Transcript Career Paths Stephanie Weirich University of Pennsylvania What I'm going to talk about…   What is like to be an assistant professor? General and specific.

Career Paths
Stephanie Weirich
University of Pennsylvania
What I'm going to talk about…
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What is like to be an assistant professor?
General and specific advice about the job
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Research
Teaching
Service
Comments and advice about juggling the job
with everything else
What does an academic career
path look like?
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Ph.D.
Postdoc (optional)
Assistant Professor
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Reappointment review in 3rd year
Tenure review in 6th year <- coming up!
Associate Professor
Full Professor
My (short) career path
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Finished Ph.D. at Cornell University, July
2002
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Internship at Bell Labs, Summer 1999
Teaching, Fall 2001
Started as an Assistant Professor at Penn,
September 2002
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Husband started at same time, same dept.,
similar research area
Currently finishing 5th year
What is an academic job at a
research university?
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Three main components:
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Research
Teaching
Service
Not evenly balanced. Research is queen.
Challenge: managing short-term Teaching
and Service goals so you can achieve long
term research goals.
Research advice
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Actively look for collaborators
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Develop a good research environment
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Too easy to get caught up with just you and your students
Can work with anyone: at your university, at another
university, at a research lab.
Reading groups, seminars
Practice talks
Advising Ph.D. students
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No one teaches you how to do it
Each student is different in how much attention they need
Most important to develop a good working relationship
They have a strong influence on your work
Research flexibility
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Research supported by funding
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Funding comes from
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grad students, summer salary, conf. travel, equip.
Start-up (first few years)
Govt. agencies (NSF, DoD)
Corporate gifts
Few limits on what to research
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For tenure must be a recognized expert
Classified/proprietary research won’t help that
Teaching tricks
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Active Lecturing
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Ask questions - really easy ones at first
Get students to work on a problem in pairs
Go through code interactively (DrJava)
Exam preparation
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Think about grading when you make your exam
No more than 15% of points for the top students
Length: how many minutes to work each problem?
Teaching and time
management
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Easy to let teaching take all of your time
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My strategy
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Can be scary to lecture
Immediate feedback, lots of short-term tasks
Real people asking for your time as opposed to amorphous
"research"
Allocate research time first
Don't begin course prep too early
Students won't complain if you finish class early (and you
won't)
Use your course staff
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Set them up as guards for your time
Let them answer email/BB ?s
Service and time management
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You can say no!
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Must do some: prefer service with a technical
component
Look for departments that protect junior
faculty from too much university-level service
My controversial view: women are overrepresented in service awards.
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Work/Life balance
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You can't work all the time
Set aside time for yourself and your family
Don't feel guilty when you aren't working
Take advantage of your flexibility and
resources
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Spend money for time
Take a vacation!
Can have children pre-tenure
(so good so far…)
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Look for policies -- At Penn:
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Women: No teaching that semester
Both: 1 year extension on tenure clock, may or may not use
Also unofficial arrangements with your department
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Flexibility valuable
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Steve had lighter teaching load Spring 2005
Next Fall: "Junior Sabbatical"
Control over your schedule, leave if you need to
Work from home sometimes
Dr. appts during the day
Hard parts
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Travel
Monday deadlines for collaborative work
Where to look for more?
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Informal and formal mentors
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In your department, research community
People you meet here
MentorNet
Systers (esp. mailing list for pretenured women)
General resources
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Tomorrow's Professor, Rick Reis
Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women In Academia,
Emily Toth
Chronicle of Higher Education
Job Search resources on my homepage