Academic Careers: Your First Year as a Professor

our next panel is about your first year as a professor so once you've applied through all the great advice we got in the last session and got the job now what oh my gosh I have to be a real person now how does that happen I've told how this this is my personal pet session because this is me right now so I hope you guys enjoy it I'm really excited for it so our panel today we have Heather Betts from Albion College and Liz Edwards from James Madison University and dr. Phil Clifford from University of illinois-chicago to share with you their advice about how to start your career as a professor so we're just gonna do some quick introductions and then get into into some topics that we think are things that we all need to think about as you go into your first year as Chris I said I'm at Albion College which is a small liberal arts school in Michigan I am also from Michigan State I am one of the large group of us who all studied thank you guys who all studied under dr. Pavone Nick and dr. Pfeiffer from MSU obviously with it being a small liberal arts school we are teaching intensive it is just undergraduate students and a lot of times people think that therefore all we do is teach but hopefully we will clear up some of those misconceptions as we go on I'm was Edwards I'm from J mu I feel a little bit of a need to clarify how JMU has evolved since dr. Favara neck stays there which is quite a bit we're actually a very active master's level institution quite productive as a faculty now so we're sort of similar to appstate in that middle ground where a standard load in my department would probably be a 3/3 but you would still be expected you know around a pub a year several of our faculty do more than that I have no affiliation with Michigan State I'm not affiliated whatsoever I did all of my schooling at the University of Miami and then went home to Virginia which is how I sort of ended up there another sort of interesting perspective that I bring is I am part of a dual academic marriage so my husband is here as well he's also an exercise physiologist he's at University of Virginia just about an hour away from J mu so that was a really interesting way to go about a job search not only looking for two academic jobs looking for two academic jobs in the same field and and so it took us a while but we got there and have landed in the place we're really happy I'm Phil Clifford I'm from the University of illinois-chicago which is a public r1 University in a state that has no budget and so we're wondering how we're going to move on to the next year there are seven health science colleges at the University of illinois-chicago I'm the associate dean for research in the College of Applied Health Sciences which includes kinesiology nutrition occupational therapy physical therapy and so research is a major function of those people that are on the tenure track in our in our university I think I'm gonna go ahead and start once you get the job and you're super excited and then it's the now what during the interview process as the previous panel talked about finding out what the expectations of the university or the college are is incredibly important you know are they looking for one publication a year are they just looking for one publication in your first three years before an interim review and then another pub before your tenure track I just finished my fifth year I'm up for tenure in the fall that's gonna look very different at a small teaching school versus at an r1 but no matter where you are they are gonna evaluate you on three criteria you're teaching your service and your research the focus is going to be dependent on the size of the school that you're at and when you just start teaching I think everyone's sort of main goal is to stay one step ahead of your students and we're just trying to keep our head above the water I know my first semester I was also trying to finish up my dissertation revision so that first semester is sort of a blur it all worked fine but it's sort of a blur um one thing that somebody said to me that I thought was vitally important and I sort of tried to keep with it through the last five years at Albion is to think about tenure at every step it may seem so far down the road that it's something that I don't need to think about just yet but it is something to keep in mind and everything you do needs to build for that moment of when you turn in your 10 year packet and so a couple things is to again find out what the expectations are I loved the comment from the last panel of during the interview process asked what does a you know a good associate assistant professor look like what are those expectations make sure you clearly know what they are I know my first year sometimes I would ask a question and I would get the answer just check out the faculty handbook that's not a good answer faculty handbooks are usually if you've ever read one are not the clearest document ever so really talk to faculty within your department or within your division or within the college itself of what those expectations are write everything down if you go to a workshop if you go to a meeting if you do a guest lecture whatever you do keep a document on your laptop or on your desktop of everything you do as as minor as it may feel make sure you have documentation of it because eventually you're gonna be writing your narrative that goes with your tenure packet mine was 35 pages when I turned in my interim tenure review packet after year three or in year three I'm you need to show that you bring value not only to the students in your teaching if especially if it's a teaching focused position but also in service to the college service to organizations like ACS mmm I can't stress enough getting involved at the regional level I will give a disclaimer I am the current president elect elect of the Midwest region but get involved in your region network with people as dr pizarnik said in part of his talk finding good mentors um is vitally important and they may not be within your department they may not be within your college network with the folks that you meet at this meeting they're going to help maybe give you some inspirations that you need but again documentation is incredibly important another thing is looking to whether you have it at your college or online or other colleges but centers for teaching and learning especially if you're gonna go to a school where teaching is the focus and that's where a lot of their evaluation of you is going to be placed look at resource resources out there keep current on them teaching philosophy I know that the panel before us some had to provide them some didn't if teaching is gonna be the focus you need to have a very well worded and well-thought-out teaching philosophy not only for the interview process but then when you come up for interim review and also again when you come up for tenure review another thing that I really tried to sort of stress over the last five years within my own teaching is the B is to be able to be willing to reevaluate my teaching especially if you're teaching the same