If you have the luxury to choose your committee assignments, select one or two that you feel are important, for which your hard work will produce satisfying results for both you and your department.
Salary
If you are paid on a 9-month salary, you may need to budget to receive no summer paychecks, depending on how your institution’s accounting works.
If you have funds from your 9-month salary put away for the summer, it may have tax consequences (
(External Link) )
Outfitting your lab / lab space
Your university probably maintains many software licenses (e.g. MS Office).
You may not need to buy these programs.
Helpful book: “At the Helm: A Laboratory Navigator”
Ask for discounts or quotes. Bid companies against one another.
List price is rarely the actual price.
At UW there are three magical numbers. Find out the #s at your institution.
may be exempt from state sales tax
may be “equipment” instead of “supplies”, and no overhead.
may be subject to bid unless you can produce a convincing
“sole source” letter saying you need that one specific model.Get help from other faculty to write this letter for your institution.
Many institutions have surplus office with free (or very inexpensive)
office equipment and computer parts.
Thefts can be common around graduation. Lock your lab/office doors.
You may have the option to insure your equipment. Scales, cameras, andflatscreen monitors evaporate more quickly than other objects.
Writing grants
First, get help on your budget from a staff member.
What is the internal deadline? Your department may need to approve your finished proposal as early as 3 weeks before the official due date.
With the NSF, you submit electronically through Fastlane, and you need an account. Work with your department. For the NIH, you need an eCommons ID (ask about it). The software hoops that you and your secretary will need to jump through to submit and NIH proposal are daunting.
Some faculty will let you borrow their proposals. If a colleague knows about your field, he/she might actually read your proposal and give you advice.
After you submit your proposal, you may get a call from the NSF/NIH program manager asking “Can you write me a new budget for your submitted proposal? I think you really need $X thousand less.”
Be happy; they are about to fund you!
Having children
Are you even thinking about having kids? Apply for daycare now. Yes, do it now. Now! You do not need to have a kid in hand or to even be pregnant to get on many wait lists.
You may get a break from teaching if you (or your spouse) has/adopts a child.
There may be rooms around your campus equipped with breast pumps. Ask.
If you are paying for child care for a kid younger than 13 (I think), your university may have a dependent care assistance program, which allows you to pay for daycare and/or afterschool care with pretax dollars. Ask your HR person. You can opt either for this or the IRS tax break for child care, but I believe that you cannot do both. See here:
(External Link) . If you file taxes separately (rather than jointly), you are not eligible for the IRS program.
Your tenure package
Show a distinction between your postdoctoral and faculty work.
When you collaborate, make it clear who did what.
Grants are also important.
You will write up a little narrative describing what effect your work has had on your field. For example, perhaps you were the first to discover something or demonstrate some effect. Ask if faculty who have just gone through tenure will let you borrow their package so you can see what this looks like.
Both teaching and service are important for being a good departmental citizen. Do it, and do it well, but don’t go crazy at the expense of your research.
After your department votes on your tenure case, your case grinds through the university bureaucracy, up to the president who informs you that you have been approved for tenure. You get a raise when tenure finally happens (which is probably about a year after your department vote). Throw yourself a party.
