the interview

Time to play catch up.

Yes, I did get the interview for the faculty position in South Carolina, officially the Endowed Chair in Marine Genomics, through the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. This took place last week (I doubled this up with another east coast meeting I presented at), and involved meeting faculty and students at the NOAA lab the first day (where the incumbent will be located), followed by a day of meetings and my seminar at MUSC on the second. I thought it went well, and I don't think I could have delivered my seminar any better.

The position would be both a tremendous opportunity and tremendous challenge. It not only involves carrying out state of the art research in the field and being successful with grant proposals, it also includes building a large program, establishing collaborations, and working with an existing genomics consortium that consists of researchers from all of the major SC universities and colleges.

My next step was to let them know whether I want to remain in the running, and I did that yesterday. Their next step includes whether to keep me in consideration after my visit and I was told their committee should meet within the next week or two to decide this. They also have one more candidate to interview, but that won't happen until May. They need to fill the position by the end of the year so I'm hoping things move a little faster once the last candidate is interviewed.

If I do make the short-short list, then there would be another visit and meetings with the provost/vice provost and relevant departmental Chairs. Part of this will be the start of negotiations for salary and startup package, and part will be to pick a MUSC home department. I'm not interested in any kind of partial appointment either, e.g., 9 months with 3 months coming off of grants. It would have to be a 12 month appointment to get me to move (or a really really good 9 month one commensurate in salary to what I have now). The startup package is important to, since it was also signaled to me that this could include funding for research faculty, post docs, and student funding, lab remodeling (new and older lab space is available), and even equipment. It was suggested that one consideration was to determine whether high throughput DNA sequencing capability should be part of the laboratory. Thinking about all of the possibilities is exciting. It would be so easy to start planning right now, but I need to be careful not to get ahead of myself (get my hopes up) and neglect my responsibilities in my current position.

And of course, if I do get to the next step, my wife and I have to decide whether or not to really take the plunge and move away from the state that both of us have lived in all our lives, leaving family and more than likely the kids behind. We've talked about it as do-able, but I don't think we can truly know until there's a real offer. And like I said, the offer has to be a good and secure one to entice me to leave the well paying and very stable position that I have now.