classes over and over again we sometimes get a little complacent that class is already prepped great I don't need to prep it I'm good to go don't take that as sort of the end-all be-all always be able to evaluate your teaching we can always improve we can always get better no matter what size school we're at so make sure your you're looking at your teaching how can you improve what are the evaluations saying are you showing progress in your teaching and we don't always get all great reviews on our teaching that's life we're dealing with students they can be unpredictable and so look at you know your trajectory of teaching that's what your tenure committee is gonna look at you know maybe you didn't do really well the first time you taught research methods well what happened the second time they want to look to see that you're improving as a professor and that's something to keep in mind as you're getting through that first year again it may not be the smoothest year but think about how you can take those experiences and build on them another thing is start small when it comes to research again having well-defined expectations from your your school is important as I said in my intro Albion College is a small teaching intensive school but we're still required and quite a bit of research is done with the undergrads you know I focus my whole research agenda around getting them involved in research and really one of the joys of being in a small school like Albion is I can get my students involved your tenure committee is gonna look at that are you doing your research all on your own or are you involving students and depending on the size of the university or the college you're at and that may be incredibly important to them you know someone said when I was at MSU is its it's the graduates who are going out to teach at the small schools they are providing the big schools with their graduate students so I'm giving them that research opportunity is incredibly important and even though teaching is the focus at a small liberal arts school research is still very important so again as you get through that first year I know you're gonna just be trying to keep your head above water and keep ahead of your students but keep in mind all the things that that need to go into your tenure review process keep really good documentation get involved no matter how big or small the committee is you volunteer for as many things as possible on campus and get involved at the regional level and the national level for ACSM if you can as well and network sometimes it's nice to be able to turn outside of your department to talk about some of the struggles that we may face within our departments as we get through that first year and having a good Network whether it be from graduate school and the buddies you you dealt with there or people you network with it at meetings like this they can really help you in getting through that first year as well a lot of what I'm gonna speak about sort of overlaps with what what Heather just talked about and I think one of the best advice I got while I was in my first year was to think about where you want to be in five years not just getting tenure but who is a professional do you want to be in five years and if the institution and you are a good match then that's going to lead to you being successful in a tenure process but if you really think about what you would like to have accomplished in five years that informs a lot of your decisions down to what research projects are going to get involved with what service opportunities are going to take on sometimes you just have to sort of take one the team that's part of committee service at the department level but sometimes you have some some say and you want to make sure that your first year is is incredibly busy I'm not gonna lie to you here because you're trying to do new preps if you're at a school that requires research particularly research that you know more of a line by the time you've got tenure you've got to get that started relatively quickly I mean you really want to be making smart decisions so you want to make sure one thing to be blunt that I sort of messed up on as I was so scared about getting my line started that I jumped on to some stuff that a someone who was leaving was helping me get started with but it wasn't really what I wanted and so I ended up I don't wanna say wasting a year or two but spending a year to on some research that wasn't really getting me towards where I wanted to be in five years versus sort of stopping and saying wait how can I at least tie in what I want to this project and and really get started in what I and what I want to do I've been lucky to even be able to shake my service and combine a lot of them so I'm in a somewhat unique position at J mu and that I'm the in addition to being my normal faculty role I'm the director of the Morrison Bruce Center which promotes physical activity for girls and women we're an endowed center with actually a pretty healthy endowment I get a teaching release for this so while my colleagues teach a33 I teach a tutu so part of the what I had to figure out coming in is how was this large service load going to be evaluated in my tenure process because I was on a slightly different role than my than most of my colleagues I needed to understand how that was gonna fit in in my evaluation when I went up at five years and whether sort of what was written and what was actually gonna happen matched as much as we would like to say that those those always do um there's a lot of unspoken sort of things that go on in a tenure process so I think a lot of Heather's point of just asking around like asking senior colleagues asking what does a successful colleague look like to you similar to what one of the people on the the previous panel said when you go what do I need to do for tenure they get very nervous no one wants to commit to if you have this many pubs if you have this on your student evals then you're good very rarely there are there see I've been to a couple schools where they have very clear tenure guidelines but for the most part it's a little bit more I don't say wishy-washy fuzzy than that but people will talk about what a successful colleague looks like and so you get a you get them talking a little more you learn a lot more that way I think really starting to find out how you're going to be evaluated in each area so how is teaching evaluated is it just off of student evaluations of teaching are you going to be actively observed in the classroom are you going to be submitting a lot of documentation in terms of syllabi would be kind of standard but in terms of teaching philosophy and self-reflections and things like that these are very different ways to evaluate teaching and it's done very very differently at different institutions similarly in research is in all publications where does grant money fit in where do presentations and engagement at the national and regional level fit in and then how did those fit in with the larger tenure picture so at JM you were evaluated annually which has its pros and cons we get a lot of data like by the