In a Friday, March 28th post, entitled "O Women, Where Art Thou?", I asked for input on what makes women who are gifted in math or science choose the specializations they do. My primary motivation was to understand if I was recruiting women adequately for my research program, but I also wanted to understand if my belief that women scientists, just like men scientists, choose their specialization for the love of knowledge and the challenge is correct, or if women scientists are more inclined to select fields that suit their nurturing sides. The latter -- that women can be drawn to certain fields if we show them the field has a strong humanitarian, biomedical, or societal compontent -- is used by some departments (see comment) as a premise for revising curricula and course syllabi in order to attract more women.
So the question can be posed as: when choosing a specialty, do women scientists and engineers choose primarily like stereotypical (male) scientists [for the love of science/knowledge] or do they choose like stereotypical (non-scientist) women [for societal/medical/humanitarian applications]?
I posed a set of 4 questions, and 13 people (12 women, 1 of unspecified gender) from STEM fields chose to share their answers with us. I thank them for their candor and encourage you to look at their comments in detail here, as well as to post your own if you haven't so already. This was obvioulsy not a carefully designed scientific study, so I am sure the questions could have used much revising and refining, but I think we can draw smoe interesting conclusions here. (You are encouraged to draw your own from the "raw data".)
These were the 4 questions:
- If you are a scientist (male or female) in a STEM field, are you naturally drawn to subareas or projects that have a prominent societal/human/biological/medical component?
- Are you doing science for the pure technical challenges or is broader impact the main driver for you?
- Do you consider frequent interpersonal interactions with co-workers to be something you crave in your subsequent career?
- Are you more hands-on (lab work) or do you prefer abstract work (with a strong math and/or computing component)?
Among the 13 people who answered (comments 1 through 15 of previous post), we had:
1 hard STEM field unspecified
3 physics or astronomy/astrophysics (1 physics, 1 astronomy, 1 astrophysics)
3 math or computer science (1 math, 2 comp sci)
1 physical atmospheric chemistry
2 biology or biomedical science (1 biological sciences, 1 biomedical sciences)
3 engineering (1 biomedical, 1 unspecified, 1 chemical)
We also had participants from PhD students to faculty, and senior people's drivers reportedly changed as they progressed through their careers (they acquire more of an appreciation for the societal, or for the big picture view of things).
The most general conclusions from the set of 13 data points provided by comments 1 through 15 are the following:
1) Science -- be it the techical challenges or the desire to see the big picture f how the universe works -- is the dominant driver among women scientists. Even engineers report the technical challenge to be a significant driver in the early career.
"I am not particularly drawn to subjects that have a societal/human/biological/medical component. I prefer research that addresses big questions like the why and how the universe works the way it does."
"I am interested in the technical challenges. What I am really interested in is how to control and arrange materials to get the properties we want."
"I am not drawn to areas with a societal component. I study math because I enjoy the intellectual/creative challenge."
"... it is the big picture, trying to figure out how the universe works that really draws me in. Overcoming challenges is very rewarding, though."
"I am motivated by my aesthetic appreciation and the logic of the work itself, not its potential broader impacts, biomedical relevance, etc."
"I am definitely drawn to biological research, but this has little/nothing to do with societal/human/medical components. I am motivated by the challenge of figuring out how life works, not by curing a disease or doing "good" for society..."
"...as people before me wrote, it is the big picture, trying to figure out how the universe works that really draws me in. Overcoming challenges is very rewarding, though."
"Pure technical challenge - I love it when I find a new way of doing something or a solution to a tough problem."
2) For all women, small collaborations are enjoyable, but a number find networking quite unpleasant. Many are also fine working on their own and don't necessarily crave frequent interaction. So not all women scientists are social butterflies (a treat stereotypically ascribed to women).
"I am an antisocial introvert, so interpersonal interactions are the opposite of a driver."
"I can be introverted and antisocial and find networking with the Old Boys Club to be frustrating."
"I enjoy interacting with my co-workers, but do not crave it. I do not enjoy interacting with people I do not know, so networking is a complete nightmare."
3) Of the 13 people who left comments, we have had 3 engineers (2 female, 1 of unspecified gender), and they all share that the impact on society is a significant driver for them.
"I get a great deal of satisfaction out of programming that difficult algorithm, simplifying that triple integral, etc. However, I realized that my inclination to solve technical problems could never be the driver of my entire career; I needed to see my work interact with society. "
"I started in undergrad as an engineer for the technical challenge, but I've stayed for the broader impact."
"I want to do work that makes an impact on global society, whether that be human health, alternative energy, environmental remediation, etc."
I don't know if this holds because these are women or because they are engineers (i.e. they chose to apply their math and science talents to an engineering discipline rather than a basic science discipline). A person, male or female, who chooses engineering over basic science may be more inclined to value societal impact as extremely important in their work. In contrast, one comment says: "My department has also found our number of enrolled undergraduate women increased dramatically now that we teach our core engineering courses in a way that emphasizes practical application of fundamental theories. The number of men enrolled also increased, but the percentage of women is higher," which emphasizes the gender component.
Engineering girl linked to an interesting post that delineates the differences between a male and a female brain. To summarize, on average boys rule in math and logic, while girls rule in language and emoting, as per stereotypical expectations. I have no doubt that men and women are different (and I don't mean in the breast or genitalia departments). I think anyone who has had children in daycare and seen little 2-year olds interact will notice differences between a group of boys and a group of girls. If you have a group of 10 boys and a group of 10 girls and offer them trucks and dolls, a majority of boys will go for the trucks and a majority of girls will go for the dolls, but not all kids will go for the toys traditionally associated with their gender, and some kids will go for neither.
Let us imagine a distribution of human treats, over a large parameter space of all treats; the peak of the distribution is on the language/social skills side of the paramter space for women and on the math/logical side for men. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the male distribution is more "tail-heavy", i.e. that men's distribution features more extremely high and extremenly low specimens for any given treat than the female one.
But this was for the general population. The question here is: How do women scientists compare to men scientists: are they more similar to men scientists in their professional skills and aspirations than they are to the women from the general population? This question requires a peak into the high-IQ distribution tails for both men and women, because this is where scientists are. (I have a nagging feeling that this question that might have already been answered by social scientists...
Within science and engineering as a profession, is the distribution of primary technical skills less sensitive to gender than in the general population? What about the secondary technical skills (e.g. verbal and writing): do women scientists still have the upper hand over men scientists in these skills, like what one would expect from the general population trends? Engineering girl says, "Throwing gender completely aside for a while, there are "trends" in personality type across different fields - my engineering friends behave differently than my art major friends *on average.*"
I do agree; the self-selection we perform by choosing our profession tends to unite us across genders and races much more strongly than a common gender or race unites us across professions. So perhaps I should go back to recruiting women and men for my group the same way, as I have done so far, trusting that, for better or worse, the love for science is a great equalizer.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
O Women, Where Art Thou?
You think women are underrepresented in science? Well, you should check out my field (I am in one of the "hard" STEM fields). There really are virtually no women here. Anywhere. I routinely teach 50+ student undergrad courses with 0-2 women. Among graduate students, there are some women, most of them foreign-born. In my specialty, there are so few women that it borders on bizarre -- during my specialty's biannual workshop I realized there are two senior (i.e. faculty) women, myself being one of them, two female postdocs (non-US) and one female student (US). This is out of 100+ participants.
So it's not so much the issue of a leaky pipeline; rather, we cannot get the women who are interested in science to even consider entering our pipeline.
Don't get me wrong, I love men. I am married to a phenomenal guy, my children are boys. I have no problem getting along with men at work, and I am fairly thick-skinned when it comes to sexist remarks or simply stupid, insensitive banter.
My research group currently consists of 10+ guys and no girls, and my long-term collaborators are all male.
So working with men and around men is totally fine by me, but sometimes it gets exhausting. Sometimes it feels like I am in a frat house, and I wish there were more women I could work with.
The first PhD student I graduated was an excellent young woman, and we are very good friends now. I also advised another woman jointly with another faculty, but that has been the extent of my advising of women. I try to recruit women actively, but my success has been fairly low. One aspect is that the applicant pool contains very few women to begin with (I search all the graduate applications meticulously), and have made a few offers to women but those didn't work out. So at this point I have decided it's a combination of the following things: (1) my group's work does not appeal to women for reasons that I don't fully understand (the fact that it's all guys in my group right now probably does not help with recruiting women), (2) my personality and/or my demeanor may be a deterrent and/or I may have to do something differently to address female students when I recruit them.
