I went to SCU's campus super excited to interview for this position. After a very successful phone interview, they invited me to check it out and meet the department in person. They asked me to provide a sample of my teaching style as expected. Upon gathering in a room full of 5 faculty, I started my presentation. I had decided to lecture on the chalk board because all of the classes I had in undergrad that I actually learned the material in were on the board and not delivered by a powerpoint presentation. After choosing an undergraduate topic, I decided to start at the very basics, as undergrads come from a diverse background, especially in California. About 5 minutes into my lecture, one of the faculty stopped me, told me the material was too easy, I was putting him to sleep and I wasn't getting to the point (mind you the point involves lots of math... sorry!). Now, I'm really sorry you are an expert in this field, but do you think freshman and sophomores are??? If you don't start at the fundamentals, how can you expect to even apply the knowledge down the road? They also continued to ridicule me and say that I should be using a powerpoint presentation and that none of them used book. WHAT! I almost fainted, undergraduate education without a book! Seriously, you have to be joking! Also, mind you, I am also coming from the #1 ranked university for this particular department so I have seen a lot, TAed for tier 1 researchers and lectures, and lectured in front of hundreds of students. So, my choice of board over powerpoint was obviously not a good one, and I would recommend if you interview here to prepare both. Instead of continuing with my interview, the room full of people starting arguing and talking over one another to discuss this issue of ppt vs not ppt for the next 10-15 minutes. After finally being motioned to continue, I began my next lesson on a different topic for upper division students. I chose something I am very familiar with, requires a good amount of math. Now, this ALSO was too boring for these people. I am also sorry, I chose a topic I learned in undergrad upper div and graduate school at a top ranked program. Also, the department chair decided to inform me she teaches this to freshman. Really, freshman can solve differential equations... I highly doubt that, not unless it is a prereq, which it was not. So, the teaching part didn't go very well. Onto the next part. I then had the pleasure of going to lunch with the group. Lunch, usually the most relaxing part of the day and a chance to get to know the other people in the department. So, when I sat down after getting a glass of water. Guess what the topic of debate was for the next 10 minutes! How fast you got your green card!!!! I was blown out of the water! Here I was, a Catholic, interviewing at at Catholic university and hearing this, what a distasteful conversation. No wonder US citizens don't want to major in technical fields. Goodness! I thought that the situation and unprofessional-ism of this department and of the people could not get any worse but it did. I went on a casual tour of the labs. I was shown a lab that had a bunch of students working for this particular faculty member in it. The professor the began commanding the students orders, like this was some sort of military environment! Not explaining, just commanding! "Clean the bench!" "Write the document!" "Look this up!" For a private school, this was not some sort of nurturing environment I had expected... at all! So, the whole process continued for a little while longer... it basically made me decide that I actually don't want to teach in this department... I had three other much stronger offers where I could actually use my skills and PhD. The icing on the cake was the following: I looked up the guy giving me a bad time about lecturing on a topic that was too easy, and he was a faculty candidate for my top tier university in our department. I actually remembered his lecture. I didn't understand it, there was way too much information to process, the slides were jumbled, and there was no story to back the research that made any sense to me. If this is how the courses are taught at this university, like that lecture I remembered from 3-4 years prior, well... I am so sorry for those students paying an arm and a leg to go there and expect a good education. The students are likely challenged by these people's teaching because they can't figure out what the heck is going on! Despite the beautiful campus, I left feeling very disappointed. I felt like they were mining ideas, and it is likely I was not alone in this endeavor. The structure and unprofessionalism were ridiculous. They did not reimburse my flight.