time I'm also going up this fall for tenure so I thought this point had five annual evaluations so I have lots of input back from my colleagues the bad side of that is we don't actually have a formal mid tenure review so unless I go to my chair and say let's take a step back and look at the big picture all I have are five one-year evaluations instead of am I really on the right track overall and research is where that could come back to sort of bite me in my case and the specific example that I can give is that on any given year I could perhaps meet expectations by coming and doing a presentation here if I did five years of presentations and no publications that would not be a successful 10 year portfolio of my institution so you sort of have to differentiate between how often are you going to be evaluated and then when you do go up for those evaluations who's doing it that also varies drastically by University at J mu tenure is extremely decentralized so it's basically at the department level four four four basically and function those criteria have been approved higher up but basically our personnel Advisory Committee which will be made up in my case of all tenured faculty my department will evaluate my ten-year portfolio this fall they'll write letters my au h we call them unit heads at JMU not chairs will also write a letter those two letters get sent to the Dean and then they just consequently get passed up higher and higher so it's really important for me to understand that that all tenured faculty in my department have a say on the other hand we do not have any external evaluators at JMU neither external outside the department other than like the Dean and the provost or external outside of the university my husband on the other hand UVA they have to solicit external from the University and also his entire College has a meeting where they debate the merit of this person for so they very very drastically so this is stuff that you want to start understanding early I mean the last part of that with the service some institutions look at that very much a sort of a check the box make sure you did what you were supposed to do in my case I was really interested in learning more about that because my service takes on a very different viewpoint I'm directing a center I've got an incredible administrative load including managing financial accounts and all of that kind of stuff so was that actually going to be valued when I went up for tenure and that was something that I've had to be honest a lot of conversations not only with my unit head but my unit head has gone to my Dean and and even with my colleagues because my colleagues at the Department of 14 I think there will be two other on tenure people when I go up so 11 out of the 14 will be evaluate me so essentially that the vast majority of my colleagues so I think really getting down and understanding the evaluation criteria getting what written materials there are most departments will have some written documentation of the criteria again I have seen a couple that say this many publications and this is how we tier journals based on impact factor and things like that that's more the exception in my experience versus the rule so I would I would think about those things really I'm learning those things while keeping your head above water the first year is tough the other thing the one thing I will say you know I'm generally a very sort of make sure that everything you're doing that year is really working towards that five year goal I'm a big advocate of doing at least one thing out of your department otherwise you can end up in the same building teaching in the same with the same 14 people all year round and you can go crazy pretty quickly and lose a lot of perspective really quickly honestly some of the most valuable input I've gained have been from people outside of my department originally at my institution then now I've been lucky enough to get on a committee here and start to get perspective from there that's a really powerful positive thing to understand how your university works at a larger level but also just to keep yourself from getting Godwin Hall is where I work it looks like a sanitarium you could lose your mind in there if you weren't careful to get out of Godwin Hall occasionally especially if on one hand we're lucky that our labs our offices in our classrooms are all in one building on the other hand it means that a lot of times I don't actually see natural sunlight except for through my window oh so I'm a really big advocate in getting at least one committee assignment or involved in one organization outside your department just to kind of keep you sane a little bit I'm going to not talk a lot about my personal career path and about getting tenure I want to start off by just piggybacking on what what Liz just said about this value of going outside your department in terms of the tenure process though and that is that when you go up in most institutions you're required to get letters of recommendation letters of reference from not only people within your university but people outside your university so Heather mentioned the word networking earlier on and you're involved now at this meeting in creating a network that network is going to be important for you and helping find your first position but it's going to be even more crucial when it comes up to that tenure and promotion process because you'll have to identify people in your institution and they could be outside your department as Liz mentioned but also people outside your University that will provide a letter difference and you don't usually contact them directly you provide a list to some anonymous committee that that contacts them on your behalf so that process of networking that you're beginning now really becomes important as you move as you move along in your career I'd like to use my time to to mention two resources that I think that are useful I've really appreciated hearing the personal stories of jimp Evonik and the panel before us as well as these two talented faculty members but there are some resources that you should know about that haven't been mentioned and the first that I'd like to tell you about is a book called making the right moves this book is was intended to help people manage their academic careers and labs most of us here have no formal training and lab management people management budget management time management and this book aims to fill that gap so their chapters on getting that first job but they're also chapters on how to hire people out of how to work with people in your lab how to set up collaborations how to manage the data in your lab the book is available for free in PDF format and so this is maybe the most important thing you need to know if you go to HHM i.org and look up making the right moves then you'll be able to download it as a PDF and I think you'll find some real value if you're still a graduate student one of the things you might think about is getting a group of other peers to go through this book with you take one chapter at a time agree to read it and then get together and talk about what