While there is an overall dearth of female students and postdocs in my department, there actually are faculty with a fairly large representation of women in their groups. I have noticed that many of those young women work on bio-related projects, which is not the work I do. This got me thinking about how my college has been trying to actively recruit more women: the spiel is that women are drawn to project with a strong societal component and/or a possibility of benefitting humankind, rather than advancing a technology or building cool equipment or gadgets. I am not sure I like the pigeon-holing of all women into project with a nurturing component (because we are all supposed to be nurturers first and foremost, mind you). I know this would have not worked for me; for me, the motivator was always the technical challenge: the more complicated the math and physics, the better.
But, I may be a complete anomaly...
So I would like to explore what it is that makes young women, interested in science, choose the areas that they do. Obviously, this is not a scientific study, but rather an informal inquiry among peers. I would like to understand if there is something simple that I can do to attract a more diverse pool of applicants to my group, or if it's just the types of projects that are unattractive to most women.
So, I would appreciate your comments on the following, and please indicate if you are male or female.
- If you are a scientist (male or female) in a STEM field, are you naturally drawn to subareas or projects that have a prominent societal/human/biological/medical component?
- Are you doing science for the pure technical challenges or is broader impact the main driver for you?
- Do you consider frequent interpersonal interactions with co-workers to be something you crave in your subsequent career?
- Are you more hands-on (lab work) or do you prefer abstract work (with a strong math and/or computing component)?
So it's not so much the issue of a leaky pipeline; rather, we cannot get the women who are interested in science to even consider entering our pipeline.
Don't get me wrong, I love men. I am married to a phenomenal guy, my children are boys. I have no problem getting along with men at work, and I am fairly thick-skinned when it comes to sexist remarks or simply stupid, insensitive banter.
My research group currently consists of 10+ guys and no girls, and my long-term collaborators are all male.
So working with men and around men is totally fine by me, but sometimes it gets exhausting. Sometimes it feels like I am in a frat house, and I wish there were more women I could work with.
The first PhD student I graduated was an excellent young woman, and we are very good friends now. I also advised another woman jointly with another faculty, but that has been the extent of my advising of women. I try to recruit women actively, but my success has been fairly low. One aspect is that the applicant pool contains very few women to begin with (I search all the graduate applications meticulously), and have made a few offers to women but those didn't work out. So at this point I have decided it's a combination of the following things: (1) my group's work does not appeal to women for reasons that I don't fully understand (the fact that it's all guys in my group right now probably does not help with recruiting women), (2) my personality and/or my demeanor may be a deterrent and/or I may have to do something differently to address female students when I recruit them.
While there is an overall dearth of female students and postdocs in my department, there actually are faculty with a fairly large representation of women in their groups. I have noticed that many of those young women work on bio-related projects, which is not the work I do. This got me thinking about how my college has been trying to actively recruit more women: the spiel is that women are drawn to project with a strong societal component and/or a possibility of benefitting humankind, rather than advancing a technology or building cool equipment or gadgets. I am not sure I like the pigeon-holing of all women into project with a nurturing component (because we are all supposed to be nurturers first and foremost, mind you). I know this would have not worked for me; for me, the motivator was always the technical challenge: the more complicated the math and physics, the better.
But, I may be a complete anomaly...
So I would like to explore what it is that makes young women, interested in science, choose the areas that they do. Obviously, this is not a scientific study, but rather an informal inquiry among peers. I would like to understand if there is something simple that I can do to attract a more diverse pool of applicants to my group, or if it's just the types of projects that are unattractive to most women.
So, I would appreciate your comments on the following, and please indicate if you are male or female.
- If you are a scientist (male or female) in a STEM field, are you naturally drawn to subareas or projects that have a prominent societal/human/biological/medical component?
- Are you doing science for the pure technical challenges or is broader impact the main driver for you?
- Do you consider frequent interpersonal interactions with co-workers to be something you crave in your subsequent career?
- Are you more hands-on (lab work) or do you prefer abstract work (with a strong math and/or computing component)?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Academic => Politician : True or False?
Forgive my little excursion into mathematical logic, which the geeky me really loves.
The title is a concise statement of what I believe to be true: a necessary condition to be an academic is to have political skills. If you think this is not true, let me rephrase: an equivalent statement can be obtained by negating the statement above, i.e.
NOT Politician => NOT Academic
In other words, if you have no political skills, your chances of getting a position and thriving as a tenure-track and later tenured faculty are, well, zilch.
This post has been inspired by several things I have been reading on different blogs, which collectively ask the following questions: Is it enough for an academic to be technically brilliant? Should he/she have political skills and to what extent are these allowed to matter in academic advancement?
I am not a social or political scientist, or a legislator by any stretch. I am a STEM faculty, a scientist, so when I talk about "political skills" I assume "political skills in academia", primarily from my experience and the experience of my colleagues and collaborators in STEM fields, although I am quite sure many aspects hold quite broadly. So let me start by defininig (dangerously loosely) political skills in academia as the abilities to assess the balance of power and the hierarchy in your institution, to understand what motivates other people, what their agendas are, where their loyalties lie, and to work within those constraints and the constraints of the broader academic system to advance your own academic interests. All of the highly successful scientists I know are very good academic politicians: they are technically excellent AND they take full advantage of the interpersonal relationships and the institutional structure to advance their professional agendas.
Having political skills does not imply that you are dishonest or manipulative. Here are a few examples from everyday life of a scientist:
a) You cultivate a relationship with a funding program manager. As an example I am familiar with, let us take DOD agencies, where you and the PM really have to get to know each other. Your agenda is getting funding, the PM's agenda is to find the best people to do the work for his program. By listening to what the PM needs you can adjust your immediate proposal goals so that you come up with a proposal that fits very well with the program; it's a win-win situation for both. The opposite, politically unsavvy scenario (believe me, I have seen it many times) would be complaining how nobody wants to fund what you want to do, without exploring what people actually want to fund.
b) Getting a stellar candidate in your area hired. Most tenure-track applicants don't realize how much intradepartmental politics shapes the outcome of faculty searches. For example, the college will allow only 1 hire and often it happens that two subareas have a stellar candidate. So who gets the candidate? Do the subareas join forces and go to call in favors with the Dean, Provost, or work out a different tenure home for one of the candidates? Does one of the candidates get dropped? These are all possible outcomes, depending on the fine balance of power within your department, the department's relationship to the college, and the college's standing within the university.
c) You need lab space, as does Prof Labhog. Who gets it? It depends on your seniority, Labhog's seniority, how much each of you is liked by Department Chair or the person(s) who has Chair's ear. There are things that can tip the scale in your favor (e.g., you are a junior faculty and need to start up your research program) or in Labhog's favor (e.g., he just received a ginormous grant and needs the lab for the new project). How everything plays out depends on your and Labhog's political skills.
These are all real scenarios where no malice is involved. Doing science requires infrastructure, financial and human resources, administrative support, and time, and everyone is fighting over limited supplies of each. Pretending these don't matter is naive, in academia or life for that matter. Being able to form alliances over certain common interests (e.g., all faculty in one subarea want to hire candidate RisingStar) and disband and form others over other interests (e.g., while Labhog and you are on the same team to bring RisingStar, you clash on labspace, while Prof Supportive is behind your case on this one) is part of the job.
You have to be clear about your loyalties and your interests, and savvy about assessing those of others.
Another aspect of the issue of politics in academia has recently been debated quite hotly in the context of spousal hires. Many people object to positions being created for a spousal hire, and that perhaps if such a position is created there should be other people interviewed for it too. However, the number of positions is not an instantaneous quantity: there are long-term strategic goals of departments and colleges, and perhaps such a position was not a high priority at that particular point in time, however, the fact that there is an excellent primary hire and a spousal that would be a good fit for the position, the position get elevated priority -- but only in the context of the spousal hire; otherwise, the resources would not be dispensed on that position at that time.
Here's a related anecdote: a colleague of mine's spouse was a prospective spousal hire in another department several years ago. However, the spouse did not get hired over a strong opposition form a faculty who sensed competition and lobbied against the hire. So the spouse took a job at a university several hours away, did a smashing job and received early tenure; in the meantime, some college administration changed, and the now tenured spouse with a phenomenal record was brought to the university, with the climate now much more accepting. None of this would have happened without several layers of administration working together.
People ask the question whether anything but the technical skill is relevant, isn't academia supposed to be a meritocracy? I believe technical prowess is necessary for success in academia, but merit is not narrowly defined as technical excellence: a person who is oblivious to how the institution works cannot be successful. A rare lone genius who can shun the institution and still achieve great fame ia usually a remnant of time bygone. Superstars rarely go in the lab, but they manage students and postdocs and bring in a lot of funding, none of which can be done successfully without political skills. Should we not try to hire superstars, because their lab skills are probably rusty? Of course not. Because their political savvy enables the science to be done. Just like Congress enables the vast majority of scientific enterprise to be funded. Politics, from lab-scale to national, greases the wheels of science.
