Lafayette Tenure-Track Physics Faculty Search Frequently Asked Questions
Link to job ad on the Provost’s website.
We are a liberal arts college, all undergraduate, with nearly all students living on campus. There are no graduate students. We are competitive (admission rate is less than 35%) and attract good students. Unusually among liberal arts schools, we have an engineering program; about 25% of the students are engineers. See Lafayette at a glance for more details.
The teaching load is officially 2+3, meaning 2 courses one semester and 3 the other semester each year. Lab sections count as 0.5 course. It is common in Physics to teach 2.5+2.5. A faculty member in their first year has a reduced load of 2+2 and is excused from academic advising responsibilities.
Lafayette provides funding for research students through the EXCEL Scholar and Bergh Fellow programs. There is funding for faculty members to attend up to three conferences per year. There is a research leave available in the fourth year of the tenure track (one semester off of teaching and service at full salary, or one year at half salary) and sabbaticals after tenure. For more info: Research Support, Faculty Travel Support
The review process, as well as expectations for faculty teaching, scholarship, and service, are detailed in Lafayette’s Faculty Handbook. The link to the current faculty handbook is here.
The faculty handbook can also be found by linking through the Provost’s website.
Here are the scholarship guidelines for the Physics Department.
We are unusual in that our first-semester introductory course for physics majors (Physics 130) covers special relativity and contemporary topics in physics. This is followed by the usual mechanics and electromagnetism courses in later semesters. Our goal in the first-semester course is to show the students interesting, modern, and (hopefully) fun physics while also picking topics in which likely none of the students have prior experience (hence it is a “level playing field”).
Lafayette College offers a competitive benefit program for employees, described in detail at the HR benefits page.