0.4 Finding the right institutional fit for you

Goals

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

Three kinds of institutional support

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

Tangibles

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

Institution/department policies

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

Intangibles (may be most important!)

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

Types of environments

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

What do you Want to know?

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

Thinking about what you want

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

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

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

Two examples

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

How do you ask?

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

What if you end up in a challenging culture?

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

Questions?

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