Academics are people, and political skills matter in all human interactions. Political skills are not the same as people skills, although having great people skills (which scientists stereotypically don't) doesn't hurt. Being able to understand what motivates each one of your staff and work with that is essential in having a productive group. I believe political savvy can and should be acquired through training, and should be an inherent part of PhD and postdoctoral experience. For instance, students/postdocs should know who the heavy-hitters in the field are, where the field is moving to and who the new stars are, as well as where the emerging sources of funding are. We as faculty can share the experience and best practices not only in lab techniques, but also in how to market oneself and how to advocate for oneself. Such skills would enable junior researchers to see the world of academia for what it is, a wonderful enterprise where challenging questions that benefit humankind get to be answered , but where ultimately bills have to be paid, and favors have to be exchanged, and strings have to be pulled. This complexity does not make science any less fascinating, just more real.
The title is a concise statement of what I believe to be true: a necessary condition to be an academic is to have political skills. If you think this is not true, let me rephrase: an equivalent statement can be obtained by negating the statement above, i.e.
NOT Politician => NOT Academic
In other words, if you have no political skills, your chances of getting a position and thriving as a tenure-track and later tenured faculty are, well, zilch.
This post has been inspired by several things I have been reading on different blogs, which collectively ask the following questions: Is it enough for an academic to be technically brilliant? Should he/she have political skills and to what extent are these allowed to matter in academic advancement?
I am not a social or political scientist, or a legislator by any stretch. I am a STEM faculty, a scientist, so when I talk about "political skills" I assume "political skills in academia", primarily from my experience and the experience of my colleagues and collaborators in STEM fields, although I am quite sure many aspects hold quite broadly. So let me start by defininig (dangerously loosely) political skills in academia as the abilities to assess the balance of power and the hierarchy in your institution, to understand what motivates other people, what their agendas are, where their loyalties lie, and to work within those constraints and the constraints of the broader academic system to advance your own academic interests. All of the highly successful scientists I know are very good academic politicians: they are technically excellent AND they take full advantage of the interpersonal relationships and the institutional structure to advance their professional agendas.
Having political skills does not imply that you are dishonest or manipulative. Here are a few examples from everyday life of a scientist:
a) You cultivate a relationship with a funding program manager. As an example I am familiar with, let us take DOD agencies, where you and the PM really have to get to know each other. Your agenda is getting funding, the PM's agenda is to find the best people to do the work for his program. By listening to what the PM needs you can adjust your immediate proposal goals so that you come up with a proposal that fits very well with the program; it's a win-win situation for both. The opposite, politically unsavvy scenario (believe me, I have seen it many times) would be complaining how nobody wants to fund what you want to do, without exploring what people actually want to fund.
b) Getting a stellar candidate in your area hired. Most tenure-track applicants don't realize how much intradepartmental politics shapes the outcome of faculty searches. For example, the college will allow only 1 hire and often it happens that two subareas have a stellar candidate. So who gets the candidate? Do the subareas join forces and go to call in favors with the Dean, Provost, or work out a different tenure home for one of the candidates? Does one of the candidates get dropped? These are all possible outcomes, depending on the fine balance of power within your department, the department's relationship to the college, and the college's standing within the university.
c) You need lab space, as does Prof Labhog. Who gets it? It depends on your seniority, Labhog's seniority, how much each of you is liked by Department Chair or the person(s) who has Chair's ear. There are things that can tip the scale in your favor (e.g., you are a junior faculty and need to start up your research program) or in Labhog's favor (e.g., he just received a ginormous grant and needs the lab for the new project). How everything plays out depends on your and Labhog's political skills.
These are all real scenarios where no malice is involved. Doing science requires infrastructure, financial and human resources, administrative support, and time, and everyone is fighting over limited supplies of each. Pretending these don't matter is naive, in academia or life for that matter. Being able to form alliances over certain common interests (e.g., all faculty in one subarea want to hire candidate RisingStar) and disband and form others over other interests (e.g., while Labhog and you are on the same team to bring RisingStar, you clash on labspace, while Prof Supportive is behind your case on this one) is part of the job.
You have to be clear about your loyalties and your interests, and savvy about assessing those of others.
Another aspect of the issue of politics in academia has recently been debated quite hotly in the context of spousal hires. Many people object to positions being created for a spousal hire, and that perhaps if such a position is created there should be other people interviewed for it too. However, the number of positions is not an instantaneous quantity: there are long-term strategic goals of departments and colleges, and perhaps such a position was not a high priority at that particular point in time, however, the fact that there is an excellent primary hire and a spousal that would be a good fit for the position, the position get elevated priority -- but only in the context of the spousal hire; otherwise, the resources would not be dispensed on that position at that time.
Here's a related anecdote: a colleague of mine's spouse was a prospective spousal hire in another department several years ago. However, the spouse did not get hired over a strong opposition form a faculty who sensed competition and lobbied against the hire. So the spouse took a job at a university several hours away, did a smashing job and received early tenure; in the meantime, some college administration changed, and the now tenured spouse with a phenomenal record was brought to the university, with the climate now much more accepting. None of this would have happened without several layers of administration working together.
People ask the question whether anything but the technical skill is relevant, isn't academia supposed to be a meritocracy? I believe technical prowess is necessary for success in academia, but merit is not narrowly defined as technical excellence: a person who is oblivious to how the institution works cannot be successful. A rare lone genius who can shun the institution and still achieve great fame ia usually a remnant of time bygone. Superstars rarely go in the lab, but they manage students and postdocs and bring in a lot of funding, none of which can be done successfully without political skills. Should we not try to hire superstars, because their lab skills are probably rusty? Of course not. Because their political savvy enables the science to be done. Just like Congress enables the vast majority of scientific enterprise to be funded. Politics, from lab-scale to national, greases the wheels of science.
Academics are people, and political skills matter in all human interactions. Political skills are not the same as people skills, although having great people skills (which scientists stereotypically don't) doesn't hurt. Being able to understand what motivates each one of your staff and work with that is essential in having a productive group. I believe political savvy can and should be acquired through training, and should be an inherent part of PhD and postdoctoral experience. For instance, students/postdocs should know who the heavy-hitters in the field are, where the field is moving to and who the new stars are, as well as where the emerging sources of funding are. We as faculty can share the experience and best practices not only in lab techniques, but also in how to market oneself and how to advocate for oneself. Such skills would enable junior researchers to see the world of academia for what it is, a wonderful enterprise where challenging questions that benefit humankind get to be answered , but where ultimately bills have to be paid, and favors have to be exchanged, and strings have to be pulled. This complexity does not make science any less fascinating, just more real.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
NSF CAREER Tips
It is mid-May, so there are 2 months left till mid-July. But, I am not counting down to vacation: mid-July is when NSF CAREER grant proposals are due. Therefore, around mid-May is when my junior colleagues usually start to write (or think about starting to write) their proposals, and I start getting a lot of questions about my experience (I got a CAREER award several years ago). In this post, I will try to provide, as much as I can, a discipline-independent set of suggestions for writing this type of grant, based on my experiences.
NSF CAREER awards are 5-year grants that are meant to enable promising young faculty to develop their research programs. Depending on the NSF directorate you plan on applying to, these awards are capped at either $400 K or $500 K.
Depending on your school's overhead and your lab needs, this usually won't cover much more than lab supplies, 1 student, and 1 summer month per year. But, the prestige associated with CAREER is significant, and getting it is a valuable (although certainly not necessary) ingredient in securing tenure.
1. Getting Informed
As with all grants, contacting the program manager (PM) is extremely important. Typically, not all program managers in your division will be involved in the CAREER program, so your regular PM may not have anything to do with it. So first find out who the contact PM is for the CAREER program, and contact him/her early on, before you start writing. Now is early enough that they may not be entirely swamped yet.
Also, some divisions utilize mail-in review + panels, some only panels (I don't think any do mail-in only). In some divisions, CAREER panels are composed of senior prominent faculty, in others you can have recent junior awardees. The composition of the panel and the PM may be significantly different than your regular program's PM and panels, so get informed early.
In my experience, you may need to be persistent in getting a hold of the PM, but this is very important.
2. Scope
In my opinion (I'm not alone in this), CAREER grants are different in scope than regular NSF grants. They are painted with broader strokes, you are allowed to dream bigger, more far-reaching dreams in the CAREER than a regular 3-year grant.
After all, CAREER is supposed to establish a foundation for a lifetime of continued achievement (paraphrased from how I remember the solicitation). I interpret this as the following: what is it that you would most like to do in the next 10 years? So write a proposal on the first 5 years of THAT project. A project of too narrow a scope is not appropriate for CAREER program. So if you have a nifty idea that potentially opens a new niche subarea where you will be a star, that's the type of project you want for CAREER. Once you have the idea formulated, run it by the PM. If you have a few and don't know which oneto write about, run it by the PM. Helpful ones will say "This one is too narrow, this one is appropriate."
