OrangePhilosophy

Syracuse also lost Tamar Gendler from the tenured ranks since 2002. Some of the additions you refer to are reflected, I think, in the specialty rankings. The overall placement is partly a function of improvements elsewhere, of course, such as UC Riverside and USC, which also made significant additions during this period.

I think since the last report we lost 1 senior and 2 junior (Gendler, Tom Holden and Daniel Nolan), and picked up 4 senior and 2 junior (Mark Heller, Ned McClennen, Ken Baynes, John Caputo, Kris McDaniel and me). Brian's right that at least a couple of other schools made major moves recently. But the raw scores should be independent of what's happening elsewhere, and our median score went from 2.7 to 2.8. (Same as Riverside.) Seems like a pretty small bump to me, but at least we're moving in the right direction.

Ishani came to Syracuse since the last report too, so it should be a gain of three junior faculty.

I didn't think Tamar was since the last report, but I guess she was gone before she was officially at Cornell, so she's been away longer than she's been officially not part of our department. That does make the effect less, if you take her loss into account, but it still doesn't seem to me to be worth an increase of only .1. I don't think it minimizes the people lost to realize that gaining 4 senior and losing 1 and gaining 3 junior and losing 2 is a pretty significant gain. It's true that Daniel is borderline junior, but Tamar is borderline senior, and all the senior gains we've had have been pretty big.

For better or worse, junior faculty are largely discounted in the Gourmet Report.

One reason to think this is a good thing is that junior faculty are not ideal PhD advisors. One reason to think this is a bad thing is that good active junior faculty are great for the life of a department and for the education of active graduate students.

One reason to think that, almost inevitably, junior faculty will continue to be largely ignored in reputational surveys is that few manage to gain a strong *general* reputation (that is, outside of their subfield) until at least the time of promotion. And many don't have it even well after then.

Junior faculty and generally less well known senior faculty can and do make a difference in the specialty rankings. The large disconnect between overall departmental rankings and specialty breakdowns is obvious in this year's Report -- if we ranked only specialities and then used specialty rankings to construct the overall list we'd get a non-trivially different top 10 and top 20 and rather large re-orderings too.

I'd like to see something like that done either as another part of the Gourmet Report or as a separate measure.