you got out of it or what questions you still have we've heard and constantly hear a lot about mentoring but often that's thought about in the idea with the idea of having a senior person that's going to tell you the wealth of their experience but the literature tells us that peer mentoring is really an effective way to learn and you can learn from those around you very very well the most valuable recommendation I can provide for you is to create an individual development plan you may have heard this term or this phrase of an IDP but you may not have an individual development plan takes into account who you are and where you want to go you heard from Jim earlier that he's a que sera sera person he waited until opportunities came up and then took advantage of them but some of you may like a little bit more of a planful approach something where you have a little bit more systemic systematic planning process and there's a website that's been created along with the American Association for the Advancement of science triple-a s the publishers of science that provides free access to a website that was created for graduate students and postdocs there are some handouts that are on one of the chairs in the back if you'd like to grab it as you go this is a free website this isn't something that's commercial that we're trying to advertise here but it helps you think about what you want to get out of your career and I heard that explicitly from Heather from Liz just a few minutes ago to think about where you want to be in five years but this website will help you walk through the process of what are your skills what are your interests and most importantly what are you your values when it comes to the end of the line what is it that you really want to accomplish not just with your career but with your life and so these aren't the this website isn't going to give the answers it's gonna ask you the questions that sort of help you think through that for yourself as students and as faculty we get caught up in the fury of the moment as we focus on the next experiment the next lecture the next deadline and we often don't take a step back to look at the big picture Steven Covey and his best-selling book the seven Habits of Highly Effective People exhort sus with his number two habit to begin with the end in mind and so that's the idea of having an individual development plan successful people have a sense of who they are and where they're going and that's the idea of an individual development plan I think two things one thing that Liz said and one thing that Phil just said getting out of your building or out of your department and peer mentoring or peer networking at Albion my first year I missed the events the week before the semester started I was on my honeymoon I had just finished at MSU you know big life changes right all within like a three week span and so I missed the new faculty workshop I missed the faculty retreat day so people knew that there was a new professor in kinesiology they knew the name but nobody could put the face with the name so I didn't know anybody outside my department our building is on well it's on the other side of the railroad tracks on campus and nobody comes down to our side of the tracks so I made it a really big point my first year any sort of event on campus I went to and we have First Friday faculty gatherings wine beer and cheese and crackers I went just so I could get my face in front of people so I can meet people outside in my department because I was not running I was not gonna be running into them in the hallway in our department in our building so I tried to do things like that anything where I could mingle with other faculty last year I started a female faculty lunch on the we have a campus-wide faculty meeting the third Thursday is the third Thursday of every month so before that open up to any female faculty and we all get together and happen you randomly get together and have lunch so some are senior faculty some are new faculty but again a way to get outside of my department interact with others on campus because eventually either I'm going to work with them on committees or they will be on my tenure committee so we do faculty elections every spring so the committee that I'm going up in front of in October for a tenure I'm two of the people on that committee I have worked on committees with a third one we have some research in common that we've collaborated on so these people know me not only as a professor but as a person and at a small school like Albion that's beneficial and you need to be involved within the community not only your department community but if possible the wider community as a whole and that's something to keep in mind to not only find good mentors who can you know give you their life experience but you know peer to peer there's a biology professor we started together and so we get together all the time and talk because we're going through the same things at the same times just in different sides of the campus and in different departments but again being able to talk to those people who are going through it at the same time you are and maybe outside of your department can give you some perspective on what you're going through within your department and that's really important so I think that peer to peer mentoring I think a lot of times gets forgotten and we think more about the this sort of standard older person younger person older career a younger career sort of format but I think there's real value in the peer to peer and I'm really glad you brought that up as well sort of two more things I'll add another couple resources that have been helpful to me there's two books one's called the teaching portfolio and the other is called the academic portfolio and these both just give examples of how to put together a teaching portfolio that explains what your teaching philosophy is how to give examples they're actually quite short reads the the materials probably on 20 to 30 pages and then they give multiple examples from different types the institutions in different fields so it's a really practical resource that helps helps you think about as I'm starting to write my own tenure materials it's like how do I sit here and basically justify my existence in your department for the last five years you know and I'm and that's a pretty big thing to sort of bite off it like you think the cover letters were hard oh wait till you get to the tenure packet the second thing is is in the first year it can be a little bit hard to see the forest for the trees you're gonna be a little bit overloaded tenure is a long process and you'll come to appreciate that it's a long process and that's a good thing take heart in that there's a reason it's a five year clock that it's it's long enough for for you to actually develop a little bit as a professional and so I think that first year it can feel really make-or-break on every single thing if you get a bad teaching eval if a grant falls through if a pub falls through know that you've got time to recover and in fact probably the more important thing and on your tenure portfolio is the trajectory