Hiring cycle will bring 76 tenured, tenure-eligible faculty to campus

Iowa State hired 76 tenured or tenure-eligible faculty in the 12 months leading up to this semester, bringing its five-year total to 444 hires. Ten of this year's hires have start dates during the next 12 months. Faculty retirements (160) and resignations (138) during those years resets the net growth to about one-third of the total, or 146 faculty members.

Those five years include two of unprecedented hiring: 105 tenured or tenure-track faculty leading up to fall semester 2014 and 123 faculty preceding fall 2015. Iowa State's enrollment leapt by 1,491 students (4.5 percent) and 1,269 students (3.7 percent), respectively, those two falls.

Compared to 123, 76 might seem a bit off the mark. But last year's leaner budget meant there were fewer positions to fill. And the escalated hiring in the two years previous is not a sustainable pattern, said associate provost Dawn Bratsch-Prince.

"One hundred twenty-three faculty hires in one year is really exceptional. Those were huge efforts, an all-hands-on-deck scenario," she said. "It's a labor-intensive, very important task and [faculty on the search committees] take it seriously."

Bratsch-Prince said "between 60 and 80 faculty hires a year is probably a good place for us to be."

The provost's office approves more searches than that, knowing that each year some searches will not result in a faculty hire -- which is not necessarily a bad thing, she noted.

"A failed search is a search in which you hire the wrong person," she said. "You want to hire the right person for the position, department and the institution. If you don't find the right candidate for the position, then do it again next year.

"Our deans have said 'we won't penalize you for having high standards,'" Bratsch-Prince added.

Clearing 2,000

The October payroll (when the university's annual employee count is taken) should reflect a faculty group that exceeds 2,000 for the first time. Still, eight straight years of record enrollments have kept Iowa State's student-faculty ratio at nearly 19:1. President Steven Leath told the state Board of Regents earlier this month that it will require flat enrollment and 300 additional faculty members to reach his student-faculty ratio goal of 16:1.

Strategic hiring

Colleges have additional priorities, but Bratsch-Prince said university hiring currently is focused on five high-impact areas:

• Big data
• Translational health
• Food security
• Areas that are important to the state economy, for example, agriculture and biotechnology
• Disciplines with high student enrollment

"A strength of Iowa State that comes out again and again is that we're very collaborative and interdisciplinary," Bratsch-Prince said. "That's our institutional culture; that's a real value we hold."

By college: Departments with two or more faculty hires

*Departments with 1 faculty hire