3. Readability
As always with panel reviews, the writing style should be such that a panelist reading your proposal in the middle of the night before the review, after having travelled to Arlington all day and read several more proposals on the way, gets a clear idea of what it is that you want to do, and why it's exciting and important. In CAREER proposals, you are more costrained in space than with standard grants proposals: there is a 15-page limit as usual, but you ought to devote a much larger chunk to Broader Impact (about 5 pages, more about this below), so count on having 10 pages to demonstrate the vision for your career development, and describe the idea and exectution for this particular proposal and how it helps your long-term career vision. This means you may not be able to get excessively technical. Readability is key. I am personally also partial to short titles, but people vary on this.
4. Broader Impact (BI)
This part is extremely important for CAREER grants. As I said above, while the BI for a standard NSF grant would be about 2 pages, for CAREER it's more typically around 5. Many people think "education & outreach" when BI is mentioned, and while they are not synonymous, that is what I will start off with.
For a standard grant, activities such as inclusion of undergrads in research and plugging into your institution's existing initiatives on broadening participation may be sufficient. (Saying you'll advise grad students and disseminate results in journals doesn't cut it even for a standard grant; it's implicit you will do that anyways).
For CAREER, you have to go beyond and show some creativity. You don't want the education part to look as an afterthought, but as a natural outcome of your research. For instance, introducing a new course or augmenting an existing one with your proposed work would be a nice ingredient of your BI. Also, you may want to interface with local teachers to create K-12 modules that relate to your resaearch. Try to be creative in whom you target: K-12, community in the broader sense? Regional, statewide, or nationwide? Specific adult age groups? Specific community organizations (neighbourhood associations, churches)? Will you use web resources to access your audience, or perhaps newspapers, radio, or TV instead? Have you made connections with news outlets, schools, museums? Be specific in your plans.
As I said, your broader impact need not be limited to education and outreach. For instance, if you propose to cure the common cold or male-pattern baldness, then you should definitely emphasize the societal impact that you work will have and how you can help maximize it through utilizing existing institutional, regional, national, and NSF-funded resources.
Broadening participation is another important aspect of BI: is there a dearth of women or ethnic minorities in your field? Can you find creative ways of targeting any of these groups through research-related initiatives? Are there ethnic groups indigenous to your region, where you could make an impact? If there are already diversity programs (NSF-funded or not) on your campus, explore how you can leverage them in your BI.
In general, showing you have thought how you'll support your BI activities is important, so if needed budget for them in your CAREER grant. However, be aware that certain components of BI are eligible for extra funding: every year you can apply for research experience for undergrads (REU) and research experience for teachers (RET) supplemental funds to support participation of an undergrad or a teacher in the lab over the summer. There are also REU site grants, but these are something different. Your institution may or may not have an REU site, but you are eligible for REU/RET supplements to your own NSF grants, and CAREER is no exception. How hard/easy it is to get an REU or RET supplement depends on NSF division, in some it's a virtual guarantee; your PM can tell you with how much certainty you can count on these supplemental funds. If they are easy to get in your division, I recommend you mention in your grant that you will be seeking these supplements in the coming years, rather than have to budget for them in the CAREER grant directly.
Propose what you would actually enjoy to do for BI. People vary widely in how much time they are willing to invest in BI activities, so don't propose something you would hate doing, because it shows when you write.
Lastly, BI should enhance and complement your awesome research, not be a crutch. A great BI will not compensate for a less-than-stellar research project.
5. Letters of Support
CAREER is a single-investigator grant, so you cannot have co-PIs. However, it is quite likely that you need other people's expertise or the use of someone else's equipment for some part of the project. In that case, every such person should provide a letter of support (where they say they are excited about working with you, but need no money and are separately funded); these letters are included as part of your application under "supplementary documents".
I recommend including letters of support for your BI activities as well (e.g. from the principal of the school if you will do K-12 outreach, from organizations/programs with which you will interface for community outreach or to recruit minority students). Letters of suport show that you have thought about these initiatives seriously and made connections in advance.
Good luck!
(Check out some of the excellent additional tips among comments.)
NSF CAREER awards are 5-year grants that are meant to enable promising young faculty to develop their research programs. Depending on the NSF directorate you plan on applying to, these awards are capped at either $400 K or $500 K.
Depending on your school's overhead and your lab needs, this usually won't cover much more than lab supplies, 1 student, and 1 summer month per year. But, the prestige associated with CAREER is significant, and getting it is a valuable (although certainly not necessary) ingredient in securing tenure.
1. Getting Informed
As with all grants, contacting the program manager (PM) is extremely important. Typically, not all program managers in your division will be involved in the CAREER program, so your regular PM may not have anything to do with it. So first find out who the contact PM is for the CAREER program, and contact him/her early on, before you start writing. Now is early enough that they may not be entirely swamped yet.
Also, some divisions utilize mail-in review + panels, some only panels (I don't think any do mail-in only). In some divisions, CAREER panels are composed of senior prominent faculty, in others you can have recent junior awardees. The composition of the panel and the PM may be significantly different than your regular program's PM and panels, so get informed early.
In my experience, you may need to be persistent in getting a hold of the PM, but this is very important.
2. Scope
In my opinion (I'm not alone in this), CAREER grants are different in scope than regular NSF grants. They are painted with broader strokes, you are allowed to dream bigger, more far-reaching dreams in the CAREER than a regular 3-year grant.
After all, CAREER is supposed to establish a foundation for a lifetime of continued achievement (paraphrased from how I remember the solicitation). I interpret this as the following: what is it that you would most like to do in the next 10 years? So write a proposal on the first 5 years of THAT project. A project of too narrow a scope is not appropriate for CAREER program. So if you have a nifty idea that potentially opens a new niche subarea where you will be a star, that's the type of project you want for CAREER. Once you have the idea formulated, run it by the PM. If you have a few and don't know which oneto write about, run it by the PM. Helpful ones will say "This one is too narrow, this one is appropriate."
3. Readability
As always with panel reviews, the writing style should be such that a panelist reading your proposal in the middle of the night before the review, after having travelled to Arlington all day and read several more proposals on the way, gets a clear idea of what it is that you want to do, and why it's exciting and important. In CAREER proposals, you are more costrained in space than with standard grants proposals: there is a 15-page limit as usual, but you ought to devote a much larger chunk to Broader Impact (about 5 pages, more about this below), so count on having 10 pages to demonstrate the vision for your career development, and describe the idea and exectution for this particular proposal and how it helps your long-term career vision. This means you may not be able to get excessively technical. Readability is key. I am personally also partial to short titles, but people vary on this.
4. Broader Impact (BI)
This part is extremely important for CAREER grants. As I said above, while the BI for a standard NSF grant would be about 2 pages, for CAREER it's more typically around 5. Many people think "education & outreach" when BI is mentioned, and while they are not synonymous, that is what I will start off with.
For a standard grant, activities such as inclusion of undergrads in research and plugging into your institution's existing initiatives on broadening participation may be sufficient. (Saying you'll advise grad students and disseminate results in journals doesn't cut it even for a standard grant; it's implicit you will do that anyways).
For CAREER, you have to go beyond and show some creativity. You don't want the education part to look as an afterthought, but as a natural outcome of your research. For instance, introducing a new course or augmenting an existing one with your proposed work would be a nice ingredient of your BI. Also, you may want to interface with local teachers to create K-12 modules that relate to your resaearch. Try to be creative in whom you target: K-12, community in the broader sense? Regional, statewide, or nationwide? Specific adult age groups? Specific community organizations (neighbourhood associations, churches)? Will you use web resources to access your audience, or perhaps newspapers, radio, or TV instead? Have you made connections with news outlets, schools, museums? Be specific in your plans.
As I said, your broader impact need not be limited to education and outreach. For instance, if you propose to cure the common cold or male-pattern baldness, then you should definitely emphasize the societal impact that you work will have and how you can help maximize it through utilizing existing institutional, regional, national, and NSF-funded resources.
Broadening participation is another important aspect of BI: is there a dearth of women or ethnic minorities in your field? Can you find creative ways of targeting any of these groups through research-related initiatives? Are there ethnic groups indigenous to your region, where you could make an impact? If there are already diversity programs (NSF-funded or not) on your campus, explore how you can leverage them in your BI.
In general, showing you have thought how you'll support your BI activities is important, so if needed budget for them in your CAREER grant. However, be aware that certain components of BI are eligible for extra funding: every year you can apply for research experience for undergrads (REU) and research experience for teachers (RET) supplemental funds to support participation of an undergrad or a teacher in the lab over the summer. There are also REU site grants, but these are something different. Your institution may or may not have an REU site, but you are eligible for REU/RET supplements to your own NSF grants, and CAREER is no exception. How hard/easy it is to get an REU or RET supplement depends on NSF division, in some it's a virtual guarantee; your PM can tell you with how much certainty you can count on these supplemental funds. If they are easy to get in your division, I recommend you mention in your grant that you will be seeking these supplements in the coming years, rather than have to budget for them in the CAREER grant directly.
