Last interview of the year

I had my last interview of the year in mid-June.

The department was founded about a decade ago, but as of a few years ago there was exactly one faculty member left in the department. It's a field with an obvious non-academic set of careers, and the chair had left, and while they were working to replace the former chair, they appointed an 80 year old interim chair, and didn't want to hire new faculty, but they didn't appoint a new chair for several years. Meanwhile all but one of the other faculty left and were not replaced. And this department still had hundreds of students which somehow continued to be taught.

Now there is a full contingent of faculty, mostly non-tenure-track but relatively senior, and the recent years of turmoil have succeeded in decreasing the number of students by 30%, which they see as fortunate under the circumstances. This year they are making several tenure-track hires, which they've been interviewing feverishly for. The delays were due to delays in the central administration's approval of the hires.