Skip to content Skip to navigation Skip to collection information

Connexions

You are here: Home » Content » 2009 NSF ADVANCE Workshop: Negotiating the Ideal Faculty Position » Finding The Right Institutional Fit For You

Navigation

Lenses

What is a lens?

Definition of a lens

Lenses

A lens is a custom view of the content in the repository. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see content through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

What is in a lens?

Lens makers point to materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

Who can create a lens?

Any individual member, a community, or a respected organization.

What are tags? tag icon

Tags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.

This content is ...

Affiliated with (What does "Affiliated with" mean?)

This content is either by members of the organizations listed or about topics related to the organizations listed. Click each link to see a list of all content affiliated with the organization.
  • Rice ADVANCE display tagshide tags

    This module and collection are included inLens: Rice ADVANCE Workshops
    By: NSF ADVANCE Program

    Click the "Rice ADVANCE" link to see all content affiliated with them.

    Click the tag icon tag icon to display tags associated with this content.

Also in these lenses

  • Lens for Engineering

    This module and collection are included inLens: Lens for Engineering
    By: Sidney Burrus

    Click the "Lens for Engineering" link to see all content selected in this lens.

Recently Viewed

This feature requires Javascript to be enabled.

Tags

(What is a tag?)

These tags come from the endorsement, affiliation, and other lenses that include this content.
 

Finding The Right Institutional Fit For You

Module by: Rice ADVANCE. E-mail the author

Summary: This presentation was designed to assist and educate the interviewee regarding campus culture and atmosphere, and was authored by Rebecca Richards-Kortum (BIOE) and Kathleen Matthews (BIOS).

Goals

  • Understand what you want to know
    • What is essential for your success and well-being in your career?
  • Identify the pathway to find the information you need - be proactive and use your resources (e.g., Web)
  • Reassess what is important in the context of reality

Three Kinds of Institutional Support

  • Tangible resources
    • Space, salary, start-up, access to students
  • Institutional policies
    • Graduate study — reviews, support, opportunities to learn outside research
    • Department and university policies
    • Mechanism by which department operates
  • Intangible department support
    • Mentoring, advising
    • Culture, spirit, collegiality
    • Moral support, empathy

Tangibles

  • Space
    • How much do you need?
    • What is reasonable in the institutional context?
  • People
    • What do you need? Graduate stipends? Technical support?
    • What is reasonable in the institutional context?
  • Start up costs
    • What do you need?
    • What is reasonable in the institutional context?

Institution/Department Policies

  • Graduate student context
    • Stipend, training in speaking/writing, opportunities to present their work and receive feedback
  • Departmental context
    • Opportunities to invite senior faculty in for seminars
    • Mechanisms for effective mentoring (in or outside the department)
  • Institutional context
    • Leave policies (how are these viewed by Department?)
    • Resources for learning
      • Teaching
      • Grant-writing
      • Running a laboratory

Intangibles (may be most important!)

  • Mentoring — what happened to others?
    • Formal/informal
  • Advice on grants/manuscripts
    • Feedback mechanisms and support
  • Advice and feedback on teaching
    • Resources/handouts/exams
  • Positive and supportive climate
    • For whom?
  • Moral support
    • When the grant doesn’t come through…
  • Quality of life in the community
    • Public vs private institution
    • Cost of living
    • Daycare and schools
    • Size of the city/town
    • Job opportunities for a partner/spouse
    • Weather
    • Sports
    • Arts
    • Other interests
    • Other……

Types of Environments

  • Supportive (understand what it means to be a junior faculty member)
    • Provide strong mentoring and support for teaching and research
    • Demand service, but do not overwhelm
  • Neutral
    • Don’t help, but not negative
    • Not supportive (“sink or swim”)
    • No support system
  • Critical and sometimes demeaning
    • Demand high levels of service
    • Senior faculty “eat their young” or “favored few”

What do you want to know?

  • About the department?
    • This is THE MOST IMPORTANT
  • About the School/College/Institution
    • But the overall context matters
  • How do you decide what to explore?
    • Priorities for you may differ from others
    • Think in many dimensions

Thinking about what you want

  • Brainstorming
    • What matters most to you?
    • Why?
    • Are you sure?
    • Can you imagine taking a job that does not fulfill your expectation in this realm?
    • What factors could compensate if this desire is not fulfilled?

Now that you know what you want to know...

  • You don’t want to appear as if culture matters more than science, so...
  • How do you find out this information safely?

Two examples

  • How is TA support allocated?
    • Ways to ask that get you snowed
    • Ways to ask that get you the real answer
  • Maternity leave policies
    • Unsafe ways to ask
    • Safe ways to ask

How do you ask?

  • Brainstorming
    • What information do you want?
    • How can you think creatively about asking your questions?
    • What if you can’t figure out a way to ask?

What if you end up in a challenging culture?

  • Strategies for coping
    • Identify supporters within the department
    • Identify potential mentors outside the department
    • Say “no” when it seems safe to protect your time
    • Identify the value system and operate, to the degree possible, within that system

Questions?

  • Think before you act
  • Reach out to your mentors for input
  • Reflect on your questions
  • Reflect on the information that you receive

Collection Navigation

Content actions

Download:

Collection as:

PDF | EPUB (?)

What is an EPUB file?

EPUB is an electronic book format that can be read on a variety of mobile devices.

Downloading to a reading device

For detailed instructions on how to download this content's EPUB to your specific device, click the "(?)" link.

| More downloads ...

Module as:

PDF | EPUB (?)

What is an EPUB file?

EPUB is an electronic book format that can be read on a variety of mobile devices.

Downloading to a reading device

For detailed instructions on how to download this content's EPUB to your specific device, click the "(?)" link.

| More downloads ...

Add:

Collection to:

My Favorites (?)

'My Favorites' is a special kind of lens which you can use to bookmark modules and collections. 'My Favorites' can only be seen by you, and collections saved in 'My Favorites' can remember the last module you were on. You need an account to use 'My Favorites'.

| A lens I own (?)

Definition of a lens

Lenses

A lens is a custom view of the content in the repository. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see content through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

What is in a lens?

Lens makers point to materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

Who can create a lens?

Any individual member, a community, or a respected organization.

What are tags? tag icon

Tags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.

| External bookmarks

Module to:

My Favorites (?)

'My Favorites' is a special kind of lens which you can use to bookmark modules and collections. 'My Favorites' can only be seen by you, and collections saved in 'My Favorites' can remember the last module you were on. You need an account to use 'My Favorites'.

| A lens I own (?)

Definition of a lens

Lenses

A lens is a custom view of the content in the repository. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see content through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

What is in a lens?

Lens makers point to materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

Who can create a lens?

Any individual member, a community, or a respected organization.

What are tags? tag icon

Tags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.

| External bookmarks