Organize a regular recruitment process of a larger high quality teaching staff

Recruitment of new Graduate and Undergraduate Teaching Assistants and PhD holders, including foreigners, for the Algebra and Analysis Section of the IST Mathematics Department, with the aim of ensuring the replacement of those who left following the increased service level requirements and the curricular reform being carried out, and to expand the teaching staff size to allow freeing some of them to pursue full-time doctoral studies. This process involved a gigantic departmental demographic change, unusual in university departments.

The decade 1983-93 was a period of radical change driving the Section from only teaching service to teaching and research:

• the Section doubled from 45 persons, with only 1 Full Professor (Jaime Campos Ferreira) and 1 PhD (Luis Magalhães), to 90, with 3 Full Professors (Jaime Campos Ferreira, António Ferreira dos Santos and Luis Magalhães) and 24 other PhD holders, including 6 foreigners (from Germany, Brazil, USA, Japan, United Kingdom, Russia);
• in 1993 only 15 of the 45 initial members remained in the Section;
• along the decade the Section had contracts with 168 persons;
• 123 persons were hired and 78 persons exited in the decade, the exits were on the individual initiative of those who left, in response to higher quality of service requirements and accountability, except in a single case where, due to non-compliance with service requirements, one Assistant was led to ask for resignation.

During the period were opened opportunities and provided incentives for Teaching Assistants to study for PhDs abroad at top universities.
This led the Section to count in 2012 with 77 members (all PhDs, and only 8 of the initial members!) of which 7 were foreigners (from Brazil, Spain, USA, Finland, Italy, Poland, UK)-

In retrospect, the scale of this movement in such a short period seems unbelievable!

The figure below shows the evolution of the different types of the Algebra and Analysis Section staff in 1983-2012.
4 phases can be identified in the figure:
(1) 1983-93, 1 decade of massive replacement, qualification and expansion.
(2) 1993-2003, 1 decade of qualification with part of the staff hired in 1989-1999 obtaining PhDs and the other part replaced, and a moderate regular increase of the total Section staff.
(3) 2004-06, 3 years of beginning of small number of PhD Teaching Fellows (PostDocs with partial time teaching service) and stable total staff size.
(4) 2007-12, 6 years of beginning of a small number of PhDs with Research Contracts, the few Lecturers remaining form 1983 leaving the Section and stable total staff size.
By 1993, after only 1 decade, almost all of the Teaching Assistants of 1983 had left, with a few who obtained PhDs remaining in the Section accounting for about 10% of the staff, and the Lecturers had reduced to 1/3 of those existing in 1983 with the others having left, while new younger and more promising Teaching Assistants were hired replacing those who left and increasing the total Section teaching staff by an additional of 3/4 over the staff size in 1983, and the number of new Teaching Assistants hired after 1983 who obtained PhDs plus new members hired already with PhDs inceased from 0 to be more than the double of the initial Teaching Assistants who had obtained PhDs and remained in the Section; the number pf PhDs in the Section had increased from 1 to 27, accounting in 1993 for 1/3 of the total Section staff.
In the decade 1993-2003 continued to increase the number of PhDs, mostly by part of the Teaching Assistants hired in 1989-99 obtaining PhDs and the others repalced, and the total Section staff increasing slightly, with half of the staff now holding PhDs.
In 2006 the few Lecturers remaining from 1983 had left the Section.
In 2003 the total Section staff stabilized after 2 decades of fast expansion, having doubled when compared to 1983 and the Section began having a small number of Teaching Fellows as a consequence of the PostDoc Program designed in 1997 by Luis Magalhães for the CAMGSD - Center for Mathematical Analysis, Geometry and Dynamical Systems and initiated in 1998. In 2007 the the total Section staff remained stable and the Section began having a few PhDs with Research Contracts hired through a new competitive program that FCT - Science and Techology Foundation opened then doing partial teaching service; the sum of PostDoc Fellows with PhDs with Research Contracts doing partial teaching service was kept at about 10% of the total Section staff.

Evolution of the Number of the Algebra and Analysys Section Faculty of the IST Mathematics Department by main typees of members
associated with the fast transition from a teaching service department for Engineering degrees to a teaching and research Mathematics Department



The recruitment of Teaching Assistants to the Algebra and Analysis Section was led in 1983-93 by Luis Magalhães, as the Section Coordinator. When in 1993 he moved to Chair of the IST Mathematics Department, it was led up to 2006 by the following Section Coordinators, who pursued the work based on the same principles: João Palhoto Matos (1994-95), Carlos Rocha (1996-June 1997), Francisco Teixeira (July 1997-98), Pedro Gonçalves Henriques (1999-2009), Pedro Resende (2010-13).

In 2006 the IST Mathematics Department organization in Sections was replaced by a more granular organization in subareas of Mathematical Sciences, unseen in the best Mathematics Departments worldwide and, unfortunately, leading to lack of the critical mass required to increase the likelyhood of balanced decisions in some subareas, and fragmenting the hiring process with some of the subareas recruiting at lower levels than before. At the time was created a Group of General Mathematics courses to manage the teaching staff of Linear Algebra and Mathematics courses offered in the initial 2 years of IST degrees, which was identified with the former Algebra and Analysis Section. The part of the figure for 2007-12 and the Coordination assignments reported in the preceding paragraph for the period 2007-13 respect to the Department Staff assigned to that group of basic courses, who were the staff of the former Section of Algebra and Analysis.

Anyway, due to what had been done before 1997 and especially in 1983-93, by the end of 2012 the scientific areas of the former Algebra and Analysis Section had 77 professors, all with PhDs, of whom 6 Full Professors (Luis Magalhães (61 years old), Carlos Rocha (60 years old), Luis Barreira (44 years old), Rui Loja Fernandes (45 years old), Miguel Abreu (46 years old), Diogo Gomes (40 years old)). Only 8 of the former Section teaching staff were from the initial 45 in 1983! 7 were foreigners (1 from each of the following countries: Brazil, Spain, USA, Finland, Italy, Poland, United Kingdom), almost all recruited in 1983-97. The Professors had earned their PhaDs in the following countries and universities:

• 35 in USA (4 at U. of Minnesota, 4 at SUNY-Stony Brook, 4 at U. of Wisconsin-Madison, 3 at Carnegie Mellon U., 3 at MIT, 3 at Stanford U., 2 at U. of California-Berkeley, 2 at Brown U., and 1 at each of the following: Brandeis U., Georgia Tech, Harvard U., U. of Illinois-Chicago, Johns Hopkins U., New York U., Penn State U., U. of Pennsylvania, Princeton U., Rutgers U-)
• 6 in the United Kingdom (2 at Oxford, 2 at Warwick U., 1 at U. of Cardiff, 1 at Queen Mary U. of London)
• 2 in Germany (both at TU Chemnitz)
• 1 in each of the following countries and universities: Brazil (U. of São Paulo), Spain (U. of Barcelona), France (U. of Paris 6), Italy (SISSA), Poland (Silesia U.), Russia (Moscow State U.)
• 22 in Portugal, all at IST, except 1 at the Faculty of Sciences of U. of Lisbon.

This is a very diverse an enviable distribution of PhD degress of a Mathematics Department faculty, even among the top USA universities.