an e-book requirement too: A strong candidate “will have e-books on topics such as home life in the U.S., home life in the UK, and water conservation.” Said adjunct also “will have hosted television and radio productions for PBS, cable television, and ABC” and “worked in electronic media, such as being editor of Forbes ASAP or a weekly columnist for ABC.com.”
Oh, and while we’re at it, the likely winner “will have founded at least two start-ups” and “will have professional connections to Oxford University in the UK.”
Naturally, folks who read the ad were moved to comment:
Tom Brokaw applied for the Santa Clara adjunct job, but didn’t make the cut because he hadn’t published a book with SUNY Press. #SCUrumors
— Noel Jackson (@noeljackson) June 10, 2014
Rebecca Schuman, writer and Vitae columnist, created a contest to see who could write the most creative cover letter for the job.
So here’s the backstory: It’s not a joke. The listing is legitimate, but the university, as you might have guessed, had an internal candidate in mind when the advertisement was written. Michael S. Malone, the ideal match, has been an adjunct lecturer at Santa Clara for three years, and his contract was up for renewal. Here’s his Wikipedia page;apparently he’s a big Decemberists fan.
In previous years, Malone says, the department chair would simply ask him if he wanted to continue teaching into the next term. He’d say yes, and the department would renew his contract. This time, however, he was told the university had to post the job.
According to a statement released Tuesday by the university, the institution recently “migrated to a new online job posting and applicant tracking system so that jobs can be posted on the system, including this one with an internal candidate.”
“SCU is an equal-opportunity employer and every application is reviewed,” the statement continues. “The goal of this particular ad was to make it as clear as possible to all applicants that the bar for the particular position is very high. We apologize if this attempt at clarity caused anguish for any of our applicants or potential applicants.”
About three weeks ago, Malone says, the department sent him a draft of the job advertisement. He noticed that someone had essentially copied and pasted his staff bio into the “Basic Qualifications” section, but he didn’t think much of it.
“I’ve never really looked at an academic job listing, so I didn’t know it was that off,” he says. “Apparently, it was fairly far.”
Of course, he never expected that the job advertisement would gain this much attention. But it’s been “kind of fun to watch,” he admits. “I’ve been a columnist for a lot of years, for ABC, The New York Times, and it’s interesting to see the impact of Twitter.”
It’s also been enlightening to see the various opinions on the advertisement, he says.
“On the one hand, it’s so specific that anyone looking at it thinks it’s fake, or that they’ve already got the guy,” Malone says. “From the English department’s perspective, though, here’s a guy who created this class, and it will die with him. If we make it a general ad, then someone will have to manage the applications and then disappoint.”
There’s no word on how many applications Santa Clara’s received. But Malone’s already got this thing in the bag, right? Well, I asked him if he’d already signed the contract, and he told me he didn’t think so.
“So, I guess, if you’ve had 25 books or a PBS series, come on in.”
