Our permanent faculty and staff typically includes eight faculty, three support staff, and shares support from an administrative assistant and a chemical hygiene officer/stockroom manager. Our current faculty have expertise in biochemistry/microbiology, biophysical, analytical, environmental, inorganic, materials, organic, and physical/nanochemistry. Staff support and teach labs and maintain the departmental instrumentation. We hire with resources in place to help our new colleagues succeed in their teaching and research, and we are collaborative and mutually supportive of each other. Our entire department is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion for all students, faculty, and staff, and we expect this to be a priority for our new colleagues as well. Several of our faculty have been involved with the Bates HHMI inclusive excellence grant and have taught our STEM Scholars program.

The teaching load at Bates is five courses spread over two semesters and a 3.5 week short term in May. Lectures count for 1 credit and labs count for 0.5 credits (for example, teaching a lecture with one lab section counts as 1.5 courses.) All faculty in chemistry and biochemistry contribute to either the general chemistry courses or the organic chemistry courses. Tenure track faculty have a one course reduction in their first year and an option for pre-tenure leave (one semester at full pay or two semesters at half pay.)  Many teaching resources are available on campus, including a new Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning, Student Academic Support Center (which combines the former Academic Resource Commons and Math and Statistics Workshop), Student Center for Belonging and Community, faculty mentoring through the Dean of Faculty’s office, and Institutional Research among others.

Three Assistants in Instruction (AIs) contribute to preparation and teaching lab courses in General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry and upper level chemistry courses.

Novel research with undergraduates is valued at Bates and is an important component of tenure and promotion. In addition to lab or field-based research, we value community-based projects and education related scholarship (though these are not required). All department members are research active and involve undergraduate students in their research program. Most biochemistry and chemistry majors graduate with research experience through our required senior thesis, and many gain additional experience through our robust summer research program. Each faculty member has a dedicated research lab housed in the brand new Bonney Science Center, which includes a new 400 MHz NMR, ICP-MS, GC-MS, SEM, XRD, fluorescence spectrometer, FT-IR, Leica SP8 confocal microscope, vivarium, suite of HPLCs and GCs, and cell culture facilities among other instrumentation. Additionally, faculty members have access to facilities in nearby Carnegie Science Hall, including the environmental geochemistry lab. New tenure track faculty will receive competitive start-up funds. Internal funds are available for summer research students, and a college-wide grants office assists with external funding.

All faculty are expected to participate in the governance of their assigned academic department or program(s) as well as the college through monthly faculty meetings. In addition, all faculty contribute to the governance of the college through assigned or elected committees. Tenure track faculty are exempted from committee assignments in their first year.

The criteria for tenure are described in Article II of the Faculty Handbook. Faculty are evaluated on the basis of teaching, professional achievement, and governance and engagement. Since excellence in scholarship is highly variable across disciplines, specific criteria such as number of papers or grants is not provided. While peer reviewed work is required for tenure, the College considers significant intellectual endeavors connected to our disciplines such as non-peer reviewed community-engaged research, digital and public-facing contributions, and involvement with profession associations as part of evaluation when assessed in appropriate ways. Candidates should consult with their department chair and evaluation committee.