As Miriam puts it, alt-ac people are hired to do hybrid work, and the sponsoring organization is normally not an academic department. What we could add to the conversation, then, is to make it clear to the parties involved (the sponsoring organization and the alt-ac person) what each might expect from the relationship. For example, a person who has been a scholar might reasonably expect that she would have some professional support for attending conferences that she chose for herself. The sponsoring organization might reasonably expect that the alt-ac person work from 8:30-5:00pm every day, 12 months a year. But the other party might not know about the other’s expectation in either case. If we prepare a list of things that recent scholars and that organizations like libraries, NGOs, foundations, and the like expect, it could help people better define the terms as they are beginning their work.

I’d be particularly excited to see a primer for employers about navigating the institutional barriers which define positions as “staff” or “faculty” with separate hiring processes. In many universities, the “staff” job classification itself stands in for “can’t be a PI on grants, can’t apply for university travel funding or research leave, must list oneself as ‘independent scholar’.” One element of this document, I’d hope, would explais to employers (hiring managers and their superiors, up to the dean and provost level) not only the practical details of how to support alt-ac employees, but why to do so when they’ve been getting by for years without giving such support to (e.g.) Ph.D. librarians.

Another possible element of this document might be about how staff-classified hiring managers can build bridges to department chairs before the job description is written, so that there’s already a mechanism in place for generating a research-faculty appointment when someone’s hired.