Propose what you would actually enjoy to do for BI. People vary widely in how much time they are willing to invest in BI activities, so don't propose something you would hate doing, because it shows when you write.
Lastly, BI should enhance and complement your awesome research, not be a crutch. A great BI will not compensate for a less-than-stellar research project.
5. Letters of Support
CAREER is a single-investigator grant, so you cannot have co-PIs. However, it is quite likely that you need other people's expertise or the use of someone else's equipment for some part of the project. In that case, every such person should provide a letter of support (where they say they are excited about working with you, but need no money and are separately funded); these letters are included as part of your application under "supplementary documents".
I recommend including letters of support for your BI activities as well (e.g. from the principal of the school if you will do K-12 outreach, from organizations/programs with which you will interface for community outreach or to recruit minority students). Letters of suport show that you have thought about these initiatives seriously and made connections in advance.
Good luck!
(Check out some of the excellent additional tips among comments.)
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Collaborations on the tenure track
When you are being put up for promotion to associate professor with tenure, your record is subject to intense scrutiny (tenure review). Typically, this happens in your 6th year, but depending on school, department, and your record, you may be put up a year or even two earlier, or even a year or more later due to the tenure clock extension for family reasons. At many universities, early promotions are very rare.
The most important part of your tenure package at research universities is, well, your research: your publications, grants, and awards. (Teaching and service are very important too, and probably more important at SLACs, but that may be another post...)
When I started tenure track, I asked around what type of productivity is expected; I actually expected a number -- someone to say "If you publish at least n papers per year, you will be fine," but that never happened. People would usually say something vague like "We want you to show a strong record of publication, to build a viable research group, to have enough money to support your group..." So I figured I won't get a straight answer, and instead I went on my own and researched recently tenured people in my area at my Uni and peer institutions, and figured out what n should be in my field.
Now, in addtion to the total output per unit time, the composition of your papers is important too. Your research output (papers in journals and/or conferences) is supposed to resemble a food pyramid: lots of fruits, vegetables, and grains (your own group's papers), a fair amount of lean protein (collaborations you have established while on tenure track), fats and sweets only sparingly [papers with old advisor(s)]. Therefore, it is widely expected that the vast majority of your papers will be your own group's papers, with the lead senior author (typicallly listed last in the author list) being you and the lead junior author (typically listed first) being your student or postdoc. Generally, if your intellectual offspring is first author, it's considered *your* paper.
The tricky part are collaborations. Your external letter writers -- people who are supposed to assess your work and ideally know it well but often don't -- will be asked to evaluate your contribution to the field, and that also means evaluating how much you contributed to your collaborative efforts. Sometimes that can be quite hard to do, when people's expertises overlap. Junior faculty are in danger of not being assertive enough on collaborations with senior faculty [here I assume it's not your advisor(s), but one or more of collaborators that you teamed up with while on tenure track], and two things often happen: (a) you have a senior collaborator on some of your papers for what are more-or-less courtesy reasons, they are not contributing tremendously or are peripheral to the paper but won't remove themselves from the author list either, and you are uncomfortable to remove them yourself, (b) the senior collaborator is always last author, warranted or not.
Either way, you run the risk of your good, hard work being associated solely with the most senior or most famous person in the auhtor list; this will certainly happen if they occupy the 'lead senior author' position, but even if they don't (this happened to me), because, owing to their fame, their name is already in people's minds and thus most easily associated with a piece of work. So be procative about removing courtesy coauthors (I know, it's unethical to even put them on unless they contributed significantly, but junior people often feel they owe stuff to senior people so these coauthorships tend to linger). I recommend being open about it: "Dr Famous, you know I am on tenure track, and we have done some nice work together, but as I am sure you know people will be trying to judge my own contribution, so I would like to pursue this line of work where my contribution will be unambiguous and separated from your work."
To avoid having your collaborative work associated with more prominent senior collaborators, make sure people know what YOU are have contributed. Talk to whomever wants to listen about the great work that you are doing, and insist on being credited explicitly in the talks given by your senior collaborators - usually people will do it on their own, but you never know. Also, traveling on tenure track to give talks is very important, so people can get to know you. If you start having children while on tenure track, you may have to cut back temporarily, but try to at least do the Tenure Tour -- usually a 5th year tour where you try to go and visit most of the places where letter writers for your tenure case are likely to be chosen from. (You may need to 'invite' yourself to a couple of places, but more on that some other time...)
Another related thing that must be done is weaning yourself from your former advisor(s). I was told that it is OK to wrap up papers you still have unfinished from your previous position, but that this should not continue past a year or two on tenure track. I had a talk very early on with my former advisor, in which I said I was expected to cut him off and he said no problem, and we agreed on which paper would be our last together.
When the time comes to write your research statement (a typical part of tenure package), make sure you can say succinctly what it is that you (and your group) did as part of every collaboration.
Collaborations are a means of creating some -- if not all!-- of the best science around, they can be lots of fun, and truly inspirational (more in another post). To the university, collaborative papers show that you can play well with other kids. Just make sure the other kids don't get the credit that's rightfully yours.
The most important part of your tenure package at research universities is, well, your research: your publications, grants, and awards. (Teaching and service are very important too, and probably more important at SLACs, but that may be another post...)
When I started tenure track, I asked around what type of productivity is expected; I actually expected a number -- someone to say "If you publish at least n papers per year, you will be fine," but that never happened. People would usually say something vague like "We want you to show a strong record of publication, to build a viable research group, to have enough money to support your group..." So I figured I won't get a straight answer, and instead I went on my own and researched recently tenured people in my area at my Uni and peer institutions, and figured out what n should be in my field.
Now, in addtion to the total output per unit time, the composition of your papers is important too. Your research output (papers in journals and/or conferences) is supposed to resemble a food pyramid: lots of fruits, vegetables, and grains (your own group's papers), a fair amount of lean protein (collaborations you have established while on tenure track), fats and sweets only sparingly [papers with old advisor(s)]. Therefore, it is widely expected that the vast majority of your papers will be your own group's papers, with the lead senior author (typicallly listed last in the author list) being you and the lead junior author (typically listed first) being your student or postdoc. Generally, if your intellectual offspring is first author, it's considered *your* paper.
The tricky part are collaborations. Your external letter writers -- people who are supposed to assess your work and ideally know it well but often don't -- will be asked to evaluate your contribution to the field, and that also means evaluating how much you contributed to your collaborative efforts. Sometimes that can be quite hard to do, when people's expertises overlap. Junior faculty are in danger of not being assertive enough on collaborations with senior faculty [here I assume it's not your advisor(s), but one or more of collaborators that you teamed up with while on tenure track], and two things often happen: (a) you have a senior collaborator on some of your papers for what are more-or-less courtesy reasons, they are not contributing tremendously or are peripheral to the paper but won't remove themselves from the author list either, and you are uncomfortable to remove them yourself, (b) the senior collaborator is always last author, warranted or not.
Either way, you run the risk of your good, hard work being associated solely with the most senior or most famous person in the auhtor list; this will certainly happen if they occupy the 'lead senior author' position, but even if they don't (this happened to me), because, owing to their fame, their name is already in people's minds and thus most easily associated with a piece of work. So be procative about removing courtesy coauthors (I know, it's unethical to even put them on unless they contributed significantly, but junior people often feel they owe stuff to senior people so these coauthorships tend to linger). I recommend being open about it: "Dr Famous, you know I am on tenure track, and we have done some nice work together, but as I am sure you know people will be trying to judge my own contribution, so I would like to pursue this line of work where my contribution will be unambiguous and separated from your work."
To avoid having your collaborative work associated with more prominent senior collaborators, make sure people know what YOU are have contributed. Talk to whomever wants to listen about the great work that you are doing, and insist on being credited explicitly in the talks given by your senior collaborators - usually people will do it on their own, but you never know. Also, traveling on tenure track to give talks is very important, so people can get to know you. If you start having children while on tenure track, you may have to cut back temporarily, but try to at least do the Tenure Tour -- usually a 5th year tour where you try to go and visit most of the places where letter writers for your tenure case are likely to be chosen from. (You may need to 'invite' yourself to a couple of places, but more on that some other time...)
Another related thing that must be done is weaning yourself from your former advisor(s). I was told that it is OK to wrap up papers you still have unfinished from your previous position, but that this should not continue past a year or two on tenure track. I had a talk very early on with my former advisor, in which I said I was expected to cut him off and he said no problem, and we agreed on which paper would be our last together.
