Listing emeritus or adjunct prof as my faculty fit in the SOP?

[gradcafe26]

I have noticed that some professors that I want to work with are emeritus professors or adjunct professors of PoliSci from other departments like international schools or MPA programs of the same university.

I will contact them directly and make sure that they will be willing to work with new graduate students next year. However, since it is the admission committee who makes the admission decision, is it uncommon, or even unacceptable, to list an emeritus or adjunct prof as ONE of my faculty fits in the SOP? Does it make a difference if the prof is offering courses in PoliSci?

My gut instinct is that it might be a problem in the admission process, but once you get in, you will have much more freedom.

Any thoughts on this? Many thanks!

[alphazeta]

To be blunt, Emeritus means retired. An emeritus professor may teach a course or two and hang around from time to time, but he or she is not an active member of the department (and someone who has reached the emeritus stage might decide to move down to Florida any day). You can't have an emeritus prof as your advisor, which is where faculty fit matters most directly, and many universities won't even let them on your committee. It would be a tremendously boneheaded move to go somewhere hoping to work with an emeritus professor, and ad coms know it. If you put down an emeritus, they will assume you have either done too little research to know that person is no longer active or assume that you just have no idea what you're doing. Either one of those is a very bad thing. Saying you want to work with an adjunct is similarly bad - it's probably more like that an adjunct will be gone in 5 years than that they will still be around. Furthermore (with rare exceptions), most people who are adjuncting are not accomplished scholars who would be in a good position to mentor and train you.

Scholars from other parts of the university are an entirely different animal. There's no problem with wanting to work with someone who teaches in a policy school, generally speaking. At many universities, the distinction between political scientists in the policy school and political scientists in the department of political science/government is purely administrative and has no meaning on the ground. In such cases, those policy faculty routinely interact with PhDs and serve on committees, etc. There are other schools, however, where the distinction is meaningful, so it's something good to feel out. This is where emailing someone can be helpful or where you might want to ask around about whether the political science department plays nice with the policy school.

If you really, desperately want to note an emeritus person in your SOP, it would be best to show you know what that entails explicitly (e.g., note that the deparment has a long history of doing work that interests you, such as that done by Prof. X and that you understand he will be teaching a seminar next year that you would enjoy)

[balderdash]

It would be a tremendously boneheaded move to go somewhere hoping to work with an emeritus professor, and ad coms know it.

I think this certainly holds if you put your primary POI as an emeritus. But I talked to the professors who are writing my recs, and all three (independently) think it's all right to say you want to work with Professors A, B, C, and D, with C being an emeritus. Even if they are 99% inactive, they can weigh in on your research once or twice a year, and probably (due to advanced age and experience) connect you to other people in the field. (I mention an emeritus in 2 of my 8 SOPs, both in such cases.)

But I am by no means sure of this, so I'd love to hear others' (read: Penelope's) opinions.

[Penelope Higgins]

I'm not sure my opinion is worth much on this question since I don't see this situation very often, but here's my two cents, and two related concerns that crop up more often in my experience reading applications.

ON EMERITUS AND ADJUNCT FACULTY

I would not be too worried about listing an emeritus faculty if their research interests match yours and you have the sense that they are still research active, but I would not list them first and I would make sure to identify at least 2-3 other people who might be of interest to you. By contrast, I would NOT list an adjunct. Here's why: emeritus faculty have served for a long time with tenure in the department, which shows that their colleagues (who are judging your application) see some value in their research and have seen them work with grad students in the past. Adjuncts, by contrast, are at a given institution (usually temporarily) purely to teach undergrads (or in some cases methods courses for grad students). They are not considered part of the permanent faculty, are not evaluated on their research accomplishments, and are often completely disengaged from the graduate student experience.

TWO OTHER CONCERNS

Here's another set of issues to watch out for: my department, for example, has a graduate faculty that is a subset of the regular faculty. People not on the graduate faculty are adjuncts/lecturers, and faculty who have been here for a long time and have not published in decades. The latter category, though tenured, are not research-active. Listing them as your proposed advisor would tell me that you just read about their interests on our website rather than actually knowing anything about them.

And finally, you should make sure that you are actually confident that the people you list as potential advisors still work on the area of interest to you. For example, don't apply to Harvard to work with Theda Skocpol on revolutions - she has not touched that stuff in 20 years. Just because someone wrote the best book on a subject at some point doesn't mean they still have any interest in it.

[gradcafe26]

Thanks alphazeta, but I did not intend to list them as my only nor primary POI. Also, I am rethinking about whether I should apply to that school...

Edited October 23, 2011 by gradcafe26

[gradcafe26]

I think this certainly holds if you put your primary POI as an emeritus. But I talked to the professors who are writing my recs, and all three (independently) think it's all right to say you want to work with Professors A, B, C, and D, with C being an emeritus. Even if they are 99% inactive, they can weigh in on your research once or twice a year, and probably (due to advanced age and experience) connect you to other people in the field. (I mention an emeritus in 2 of my 8 SOPs, both in such cases.)

But I am by no means sure of this, so I'd love to hear others' (read: Penelope's) opinions.

balderdash, if you don’t mind, I would appreciate it if you could elaborate a little bit on how to list POIs in your SOP.

As I understand, first of all, as pointed out by Penelope Higgins, you should make sure that you know their recent works, and they match your interest. Secondly, I am not sure about this, but it seems that you cannot just list one or two profs, since you are applying to the department, rather than an individual faculty. Thirdly, put down full professors before associates. Also, say, if I want to do CP with a concentration on Russia, I may want to list the name of the Russian specialist in the department first, followed by a Latin Americanist whose research method could be applied to Russia. But do you actually have to explain these reasons in the SOP, or just leave it as “I want to work with Professors A, B, C, and D” as long as those names are consistent with other parts of your SOP?

Thanks!

Edited October 23, 2011 by gradcafe26

[gradcafe26]

I'm not sure my opinion is worth much on this question since I don't see this situation very often, but here's my two cents, and two related concerns that crop up more often in my experience reading applications.

ON EMERITUS AND ADJUNCT FACULTY

I would not be too worried about listing an emeritus faculty if their research interests match yours and you have the sense that they are still research active, but I would not list them first and I would make sure to identify at least 2-3 other people who might be of interest to you. By contrast, I would NOT list an adjunct. Here's why: emeritus faculty have served for a long time with tenure in the department, which shows that their colleagues (who are judging your application) see some value in their research and have seen them work with grad students in the past. Adjuncts, by contrast, are at a given institution (usually temporarily) purely to teach undergrads (or in some cases methods courses for grad students). They are not considered part of the permanent faculty, are not evaluated on their research accomplishments, and are often completely disengaged from the graduate student experience.

TWO OTHER CONCERNS

Here's another set of issues to watch out for: my department, for example, has a graduate faculty that is a subset of the regular faculty. People not on the graduate faculty are adjuncts/lecturers, and faculty who have been here for a long time and have not published in decades. The latter category, though tenured, are not research-active. Listing them as your proposed advisor would tell me that you just read about their interests on our website rather than actually knowing anything about them.

And finally, you should make sure that you are actually confident that the people you list as potential advisors still work on the area of interest to you. For example, don't apply to Harvard to work with Theda Skocpol on revolutions - she has not touched that stuff in 20 years. Just because someone wrote the best book on a subject at some point doesn't mean they still have any interest in it.

Thanks a lot Penelope Higgins, these are great advices, and my concern is resolved.

[cafejc]

"I'd like to work with A and B because blah blah. Being able to consult Prof. Retired will also be invaluable"

[gradcafe26]

cafejc, that sounds very smart, thanks!