so they want to see that there was growth in your teaching that there was growth in your research and then the last one I wanted to add in that first year is pay attention to sort of the social norms I'll call them around your department and be engaged with it so are people really present some departments have different cultures some people come and teach do their office hours and then they're out and then that's how that department works other departments are very very present they expect you should be in your office with your door open all the time those are important you want people to be looking for a reason to give you tenure not for a reason to not give you tenure and I have actually seen at JMU not in my department people pushed out because they didn't fit because they didn't abide by some of these semi written semi unspoken sort of of norms in terms of and at least a J mu there's a teaching research service and basically like community member kind of clause in there so pay attention to those norms and just respect them that's not to say that as you get there you might not be able to shift them yourself your first year isn't the year to do that your first year is to come and and try to be a member of the community you may decide it's not the place for you and that would be okay but you're gonna want to be able to leave wherever you are successfully if that is if that is the move for you or maybe you find that it really is there I think some of those social things sometimes get underrated in terms of where your importance of time should be and they can be quite important in terms of building that camaraderie having people that you know to call when you have a question to be able to actually get a straight answer having enough of a relationship that people feel like they can give you a straight answer versus just some junior faculty that's showing up at their door and asking a question if that makes sense I think also getting some sort of example when you sit down with a blank word doc and have to put together your narrative which again as I said faculty handbooks are not the greatest written document out there and all I wanted was somebody to tell me what's it the format supposed to look like I don't care what the words are that you put on the page but just give me a template or something and again my my friend Brad is a semester ahead of me on and tenure even though we started together and he sent me his and I didn't read a word that he wrote because I didn't want his words in my head I just wanted to see sort of how he laid it out so I had an idea some colleges and universities will give you a template some departments will show you hey here are other successful ones that have gone through in the department again by networking with your peers whether it be at your institution or another institution will help you with that what does that narrative look like how do you break it down how do you sit and really I mean goes Erin possibly said in the last session pat yourself on the back you have to do that in your cover letter but you definitely have to do it in your tenure materials and again from day one keeping track of all the letters of rec that you write all the workshops you do all the little things that you do that we sort of take for granted in our daily lives as professors keep track of that because you need to document your worth to your department unto your university and and you need something to back it up instead of just sort of loose terms of you know I help my students okay well how do I do that you know what have I done to help the recruitment of new students you know which admissions receptions do I go to I mean I'm talking really concrete dates and details and again volunteering for things when they put out the call you know last week I did a teaching sort of symposium for U of M grad students of what it's like to teach at a liberal arts college it was part of their summer seminar for their Center for teaching and learning so I sat with a whole host of postdocs in and grad students to say you know this is what it's like at this school doing that homework and and again being able to volunteer adds to what you can document for your worth when it comes to tenure time nothing is too small when it comes to service or committees or any of those things that go into your evaluation and how you're going to be judged when the time comes some institutions will even let you observe the evaluation process lets you be a non-voting member on a we call them PACs but on whatever the committee is if you can do that that is the best way you will spend your time being able to be privy to those conversations it's one thing to sort of see sort of the product or even see a letter someone got to actually see the conversations as they occur that would be one of the best uses of your time if your institution allows that so I'll just say it a large public university those those discussions are really quite hidden so much less open and and so the discussions within the department so that it's it's actually not within a department but it's within a college and some really difficult discussions there but then it goes on to the university level and so you have to get get beyond both of those hurdles in in the Health Science colleges it's generally required that you have some kind of research grant it used to be expected that that would be a federal grant but I think there's a little bit more leniency given the difficulties these days but publications are the currency so yes you have to document your teaching evaluations yes you have to document reviews of manuscripts that you've done yes you have to document that time that you've spent in the community and being a good citizen but the threshold has to do with whether you've produced scholarly efforts so it's it's one of those things where if you don't have that then doing everything else and being involved in lots of other ways isn't gonna get you beyond that hurdle to contrast that just to let you sort of to give a different perspective from the masters level institution so RJM you wide criteria are are you have to be excellent in one of the three pillars and satisfactory in the other two that is literally all of the that the university handbook says you can see that that's not very much each department then has criteria for how each of those are evaluated certain departments on our campus require that the excellent come in teaching because because of our history as a teaching college certainly certain units really still strongly identify with that and even teach for for and even five five loads that seems insane to me our department is a little bit more of that sort of true masters comprehensive in terms of we sort of value the balance between teaching and research in my case what I wanted to know was whether it says in the handbook I could go up in the pillar of service because you know my service isn't just an amalgamation of committees right it's like an actual center that I'm running and that was something that my unit had even went all the way up to the Dean to get sort of no for real if she submits this is