When the time comes to write your research statement (a typical part of tenure package), make sure you can say succinctly what it is that you (and your group) did as part of every collaboration.
Collaborations are a means of creating some -- if not all!-- of the best science around, they can be lots of fun, and truly inspirational (more in another post). To the university, collaborative papers show that you can play well with other kids. Just make sure the other kids don't get the credit that's rightfully yours.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Spousal hiring -- reason you don't have a tenure track job?
In an ideal world, everyone who is qualified (or feels qualified) for a tenure track position gets to have one. This is not that world.
There has been quite a spirited debate on the YFS blog regarding spousal hires.
Apparently, a number people who believe that they deserve a tenure track position and have not been able to get one think spousal hires are unethical, unfair, and a whole host of derogatory adjectives. I beg to differ. I strongly support spousal hire initiatives and affirmative action. While there may be cases where these backfire, these are few, and we need to focus on the vast majority of improvements that they have brought about. I think the fact that we feel free to dismiss these initiatives is a clear sign how much we take their beneficial effects for granted.
For all those of you who think some naughty unworthy spouse is hogging your rightful tenure track position, here's an inconvenient truth: if you keep applying and fail to receive a tenure track offer, spousal hires are the least of your problems.
If you are not even getting an interview, more likely your problems are among these:
(a) few places are hiring in your field, (b) your CV doesn't look as stellar as you think, (c) your proposed research does not sound exciting or fundable or is a poor fit for the department, (d) one of more of your letters of recommendation are lukewarm (i.e. those you consider your friends are not your friends) or the letters are just late/missing or (rarely) openly dismissive. It is usually a combinantion of the above, with (d) being completely deadly.
If you did interview, but did not get an offer, then (a) the chemistry wasn't great (a.k.a. they just didn't like you), (b) they liked you but liked someone else even better, (c) someone in the department vetoed your offer because you'd be competition, (d) the department cancelled the search as they ran out of money.
But let us see four scenarios where the dreaded spousal hire comes to play.
Let us say that person A and person B have interviewed and are a department's top 2 choices for hiring. Person A is single, or not single but won't apply as part of the couple because they hate the concept of spousal hires or something to that effect. Person B is a 'leading spouse' and won't take a position unless there is one for the spouse. In Scenarios 1 and 2, we will assume A and B have comparable qualifications, i.e. both are junior.
Scenario 1: there is only 1 opening.
1a) If they liked candidate A more than B, then it's a no brainer. Congrats, A!
1b) If they liked B more then A, then usually Chair will go to the Dean and Provost to beg for more money and another position to hire B's spouse. Usually, that only means B's spouse will get a chance to interview. If B's spouse is no good, there is *no way* they will be hired -- perhaps if B is a superstar but junior superstars are rare and statistically insignificant. In the case there is no spousal hire, yes, B will decline the offer and A will get the offer, but this is where the misfortune of B's family actually helped A get a job, not the fact that A is the top candidate.
Scenario 2: there are 2 openings
2a) If they liked A more than B, A gets an offer, and B gets an offer, whereas a 3rd position is begged for from senior administration similar to what happened in 1b. Either way, A gets the job.
2b) They liked B more than A, and here's a tricky scenario that most nay-sayers object to: B's spouse is in the same field as A and B. Again, the first attempt will be to get a 3rd position, if yes, everyone's happy, but if not, does A get the position or does B's spouse get the position instead?
*It depends on how much more they liked B than A.* If they liked B so much more than A that they would rather hire B+spouse and let A go than risk to lose B, then, I am sorry but A should not hold a grudge against the spouse. A should realize that they were a distant second in this search, and that B's spouse is not to blame. A should have been the first choice, apparently A may not be so stellar in the eyes of that particular department.
Scenario 3: Another situation is that A is not interviewing against a leading spouse but a trailing spouse (so the leading spouse B is in a different department or is a senior famous scientist). There is only one position available.
3a) If A is much better than the trailing spouse, A will get the offer and B's host department will be told "Sorry, but no." Alternatively, there may be special requests to hire both A and trailing spouse -- I can assure you there is usually extra dollars from Provost for these spousal hires, so it's actually something Chairs will really go for. Unfortuately, if no extra positon is available, the outcome here depends also like under 2b above, on how badly B's prospective department wants him/her. But a junior faculty will likely not interview ever against an older superstar's spouse.
So if A is superior to the same-age spouse of B, my money is on A getting the offer ~90% of the time. I have witnessed a number of outcomes like these.
3b) A is comparable to the trailing spouse. Additional place will be sought, but if it doesn't come through, spouse will be likely hired. Again I say, A was not the superior candidate.
Let me reiterate: from my experience on hiring committees, overwhelmingly, spousal hire only means spousal hire gets to be interviewed. If the spouse truly sucks, they never ever get hired.
Scenario 4: A super unlikely scenario is that you are not interviewing againgst a leading spouse or a trailing spouse but rather *all the spots everywhere are already filled by trailing spouses*. Then one could argue that indeed all the trailing spouses are the culprit. This is a hypothetical field, but if it existed, it would likely not be a science or an engineering field, since a complete absence of superstars means that this field it completely uninteresting for funding. But enough with my silly little Gedankenexperiment...
For people desperately seeking a tenure track job, it's easy to just turn the anger towards trailing spouses, as they are perceived as vulnerable. In reality, especially in junior couples, one spouse is not invariably the leading and the other a trailing spouse; rather, they are commonly both very good, with one a stronger candidate for some institutions and the other one for others. So please don't disparage your own colleagues who are in the same shoes as you, struggling to find a permanent position.
As I wrote above, there could be many reasons you are not getting the job, and only the quality of your application and your interview is within your power to influence. I know this is hard to hear, but, overwhelmingly, the reason is that you are not -- or don't look on paper -- as the best candidate for the job. Therefore, focus your energy on examining your own qualifications objectively; ask for HONEST INPUT and CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM of your application and your interview talk, and do as much as you can to strengthen your own case.
N.B. A first-hand account of a spousal hire can be found
here. I hope it humanizes the issue a bit.
There has been quite a spirited debate on the YFS blog regarding spousal hires.
Apparently, a number people who believe that they deserve a tenure track position and have not been able to get one think spousal hires are unethical, unfair, and a whole host of derogatory adjectives. I beg to differ. I strongly support spousal hire initiatives and affirmative action. While there may be cases where these backfire, these are few, and we need to focus on the vast majority of improvements that they have brought about. I think the fact that we feel free to dismiss these initiatives is a clear sign how much we take their beneficial effects for granted.
For all those of you who think some naughty unworthy spouse is hogging your rightful tenure track position, here's an inconvenient truth: if you keep applying and fail to receive a tenure track offer, spousal hires are the least of your problems.
If you are not even getting an interview, more likely your problems are among these:
(a) few places are hiring in your field, (b) your CV doesn't look as stellar as you think, (c) your proposed research does not sound exciting or fundable or is a poor fit for the department, (d) one of more of your letters of recommendation are lukewarm (i.e. those you consider your friends are not your friends) or the letters are just late/missing or (rarely) openly dismissive. It is usually a combinantion of the above, with (d) being completely deadly.
If you did interview, but did not get an offer, then (a) the chemistry wasn't great (a.k.a. they just didn't like you), (b) they liked you but liked someone else even better, (c) someone in the department vetoed your offer because you'd be competition, (d) the department cancelled the search as they ran out of money.
But let us see four scenarios where the dreaded spousal hire comes to play.
Let us say that person A and person B have interviewed and are a department's top 2 choices for hiring. Person A is single, or not single but won't apply as part of the couple because they hate the concept of spousal hires or something to that effect. Person B is a 'leading spouse' and won't take a position unless there is one for the spouse. In Scenarios 1 and 2, we will assume A and B have comparable qualifications, i.e. both are junior.
Scenario 1: there is only 1 opening.
1a) If they liked candidate A more than B, then it's a no brainer. Congrats, A!
1b) If they liked B more then A, then usually Chair will go to the Dean and Provost to beg for more money and another position to hire B's spouse. Usually, that only means B's spouse will get a chance to interview. If B's spouse is no good, there is *no way* they will be hired -- perhaps if B is a superstar but junior superstars are rare and statistically insignificant. In the case there is no spousal hire, yes, B will decline the offer and A will get the offer, but this is where the misfortune of B's family actually helped A get a job, not the fact that A is the top candidate.
Scenario 2: there are 2 openings
2a) If they liked A more than B, A gets an offer, and B gets an offer, whereas a 3rd position is begged for from senior administration similar to what happened in 1b. Either way, A gets the job.
