Interviewing CIS Director Candidates

In the past few days, I have had the opportunity to interview three candidates for our school's new position as the Director of the Carter Innovation Studio. The position itself is a very fluid one: at a minimum their job will involve managing the administrative duties of running a facility such as the CIS, but the goal is that the director will be an active member of the community in bringing science and engineering to the forefront of our school's priorities, and have outside connections to help facilitate such change. A candidate may teach Applied Science or a technical task, they may help out with our robotics team, continue the school's stagnated airplane project, or begin a new Uniquely Athenian program involving the CIS.

Now for the candidates themselves: the candidates' backgrounds and experiences seemed to be very variable, but all of them were impressive candidates for the position. All three have experience with teaching in the maker/STEM fields, but that was about where their commonalities ended. One already has experience running the makerspace of an independent school and their FRC team, as well as having experience working in the industry as an engineer. The other two seemed to be more interested in the intersection of engineering/STEM subjects and other fields, including entrepreneurship and the arts; they were less focused on the technical details of STEM. The demo lessons for these two candidates were thoughtful and well-executed.

For the lessons that each candidate taught, they all seemed to be under the impression that they would be teaching a lesson to students with no prior engineering experience, which was not the case: the students were many of the main leads for the robotics team. Thus the real test was how well would they be able to spin the lesson to make it interesting for this unexpected audience. One of the candidates seemed to be able to both connect with us as well as connect the lesson he taught to overall engineering themes and principles. The second candidate had a fun activity, but neglected to reflect/summarize on what the purpose of the activity was. The third candidate had an activity that did a good job combining a fun activity with ideas of STEM, entrepreneurship, and creativity.

Overall, all of the candidates were impressive, and I am glad that Athenian was able to reach such a large talent pool. I think the school's unique approach to hiring which involves bringing the best people on board rather than finding someone that exactly meets a job description will ultimately pay off in creating a strong community of teachers striving to make change.