her 10 year packet is that going to be successful so I just sort of gives you a different perspective of you know at an r1 the research is going to make or break you at my level I get a little bit more option to sort of pick which area I want to highlight as where I'm excellent when I go up for full it would be I have to be excellent in to and satisfactory in the third verse is I'm assuming you have to be excellent in teaching yeah you're not going to be successful if you don't have the teaching component if that is the focus of the school but again I still need to document service both internally and externally I need to still document research and especially research that involves our students and that it's hard to juggle I mean one thing we haven't talked about is the balance it's very hard your first year will be hard as I said - so Aaron and I both started together a good friend of ours started out in academia the next year and I remember calling our friend Meredith and saying this year is going to suck it's going to be incredibly hard know that next year will be better it will be a little bit easier it gets a little easier but I think we would be doing you a disservice if we didn't say it's hard to juggle it I have three kids at home has been in two dogs I have an hour commute every H way I mean there are things that are going to make your your daily lives difficult you can't be the best every day and everything that you're trying to do but if you sort of keep in mind from day one as Lou said here's my five-year plan and I think that that website sounds awesome I wish I knew about that five years ago and that website sounds awesome as far as developing that plan and you keep that in mind there are gonna be ups and downs of trying to balance life as a professor because we all have lives outside of the classroom as well don't tell that to my students who are here because then shock them but keep the the end goal in mind and I think if you keep on top of it from the get-go and not wait until you know two months before your interim materials are due so ours is you have a three year review and then your tenure review if it's something that you keep in mind and keep that folder and keep throwing things in there it'll make the process easier and the balance easier because it is it's a it's a balanced game it's a juggling game and this last year was I thought my first year was hard this past year was really hard and trying to balance a baby at home and teaching and keeping tenure which is you know creeping up incredibly fast in mind so they're gonna be ups and downs the first year again because new preps and a whole new situation and trying to navigate the social norms which are unwritten usually at the schools it's difficult but just keep in mind if if this is your passion that should be the overriding focus and even when there there are tough days whether it be due to teaching evaluations or other things of dealing with students keep that in mind and if you have a good network of support whether it be with peers or people you've met it at a CSM turn to those people we all go through this as professors and and use the network you have around you to deploy you up on those tough days I think that build off of Heather's point a little bit about balance that's something that you're going to have to figure out how that works best for you particularly in this age of constant connectivity and honestly the general expectation that you're going to be constantly connected because our students are because they're constantly having their phone in their hand they sort of expected the same and and as I've gotten older and more experienced and more comfortable there been times that I'm like guys you know me at ten that's not happening like I'm in bed like a normal person go to bed but that's something that you're gonna have to figure out what that balance is for you at the same time I would it makes me more comfortable to go ahead and answer some emails at eight o'clock at night because it makes me like a little crazy when there's the red dot on my phone that for me is it's how I feel sort of more relaxed for other people I have I have professor friends who have literally gone back to flip phones to dumb phones because they don't want the connectivity and they can tell a student sorry like I don't have a smart phone that's that's you're out of luck you should have thought about it during office hours you have to find one's gonna be authentic to you to find that balance in that first year set up some blocks of time where you're gonna be able to focus on prepping classes or on research or whichever one is is where your focus needs to be if you're sitting on your your laptop with your email constantly buzzing because it will I certainly assure that you're going to be far less productive than if turn that off focus on prepping your class focus on writing for two or three hours or even an hour at a time that's gonna be a really important skill that was one of the harder for me to develop you have an incredible amount of autonomy it's one of the beauties of our job but that means that you have to be very good at self-regulation in terms of being able to prioritize your time set aside that time and and again think about what you need to accomplish this week this month this year and this five years and prioritize your time according to that obviously we all know you have to be responsive to students because I mean then the students why we're there I'm not trying to like a lotta stupid students I get that's why we're in our jobs but that has to balance with you also being able to do the other parts of your job which include preparing a quality classroom experience for them so you're gonna have to find that balance in this age of constant pinging and even constant stopping by your door and being able to to put a note on your door saying hey I'm writing a manuscript I'm prepping a lecture because if someone is stopping in every five minutes that's really going to disrupt your time there are so many days where I'm like thank goodness the day is over now I can actually go home and do my work and and so I think that's what we as I've become a parent I you'll actually see my daughter around part of being the dual academic marriage as we both need to be here so the daughters with us but as I become a parent I've tried to put more of work at work and more of home at home and that's one of those skills I've had to develop is being able to say this time is it's needs to be devoted to this and I'm gonna stick to that and I'm going to hold myself to that even when something else is perhaps popping up if it's not an emergency it can wait kind of thing well I think you've got complete agreement from the three people up here you need to set up boundaries and those can either be time boundaries that after a certain amount of time I'm focused on my family or I'm focused on me or I'm focused on my hobby or those can be placed boundaries so don't have all day in your office maybe there's a study Carol in the library or a coffee shop that gives you a physical boundary that you can move to to allow you