Suggestions for college list (LACs)?

[merc81]

Regarding Russian Studies and LACs, this interview with a Kenyon alumnus may be of interest to you: Meet the New Faculty: Jason Cieply, Russian Studies - News - Hamilton College.

[Publisher]

Not a convincing interview as the professor seemed to switch jobs every year for several years in a row (Stanford, Wellesley, Williams, Hamilton).

He earned both his MA & PhD at Stanford.

[merc81]

Changing institutions during the nascent stages of an academic career would be typical, of course, for someone with a newly granted PhD in search of a tenure-track position. The interviewee pretty much states this as such:

Following Stanford, I went to Wellesley for a year and then Williams for a year, and I felt like I had returned to my element. When I saw the ad for nearby Hamilton College, I thought maybe this, being a long-term, tenure-track job, this could be it.

Note that his experience at Stanford was not as he’d wished for it to be:

As a grad student I taught at a big research institution, Stanford, and there are very smart students there as well, but they weren’t the ideal I had in mind, which was the engaged, enthusiastic liberal arts student who’s in it for the ideas, for the love of knowledge …

[Motherprof]

I’m an academic in this field, and I can confirm that this is indeed the case, unfortunately (taking a few temporary positions before hopefully landing a tenure-track one). This is true of most humanities fields, of course, not just Russian. You’re absolutely right.