2b) They liked B more than A, and here's a tricky scenario that most nay-sayers object to: B's spouse is in the same field as A and B. Again, the first attempt will be to get a 3rd position, if yes, everyone's happy, but if not, does A get the position or does B's spouse get the position instead?
*It depends on how much more they liked B than A.* If they liked B so much more than A that they would rather hire B+spouse and let A go than risk to lose B, then, I am sorry but A should not hold a grudge against the spouse. A should realize that they were a distant second in this search, and that B's spouse is not to blame. A should have been the first choice, apparently A may not be so stellar in the eyes of that particular department.
Scenario 3: Another situation is that A is not interviewing against a leading spouse but a trailing spouse (so the leading spouse B is in a different department or is a senior famous scientist). There is only one position available.
3a) If A is much better than the trailing spouse, A will get the offer and B's host department will be told "Sorry, but no." Alternatively, there may be special requests to hire both A and trailing spouse -- I can assure you there is usually extra dollars from Provost for these spousal hires, so it's actually something Chairs will really go for. Unfortuately, if no extra positon is available, the outcome here depends also like under 2b above, on how badly B's prospective department wants him/her. But a junior faculty will likely not interview ever against an older superstar's spouse.
So if A is superior to the same-age spouse of B, my money is on A getting the offer ~90% of the time. I have witnessed a number of outcomes like these.
3b) A is comparable to the trailing spouse. Additional place will be sought, but if it doesn't come through, spouse will be likely hired. Again I say, A was not the superior candidate.
Let me reiterate: from my experience on hiring committees, overwhelmingly, spousal hire only means spousal hire gets to be interviewed. If the spouse truly sucks, they never ever get hired.
Scenario 4: A super unlikely scenario is that you are not interviewing againgst a leading spouse or a trailing spouse but rather *all the spots everywhere are already filled by trailing spouses*. Then one could argue that indeed all the trailing spouses are the culprit. This is a hypothetical field, but if it existed, it would likely not be a science or an engineering field, since a complete absence of superstars means that this field it completely uninteresting for funding. But enough with my silly little Gedankenexperiment...
For people desperately seeking a tenure track job, it's easy to just turn the anger towards trailing spouses, as they are perceived as vulnerable. In reality, especially in junior couples, one spouse is not invariably the leading and the other a trailing spouse; rather, they are commonly both very good, with one a stronger candidate for some institutions and the other one for others. So please don't disparage your own colleagues who are in the same shoes as you, struggling to find a permanent position.
As I wrote above, there could be many reasons you are not getting the job, and only the quality of your application and your interview is within your power to influence. I know this is hard to hear, but, overwhelmingly, the reason is that you are not -- or don't look on paper -- as the best candidate for the job. Therefore, focus your energy on examining your own qualifications objectively; ask for HONEST INPUT and CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM of your application and your interview talk, and do as much as you can to strengthen your own case.
N.B. A first-hand account of a spousal hire can be found
here. I hope it humanizes the issue a bit.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Is your advisor supposed to secure a job for you?
In a word: no.
This post is inspired by my reading some of YFS earlier posts (I am relatively new to her blog), and remembering what I thought pre-tenure track and realizing I have a different perspective now.
I was fortunate to have a well-funded advisor who could afford to just let me do my thing, but was also responsive when I needed advice, so I ended up with a fairly large number of papers when I left his group. He was proactive about sending me to conferences but would never bend over backwards to introduce me to anyone. I had to suck it up and try to do it myself. When you are a grad student or a postdoc, people don't take you seriously, but you also (hopefully) don't have a huge ego (at least I don't think I did), so I just went with the flow and tried not to take being ignored too seriously. Was it because I am a woman? Probably, to a degree for sure. Did it bother me? Well, sure. But, it is what it is.
When I was applying for jobs, I did a very meticulous search, researched tactics for writing all components of the application (CV, research and teaching statement, etc), and I asked for advice from anyone who would give me some. My advisor, other profs, labmates, anyone. My advisor was helpful in this aspect; later, I heard from people that he wrote me a smashing letter of recommendation, but that was it, that was the extent to which he helped with the job hunt process. He didn't call anyone (that I know of) to propel my case, and during one of my bouts of self-doubt while trying to decide from among several offers, he said something to the effect "I can't decide your life for you." While I am sure he was trying to just get me off his back as I was pestering him, this kind of stuck with me; he is right. It is ultimately my job to find and decide on a job.
Later on, after I started on tenure track, I did not get invited to give talks because he recommended me, I started getting them when I started having exciting work done in my own group. Could he have done more? Probably. I know a couple of (IMHO) quite mediocre people whom he does propel (throws invited talks their way). Maybe he doesn't think I need help? I think he simply likes them better, for whatever reasons (yes, gender may be one). But at least my advisor didn't do me any disservice that I know of, I did learn a "trade" from him, and since he's famous that probably helped with my initial job offers. But from this point on, it's all me, and I would not have it any other way.
Similar to what happens when you go through puberty and suddently you start seeing your parents with new eyes, not as infallible deities but very flawed humans, a few years after starting my tenure track job I realized that my famous advisor is very insecure and not nearly as well connected and sky-high as I had envisioned. I saw him get all star-struck when a super-duper famous scientist remembered his name. So one reason why the advisor is not supposed to secure a job for you is because they cannot; grad students and postdocs have a skewed vision of how famous and well connected and self-assured their superiors are.
Now that I have my own group, I see things from the other side. I can absolutely not guarantee that even the most stellar of my students/postdocs will get the job they like. The best I can do is ensure:
a) the student/postdoc does good science/cuting edge project, with adequate resources, and adequate supervision to ensure timely progress
b) they get to write and publish high quality papers, do so with the optimization of time-to-publication and prestige of journal in mind,
c) the student/postdoc is sent to relevant conferences to present the work. I introduce them to the people I know really well, and the rest is up to the student/postdoc (as there are people I don't know well either)
d) help with career advice, offer them (especially postdocs) a chance to write grant proposals, offer teaching opportunities
e) I write the best letter of recommendation that I possibly can for any of them, and do so promptly when asked.
Beyond this, it's up to the students/postdocs. Sometimes, unfortunately, I think the aspirations are not commensurate with performance, and I will try to talk to the student/postdoc. Not everybody should be in academia, or industry, or any other particular venue. There is a combination of technical skills, talents, and personality suitable for each. I try to give my opinion in a nonjudgemental fashion, but this is also something to be ultimately decided by the student/postdoc. I know of at least two people for whom everyone said they were not very good; but they worked very hard and are both in tenure track positions at small colleges. They worked with whatever talent they had and maximized it, whereas I know of a number of highly talented people who are still going from postdoc to postdoc. So if the advisor tells you that you are not cut out for academia, and you are certain you are, you may be wrong. But you also may be right... That’s one reason why your advisor should not be the keeper of your destiny.
For young scientists trying to get a tenure track position:
If you have original ideas, then ask for input -- lots of input! -- on how to make your application stand out (it's amazing how few people -- guys are the worst offenders -- actually ask for any input on any of their application materials).
Be honest with yourself about your abilities and learn how the system works.
Working within the system, making adjustments in goals as needed (e.g. switching from basic to applied research, exploring different departments), and utilizing the talents you have is the way to go. Getting a tenure-track job, for better or worse, is nobody's job but yours.
This post is inspired by my reading some of YFS earlier posts (I am relatively new to her blog), and remembering what I thought pre-tenure track and realizing I have a different perspective now.
I was fortunate to have a well-funded advisor who could afford to just let me do my thing, but was also responsive when I needed advice, so I ended up with a fairly large number of papers when I left his group. He was proactive about sending me to conferences but would never bend over backwards to introduce me to anyone. I had to suck it up and try to do it myself. When you are a grad student or a postdoc, people don't take you seriously, but you also (hopefully) don't have a huge ego (at least I don't think I did), so I just went with the flow and tried not to take being ignored too seriously. Was it because I am a woman? Probably, to a degree for sure. Did it bother me? Well, sure. But, it is what it is.
When I was applying for jobs, I did a very meticulous search, researched tactics for writing all components of the application (CV, research and teaching statement, etc), and I asked for advice from anyone who would give me some. My advisor, other profs, labmates, anyone. My advisor was helpful in this aspect; later, I heard from people that he wrote me a smashing letter of recommendation, but that was it, that was the extent to which he helped with the job hunt process. He didn't call anyone (that I know of) to propel my case, and during one of my bouts of self-doubt while trying to decide from among several offers, he said something to the effect "I can't decide your life for you." While I am sure he was trying to just get me off his back as I was pestering him, this kind of stuck with me; he is right. It is ultimately my job to find and decide on a job.