to accomplish the things that are important for you so you have to figure out how you're going to do it but the key to providing that balance and engaging in all the different activities of your life that you think are important is to be able to make time for them so maybe we're at the point where we should open it up to questions from you folks if you will go up to the microphone so that everybody can hear your question so I said this was just for me right okay one thing that I've seen happen at institutions I won't say which one is that senior faculty may have projects that they're really excited about and they think are a good fit in collaboration with new faculty and they say hey why don't you come work on this and this and this how do you set a line between making sure you're a good colleague and getting involved in things but also protecting your time to do things that are going to be important to where you are five years down the road for review that's a great question because that's kind of exactly what happened to me I think first very clearly outlining what they're asking of you even just starting that conversation of you know do you see me as actively collecting data as overseeing students as a logistics scheduling person just in the writing data analysis phase understating that better can help you understand what whether that's a good fit or not and then I think offering concrete ways that you may be able to be involved in within the limits of what you're trying to accomplish I said of just saying no saying you know I've got a lot on my plate but here's how I could help this project here are the skills that I think are sort of the best intersection of what you're looking for and what I'm looking for and so that way I think you're not just blowing them off but you're it's again back to those boundaries and then they'll start to see you as someone who has your own independent research agenda not as a glorified graduate student and I think that helps helps you define that autonomy which is particularly important I had this sort of differently because I did all of my degrees at Miami I had this issue more at the doctoral level of being able to find myself at different levels but I've seen this happen we will go back to a school that they attended being able to now define yourself as a colleague versus just a student who's extended that becomes really important to sort of subtly and gently start drawing those boundaries I would I would just comment that collaborations are increasingly important in science as science becomes more interdisciplinary so embrace those opportunities especially if they're a little outside your expertise because you need to broaden the the involvement instead of saying I'm a this kind of a scientist you need to have colleagues that come from other disciplines but as Liz just said define what the expectations are up front including the potential outcomes we're gonna have a paper out of this and here's who's gonna be the first author it's my graduate student or it's gonna be you and here's what the potential grant application is that will come out of this and who's going to be the author of that I know I'm not a student but prep was a big thing and like that was one thing my first year I was blown away by so for your typical let's say one hour lecture how many hours did you spend prepping just to give them like a quantitative scientific data number that we love because I will tell you for a one-hour lecture for me it was three to five hours of prep that first year and mind you right that's one hour on a Monday - the three classes I teach Monday Wednesday Friday so same to you like what's a typical time length and then how much did you prep for that just to give you an idea of where your time is spent that first year it felt like all I did was prep especially because I was teaching for the first time anatomy and human physiology which I did not teach in graduate school so I'd say three to five hours not an exaggeration per lecture I mean thank God for publisher resources I won't lie so I wasn't creating powerpoints but I had to figure out what this looked like because it had been a long time since I had taken an anatomy class and as an undergrad and now I was teaching one I had nothing in the recent memory to pull from of oh well this is how you know pivot ought it or this is how dr. Pfeiffer taught it I you know I have an example it been a long time and so don't underestimate the amount of prep that you will be doing it will be substantial and again I felt like I felt like their students could see through me that I was you know one or two lectures ahead of them and I was just shocked when I got my rep my evaluations at the end of the semester of how well-organized I was and how well-prepared I was I was like oh cow I must have just completely fooled them because I felt like I was just keeping my head above water they don't know any better to be honest so as long as you can sort of keep a day or two ahead of them you know try to do as much as you can a head of time if you know already what you're gonna be teaching in the fall my god start next week when you're home even putting your syllabi together now do not wait till August so at least you have an idea of what my semester looks like again call on your network of buddies Chris I said it to you before the session started tell me what you're teaching if you need anything call I'm more than happy to share and I think I have found that to be incredibly rewarding the network of people I have from from both my masters and my my doctoral work of if I need something just give me your syllabus you know can I just see how did you teach this so like I'm teaching sport nutrition in the fall for the first time I've never taught nutrition so I reached out to two of my buddies at various schools who I know teaching me like can I just see what you cover you know what topics are important that you think I mean this is what you teach all the time so again I can't stress enough the network you know I I'll speak for us I'll try you know come up to any of us after you know if you see any of us around anyone who's on either this panel or the panel before you know if you want to talk to us more in depth about you know specific questions you use us as the start of your network as far as what faculty life an interview process and that first year looks like we've all been there and I think especially if you're at a teaching intensive school we like teaching we like helping we like while all of that and whether it's an undergrad or a first year faculty member you know use us I would agree I would say even one of my classes was just on obesity talk about that like the broadest topic ever some of those lectures took me 10 to 15 hours to prep because if I was teaching about the economics of obesity just to get my own head wrapped around something that was was pretty solidly outside my field but I felt like was an important thing to talk about when we're talking about the impact of obesity some of those lectures took me an incredible amount of time to prep ones that were a little bit more in my wheelhouse I