Want a job? Come to Pitt HPS

As some of you know, I am in the last stages (throes?) of my PhD program at the University of Pittsburgh, in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) department. For those who are not familiar with it, the department is relatively small: there are usually about 8-9 faculty whose primary appointment is in HPS, and about 30 or so graduate students.

In an average year, 1 to 3 people from my department go on the job market, and the department has had a very good placement record since I've been here: everyone who graduated from the program has gotten a tenure-track job, either straight out of grad school or after a 1-2 year post-doc. But this year, we had ten people go on the market, eight of them (myself included) for the first time. There was a lot of hand-wringing and worry, by students and faculty alike, about having so many HPS people on the market at one time. The demand for folks like us, who prove theorems in the foundations of quantum gravity or trace out the technical development of Galileo's kinematic theory, is just not as high as for people who work in ethics or epistemology.

I am now happy to report that all ten people have found good positions: 8 people are beginning tenure-track jobs, and the other two are taking enviable post-doc positions (including filling fellow-blogger Gillian Russell's old spot as Killiam fellow). I won't give the list of where everyone is headed, since I haven't asked their permission to broadcast that information to the three people who read this blog. But I grant myself permission to announce that I will be starting next fall as an assistant professor at UNLV (the University of Nevada-Las Vegas). It's a great position for me, in a department full of smart, sensible, and funny people. I'll probably blog in more detail soon about why I'm so excited about it -- but for starters, it was 70 degrees when I visited in January!

UPDATE: The Killam Fellow mentioned above will have a tenure-track position, though it is not yet determined where he will be yet. So 9 of 10 will start tenure-track jobs.