The Compleat Academic A Career Guide
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Transcript The Compleat Academic A Career Guide
The Compleat Academic
A Career Guide
XING WAN
Agenda
Starting a Career as a PhD candidate
Different from master and undergraduate
Job options
Teaching and Mentoring
Teaching
Mentoring
Research and Writing
Research Grant
Writing Journal Article
Setting Up Your Lab
Managing your career over time
Starting a Career as a PhD candidate
A Guide to Ph.D Graduate School
Job Options for new PHD graduate
3 Job Options for new PHD graduates:
Postdoctoral
Faculty
Industry
What’s their pros and cons?
Job Options for new PHD graduate
Postdoctoral
Faculty
Industry
Pros
Cons
•Facilitate the transition
•Broaden research domain
•Research Utopia (No burden)
•Need funding and sponsor
•“Transition” job
•World expert with Prof. title
•Tenure (Job safety)
Balance your time
between Teaching and
Research
•Higher compensation
•Exciting career track
•Can leave the work behind
Less job safety
Advantages of a Postdoctoral Fellowship
How to Find A Postdoc Fellowship
Preparation for Careers outside of Academia
Transferable skills
Certain skills not trained enough in graduate
programs
Social skills
Having a positive can-do attitude
Needs more flexibility
Is PHD’s social skill really not that good?
How to Apply for Faculty Position
Key: Vita
Start by listing everything you have done
Displays all your relevant skills.
Include your work "in progress", especially your
thesis proposal, and your future research directions.
Might also include a list of courses you could teach.
Be neither parochial nor grandiose.
Besides Vita, are there any other things we need to
prepare?
How to Apply for Faculty Position
Key: Job Visit
Research the institution, the department and the
audience of your talk.
Present your ideas in a less complex way
Mention that you know the limits
At the end of the talk make a brief but explicit
statement regarding future research directions
conclude with a summary of what you have shown.
Prepare a 5 minutes mini-talk about yourself and your
research.
Teaching & Mentoring
Effective Teaching
Make good use of the binding contract: the Syllabus
Engage students in numerous study sessions
Establishing student communication channels:
office hours; email
Take a firm, rational, but caring approach by
accepting the excuse but asking for verification.
Do not cover "everything" in detail
Be careful not to inadvertently impose your political,
moral, or religious beliefs on students
Effective Teaching
Save everything.
Keep good records
Create your own versions of the teaching
forms
Build a directory of useful information to
refer students to various kinds of help
Mentoring
Testing a student's research ideas
What are you interested in doing/finding out?
Why are you interested in doing this?
How does what you are interested in doing relate to what's
already known?
How does this research differ from and/or extend previous
research?
How are you going to do this?
What do you expect to find?
Fit between you and the student?
Research & Writing
Obtaining a Research Grant
Develop a research idea and
then pitch it to potential funders
Select your ideas carefully
Think broadly about the applications
of your work
Call the relevant program
officers
Be prepared with follow-up
questions
Hedge your bets
Submit your ideas to various agencies
Writing the Empirical Journal Article
An article is written in the shape of an hourglass.
Broad general statement
Specifics of the study
More general consideration
Introduction
Method
Results
Discussion
Title and abstract
Setting Up Your Lab
Not enough funding
Buy what you absolutely need to begin your research
program
Save some money for later
Start small and make sure your lab works with right
people
Managing Your Career Over Time
The Academic Marathon
Thinking about the future: make concrete plans for
small chunks of time and more general plans for the
more distant future.
Short-term planning: build time for writing and
research into your schedule
Medium-term goals: six-month chunks of time is a
good choice
Long-term goals: range beyond concrete behavioral
objectives to the category of dreams, hopes, and
aspirations.
Enjoy the Pure Joy of Research!
Faculty have pretty flexible
schedule, but can never leave
the work behind.
The joys are the primary reasons why
this stressful, ill-paid line of work is
worth pursuing. And what drives us
ultimately is the pure joy of research:"
Those moments.... When suddenly
there is a synthesis of the human
intelligence.. And to know every day
that it might happen again." (Gornick
1983, p.52)