would say three to five is a bit more standard the other thing I would prepare you for after about the third or fourth time you've taught a class that's when you see like a really a really nice break in terms of how comfortable you are for the first several years the first semester sort of get everything on the slides or get everything in my lecture notes the second one was okay I don't like talking to people for 75 minutes straight how can I build in formative assessments and other techniques within my class to help build those in you maybe you're amazing and you can build those in the first year for me it was like just just get the material there make sure I feel like I gave them all of the information I felt like was required for a class after about the third or fourth year it was like okay this actually looks like what I want it to look like and now I'm going back to two new brand new preps this fall which is just making me cry a little bit inside but because I know I know that it's sort of a it's really like a three year process until I get back to the place I am now in terms of just really feeling good about where a class is sort of as a whole there'll be pieces you love from the beginning but know that and just it's it's okay that's the process everyone goes through you will look back and feel a little bit bad for your students that you had your first semester that's okay they had a good experience you're a qualified person that's why you got the job so give yourself that grace but then continue trying to to improve and get better and don't forget with all the stress of prepping you have to grade 2 so as you're trying to keep up on the prep and then oh crap I had them do an 8 page research paper and there's 32 of them in the class and I'm madly trying to grade those which wine helps just keep that in mind and you're still trying to prep so as you're looking at your three classes or four classes God love you if you have four for the semester and look at when you have things do if I mean it may seem awesome if your anatomy class interphase class all have an exam on the same day because great there's no prep for that day for either class but that means that I have to grade the exams so keep in mind what the grading load looks like in addition to the prep load you know students like lots of feedback that's great but they also like it timely and if you assign all this stuff but you just can't get through it because you're also trying to prep that's no good for either of you so usually what I do when I do my syllabi I then grab my can't grab my planner or my calendar or my foot phone and I plug in when the when I've scheduled the test to make sure that there's not too much overlap or when I've scheduled research papers and in two classes to make sure again one maybe earlier in the semester so I can get through those or mostly get through those before the next wave hits so keep in mind the grading because if you're just trying to prep all semester it's very hard to do both of the the magnitude of the grading and the magnitude of the prep so keep that in mind neither of you negotiate for a student helper are a grater to help yeah any of that process I wish but my department secretary is always helpful when it comes to multiple-choice true/false think easy things degrade she always volunteers to grade them and I am more than happy to hand her the piyo when I come out of the classroom so you may find sort of an unexpected helper at a fully under grad school I don't have TAS I don't have graduate assistants so when it comes to to the grading it's me or Nicky sometimes which is helpful we do have what we call collateral at JMU so we in our department make sure the I think 14 graduate assistants we have a pretty healthy funding for that and so each professor professor is allowed to have five hours a week of a graduate assistant that we can use sort of however we see fit what I will say is that the grading is how I keep the best pulse on the class and how it's going so it's a double-edged sword if you hand it off what I would ask about and this is going to depend on your institution is whether you can have a reduced teaching load for the first year and if you can or and even if you can't can you have overlapping preps can you teach two sections of X phys because the time in the classroom is sort of the least amount of time in terms of the teaching so I don't think that's an unreasonable question it may not always be able to happen but that's that's a normal question to ask when you're negotiating with people or even the same prep from from fall to spring so that you're not ideally you're not going to go in and have six brand-new preps over your first year that's a pretty rough year I think fully have not had to do it but I have many colleagues you have you know so if you can double up a prep or have at least one the same fall to spring that's gonna really help keep you saying trip other questions she's on her way up this is probably more from an r1 perspective just because it's what I've experienced I was doing a research rotation in a very junior faculty lab and she had a postdoc that was pretty much the same level that she was and there was a lot of like knocking heads and conflicting ideas so how do you going into being a junior faculty try to avoid that when you're hiring new people into your lab when you're hiring postdocs or PhDs or something like that I think the first thing is new faculty shouldn't hire postdoc is the first person in their lab and it shouldn't be a graduate student either because you're not going to get that much out of that graduate student in those first couple of years so the recommendation that comes from other people not just me but including this this book making the right moves would be if you've got funding the first person you ought to consider hiring as a research technician somebody that can get in and actually do the experiments and can order the supplies and keep things and get things organized and keep them organized that would be the the wisest thing to do I think we have a situation because of the number of scientists produced worldwide where it's wages have been depressed for postdoctoral fellows and so often people think of hiring a postdoc first but there is this built-in competition where you really owe it to a postdoctoral fellow to let her take a project along and yet the junior faculty member is trying to keep that project so those are my thoughts about it thank you all for coming I think to echo what Heather said please feel free to approach me in the hall you'll see me probably with my stroller and my daughter so I'm easy to find but I'm more than happy to talk about anything we talked about here or about my dual academic career marriage thing if that's something that you guys are facing or or anything else absolutely and I think there's supposed to be a networking reception outside afterwards so don't run away

Channel: ACSM

Views: 7,473

Keywords: Student, exercise science, acsm, American College of Sports Medicine

Id: 7NB__VUXpXA

Length: 59min 27sec (3567 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2016