I confronted similar decisions during my job search year. Ultimately I was confronted by choosing between regional universities with a 3-3 or higher load but with contract systems instead of tenure; a TT SLAC position with a 4-3 load, a visiting elite SLAC position with a ridiculously low load + research support, or a Post-Doc with two very prominent researchers in my subfield. After offers had come in, I went with the permanent TT SLAC position and mostly have no regrets.
The main drawback with my position is that the 4-3 load basically closed down my ability to do much with research during my first year. Course preps and adjusting to the institution simply took a tremendous amount of time and energy. Fortunately, I had a bunch of data from grad school to keep me producing materials for conferences and some work towards publication. I dare say that you'll find a 3-3 load to be just as taxing, especially if you have more than 2 new course preps. In my case, a main motivating factor was that a Post-Doc guarantees nothing and too many Post-Docs can start to push one out of much hope for an academic position. I've seen colleagues who have a chain of post-docs at even elite institutions not land an R1 position after multiple searches. Success in the SLAC market is jeopardized in such a case because most SLAC search committees will want to see evidence of recent, effective teaching (i.e., last 1 to 2 years tops).
With your TT SLAC offer, you need to decide when "potentially low" is too low. If your SLAC provides enough annual funding to offset most of your travel expenses to one or two major conferences per year, can offer support with the essentials (e.g., computing, SPSS or a similar statistical engine), has a subject pool, and may fund some one-time research/faculty development start-up as part of your contract, that's not at all too bad. If there's an honors program or independent studies program where students work with faculty on research, all the better - esp. if working with those students gives you a little bonus pay. Even with a bare bones lab, you can do a lot these days. MTurk can easily expand a subject pool. Then, there's ever more free software that can help with unusual data analyses or even stimulus design.
Asstprof makes a great non-obvious point, too. Find out if the institution has an IRB. If it doesn't, this is a clear sign that research is not part of the institutional culture. Even if you have a way to do research at such a place, your colleagues won't likely be as enthused with research. In such an institution it's easy to feel isolated and bitter.
One final thought - in my opinion, a Post-Doc is only good if it 1) will teach you new skills that are highly sought out - and - 2) it's with a known researcher.
Hope there's something useful here!
anon (guest) 25 Mar 2015 17:28