Later on, after I started on tenure track, I did not get invited to give talks because he recommended me, I started getting them when I started having exciting work done in my own group. Could he have done more? Probably. I know a couple of (IMHO) quite mediocre people whom he does propel (throws invited talks their way). Maybe he doesn't think I need help? I think he simply likes them better, for whatever reasons (yes, gender may be one). But at least my advisor didn't do me any disservice that I know of, I did learn a "trade" from him, and since he's famous that probably helped with my initial job offers. But from this point on, it's all me, and I would not have it any other way.
Similar to what happens when you go through puberty and suddently you start seeing your parents with new eyes, not as infallible deities but very flawed humans, a few years after starting my tenure track job I realized that my famous advisor is very insecure and not nearly as well connected and sky-high as I had envisioned. I saw him get all star-struck when a super-duper famous scientist remembered his name. So one reason why the advisor is not supposed to secure a job for you is because they cannot; grad students and postdocs have a skewed vision of how famous and well connected and self-assured their superiors are.
Now that I have my own group, I see things from the other side. I can absolutely not guarantee that even the most stellar of my students/postdocs will get the job they like. The best I can do is ensure:
a) the student/postdoc does good science/cuting edge project, with adequate resources, and adequate supervision to ensure timely progress
b) they get to write and publish high quality papers, do so with the optimization of time-to-publication and prestige of journal in mind,
c) the student/postdoc is sent to relevant conferences to present the work. I introduce them to the people I know really well, and the rest is up to the student/postdoc (as there are people I don't know well either)
d) help with career advice, offer them (especially postdocs) a chance to write grant proposals, offer teaching opportunities
e) I write the best letter of recommendation that I possibly can for any of them, and do so promptly when asked.
Beyond this, it's up to the students/postdocs. Sometimes, unfortunately, I think the aspirations are not commensurate with performance, and I will try to talk to the student/postdoc. Not everybody should be in academia, or industry, or any other particular venue. There is a combination of technical skills, talents, and personality suitable for each. I try to give my opinion in a nonjudgemental fashion, but this is also something to be ultimately decided by the student/postdoc. I know of at least two people for whom everyone said they were not very good; but they worked very hard and are both in tenure track positions at small colleges. They worked with whatever talent they had and maximized it, whereas I know of a number of highly talented people who are still going from postdoc to postdoc. So if the advisor tells you that you are not cut out for academia, and you are certain you are, you may be wrong. But you also may be right... That’s one reason why your advisor should not be the keeper of your destiny.
For young scientists trying to get a tenure track position:
If you have original ideas, then ask for input -- lots of input! -- on how to make your application stand out (it's amazing how few people -- guys are the worst offenders -- actually ask for any input on any of their application materials).
Be honest with yourself about your abilities and learn how the system works.
Working within the system, making adjustments in goals as needed (e.g. switching from basic to applied research, exploring different departments), and utilizing the talents you have is the way to go. Getting a tenure-track job, for better or worse, is nobody's job but yours.
So do I need a stay-at-home wife or what?
Among the comments on FSP posts of today and yesterday, the issue has been raised whether having a stay-at-home spouse (SAHS) or a spouse whose career is somehow subordinate to the academic's is a significant advantage to one's career in academia over the careers of dual-career faculty.
You betcha. But it's not like we should all make our spouses quit their jobs.
Having a stay at home spouse or a spouse who will shoulder a significant amount of childrearing frees up your time to work - period. I don't think there can be any debate about that as it's simple math. So a SAHS is an advantage from an academic standpoint, as you have more time to work, you are more mobile among different institutions etc. But of course it has downsides: lower income, perhaps disconnect between spouses, resentment if the 'trailing spouse' would actually rather be working, or is working but in a career not commensurate with abilities... So I don't think my colleagues who have stay-at-home spouses are living la vida loca; they are however probably better positioned to be slaves to their jobs if they so choose.
I am part of a dual-career couple but my husband is not an academic.
However, I am Mommy (being Mommy needn't imply femininity; there are wonderful men outr there who are Mommy in the best sense of the word -- defined as kids' primary contact for kissing booboos and cuddling), which means I am nearly always the one to stay home when kids are sick, I take them to the doctor's, I also do all the cooking, etc. This accumulates over the years into a significant time advantage for faculty who are faculty but not Mommy, bacause of the time all this takes, as well as wear and tear on the body, not to mention the loss of higher cognitive abilities and gray matter owing to too much time spent around toddlers.
Anyway, can I go to late evening meetings, work 16 hour days every day (in my office at the University, that is) or freely globe-trot and not worry about my family? Of course not. Do I wish I could?
Sure, sometimes. Do I envy people who can? Yup, on occasion. I have been known to say I need a wife, especially when I have to keep missing work over a string of ear infections and pink eyes...
But ultimately, for every faculty: it's your life, your family, and your priorities. If you really want someone else to completely run the non-science part of your life, that's up to you. You may appear to have an advantage, and you may well have one, in terms of devotion to work and research output. But I think if you elect to have a family you should enjoy it -- otherwise what's the point of having it? I am not advocating procrastination, but let's face it: most academics don't end up being indispensable to the world -- they are however indispensable to their families.
You betcha. But it's not like we should all make our spouses quit their jobs.
Having a stay at home spouse or a spouse who will shoulder a significant amount of childrearing frees up your time to work - period. I don't think there can be any debate about that as it's simple math. So a SAHS is an advantage from an academic standpoint, as you have more time to work, you are more mobile among different institutions etc. But of course it has downsides: lower income, perhaps disconnect between spouses, resentment if the 'trailing spouse' would actually rather be working, or is working but in a career not commensurate with abilities... So I don't think my colleagues who have stay-at-home spouses are living la vida loca; they are however probably better positioned to be slaves to their jobs if they so choose.
I am part of a dual-career couple but my husband is not an academic.
However, I am Mommy (being Mommy needn't imply femininity; there are wonderful men outr there who are Mommy in the best sense of the word -- defined as kids' primary contact for kissing booboos and cuddling), which means I am nearly always the one to stay home when kids are sick, I take them to the doctor's, I also do all the cooking, etc. This accumulates over the years into a significant time advantage for faculty who are faculty but not Mommy, bacause of the time all this takes, as well as wear and tear on the body, not to mention the loss of higher cognitive abilities and gray matter owing to too much time spent around toddlers.
Anyway, can I go to late evening meetings, work 16 hour days every day (in my office at the University, that is) or freely globe-trot and not worry about my family? Of course not. Do I wish I could?
Sure, sometimes. Do I envy people who can? Yup, on occasion. I have been known to say I need a wife, especially when I have to keep missing work over a string of ear infections and pink eyes...
But ultimately, for every faculty: it's your life, your family, and your priorities. If you really want someone else to completely run the non-science part of your life, that's up to you. You may appear to have an advantage, and you may well have one, in terms of devotion to work and research output. But I think if you elect to have a family you should enjoy it -- otherwise what's the point of having it? I am not advocating procrastination, but let's face it: most academics don't end up being indispensable to the world -- they are however indispensable to their families.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Delayed gratification
Summer officially starts when you submit the final grades. I am getting around to doing so -- sloooowly -- delayed gratification I suppose.
Most of my nonacademic acquaintances think that I chill out all summer, whereas anyone in a STEM field will tell you that most of the truly enjoyable work (non-administrative, non-teachning, just pure research and some research-related travel) are done during the summer.
My grad students are discouraged from traveling during the summer for more than a week, as summer is when they don't have classes and can make progress towards their degrees. It's not that I don't enjoy teaching, I do, but there are aspects of teachning that I don't enjoy (grading exams, anyone?), and I most definitely enjoy research and working with grad students and postdocs way more (I'm sure this is pretty common though).
Anyway, what I hope to offer here is the experience of a junior faculty who has recently received tenure in a very competitive STEM field and managed to do so while having a family and keeping sanity for the most part. I will try my best to share what little wisdom I have acquired with junior people on tenure track or thereabouts, on topics ranging from balancing family and work to surviving tenure track and moving beyond it.
Tenure -- talk about delayed gratification...
Most of my nonacademic acquaintances think that I chill out all summer, whereas anyone in a STEM field will tell you that most of the truly enjoyable work (non-administrative, non-teachning, just pure research and some research-related travel) are done during the summer.
My grad students are discouraged from traveling during the summer for more than a week, as summer is when they don't have classes and can make progress towards their degrees. It's not that I don't enjoy teaching, I do, but there are aspects of teachning that I don't enjoy (grading exams, anyone?), and I most definitely enjoy research and working with grad students and postdocs way more (I'm sure this is pretty common though).
Anyway, what I hope to offer here is the experience of a junior faculty who has recently received tenure in a very competitive STEM field and managed to do so while having a family and keeping sanity for the most part. I will try my best to share what little wisdom I have acquired with junior people on tenure track or thereabouts, on topics ranging from balancing family and work to surviving tenure track and moving beyond it.
Tenure -- talk about delayed gratification...
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