General

• What about our position is particularly attractive to you?
• What could you contribute to our program?
• What is your impression of our institutional mission and goal (value) statement? How are these statements related to your goals?
• If you were a member of this search committee, what is one question you would share with potential candidates?
• How would you advise a student if s/he were questioning whether or not to major in your discipline?
• With whom might you be interested in collaborating?
• What resources would you need to begin?
• What is the most useful criticism you have received?
• What professional development activities would you be interested in participating?
• How would you deal with diversity in race or ethnicity, etc?
• How do you plan to stay current in your field?
• Where do you see yourself professionally in about 5 years?
• What kind of a problem-solver are you (a brainstormer, an idea person, or a detail person)?
• What are the greatest strengths you think you bring to this job?
• Tell us about a project in which you've been involved that was successful and one that was not. Why do you think these were the outcomes?
• There is a strong move to infuse interdisciplinary work into the curriculum. With what other disciplines could you work (teach/conduct research)? Have you done such work in the past?
• We have instituted a community service requirement for all undergraduates – how would you see yourself interface with such a program.
• Our institution is dedicated to providing a liberal arts, spiritually-based, holistic education. How would you describe your place in that vision?
• What questions do you have for us?

Teaching-Related

• Talk to us about your philosophy of teaching.
• We have a large teaching load here – 12 hours per term; how do you manage this and still publish and conduct your research?
• What are your teaching strengths?
• Which courses would you prefer to teach? Which would you prefer not to teach?
• Are there other courses that you think we should add as either electives or required courses? Please describe.
• Share an example of how you could encourage a student to work harder in your class?
• What courses could you teach in our program?
• How would you plan a course in? What texts would you use? What topics would you cover? How would you evaluate student learning in the course?
• Describe your familiarity and experience with different teaching methods such as collaborative learning, learning styles adaptation, and classroom assessment.
• Describe your strengths as a teacher. How would you improve your teaching ability?
• If you have a student who is doing poorly in your class, but has not missed classes and appears to be a good student, what would you do?
• How do you bring diversity into your course planning? Into your day-to-day teaching?

Research-Related

• Describe your current research. Will you be continuing in this research track? What are your future research plans?
• How would you involve graduate or undergraduate students in your research?
• How can you involve graduates of undergraduates in your research?
• How does your research relate to your teaching?
• What are your research strengths? (e.g. quantitative, qualitative?) Why?
• Your current research requires more technological support than this institution is able to provide. How would you deal with this?
• We see that you have given a lot of conference papers and presentations; we have limited professional development funds. How do you feel about that as a limiting factor? (Will you continue to go and pay your own way or sop doing research? Resent the limitations?)
• What does your dissertation contribute to the field?
• How do your community service and research intersect?
• Where do you plan to be in your teaching and research in five years?

Additional Interview Questions for a Community College Position

• What experience have you had teaching at the community college level? How, if at all, do you think teaching at a community college differs from teaching at a four- year college or university?
• What is your perception of the responsibilities of a full-time faculty member in a community college? …to the department? …to the division? … to the college as a whole?
• What experience have you had teaching diverse students? (well-prepared, under-prepared, full-time, part-time, students with full-time jobs and/or family care responsibilities, students representing different ethnic groups and races, religions, ages, and genders?) What teaching methods have proved effective with such students?
• How well-prepared are you to teach the following five basic level courses: (insert appropriate course titles from your field)?
• Describe your goals and plans for professional development as a community college instructor.

Questions a Candidate Might Ask

• What are the students at this institution like? Can you tell me about the various student populations on your campus?
• Do opportunities for conducting research with students exist?
• What are the promotion and tenure requirements?
• What do you hope the person who is hired will do?
• What is the role of the university and your department in the community?
• What are the current teaching needs in the department?
• What is the service component of the position like?
• Is there a sense of community within the department?
• How many adjuncts/graduate students are in the program?
• Where are most of the students from?
• Are there any research groups among the faculty? Do these groups include graduate students?
• What is the relation of the university/college to other schools in the region?
• What role does the department play in other university programs?

Potential Questions to the Chair:

• How do you define "scholarly activity?"
• Who in the department has received funding? From which agency?