[CAUT] CAUT Endorsement

[Porritt, David]

Of course all of our experience comes from a fairly small segment of the
world.  Even if one has had a job a 2 or 3 music schools, that's not
universal knowledge of academia.  My experience in that regard is pretty
limited. Here our head of the Keyboard Studies area is a quite
knowledgeable pianist whose father was a piano technician.  The other
three of the piano faculty have had or still have their performing
careers and have worked with piano technicians a lot to get what they
each want in a piano.  I really think they could work together to find a
replacement for me.  I'd love to think that they did that job well 21
years ago but having read the interesting article on incompetence I'm
reluctant to say anything!  

 

In other words, the committee has to find a warm body that seems to have
the qualifications, references, documented education and character to do
the job.  Even if a test were conceived that actually could measure a
person's aptitude for this work, how much weight should it have in the
hiring decision?  Candidate A has passed the CAUT test but has a poor
credit history.  Candidate B has a good work record and good references
(happy musician customers) but never bothered to take the CAUT test.
I'd bet credit history would trump CAUT test.

 

dave

 

David M. Porritt, RPT

dporritt at smu.edu

 

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Fred Sturm
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 7:50 PM
To: caut
Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT Endorsement

 

On 10/23/07 3:12 PM, "David M. Porritt" <dporritt at smu.edu> wrote:

I think college administrators have to interview, check backgrounds, do
their do-diligence but I really have my doubts that any testing PTG
could do would do as well as a good college football scout can do and
they miss a lot.  


Hi David,
    The problem is that there is no animal in the music department who
is the equivalent of the college football scout. Who in your music
department do you think qualifies as a good scout for piano technicians?
And even if they actually know what to look for, where is the
opportunity for them to witness a game or two in a real life analogy?
(Okay, the candidate can come and do a tuning or something, but that
doesn't say a lot, even if the "scout" can evaluate it reasonably well).
Not to say that the administrator doesn't need to do the normal due
diligence in any case, checking recommendations, etc. But one of the
problems we face is that the person usually doing the hiring has no
concept of the skills needed, and has to rely almost entirely on a best
guess of what references and experience set might mean. Probably doesn't
really even know what questions to ask.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico 

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