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Category Archives: Managing an academic career
Attributes that make getting tenure easy: curiosity, effectiveness, and conscientiousness.
Curiosity may be the most important characteristic of a successful academic. It is something that motivates us a lot in our earliest days, but sadly, many get over it. Nurture your curiosity for a successful academic career in both … Continue reading
Please don’t back out at the last minute!
A well-planned meeting is among the more gratifying social events to organize. I bet Mike Travisano, Matt Herron, and Will Ratcliff were really glad to see their catalysis meeting actually taking place. We were the little figures they got to … Continue reading
What is academic success?
When you click on a region on Google maps under satellite view it will first come in fuzzy. If it is a well-covered area, it will gradually come into focus in amazing detail. Other less popular regions never come into … Continue reading
Great irresponsibility, or great organization?
Sometimes it is easier to just do whatever tasks stream at you through the incessant flow of email than to work on the conceptually difficult, important, long term research papers. At other times you want to scream and throw things … Continue reading
More on work life balance: get writing done first!
Wouldn’t it be interesting to zoom backwards and forwards to other times and see how much time we really spend working and what areas we work in? Does email count? Checking Facebook? Answering colleagues’s emails? What counts? Does the work … Continue reading
Posted in Managing an academic career, Writing
Tagged organization, Work–life balance, writing
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Have confidence in yourself and innovate recklessly
By now you have turned in a January preproposal to the National Science Foundation if you are a biology professor in areas of ecology, evolution, or various kinds of physiology. You may feel good about your preproposal, or you may … Continue reading
Posted in Grant proposals, Managing an academic career
Tagged confidence, creativity, innovation, NSF, preproposal, professor, Research
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Nominate your hero, your mentor, or your colleague for that well-deserved award
Do you sometimes wonder how the people that get prizes are chosen? Can you think of someone who had a big influence on you that should get a prize? Identify the prizes given by your scientific societies and nominate the … Continue reading
Letters of recommendation – help me out!!!
You think we’ve worked well together, but when it comes time to ask for that letter of recommendation, you worry. Couldn’t I have done more? What does she really think of me? What about that time I skipped class, or … Continue reading
What do you really want to do with that Ph.D.?
Sometimes it is scary to think how much chance events can influence the course of our lives and careers. Can you pinpoint a time that turned you to your current career path, or to your current study system? Was it … Continue reading
How to interview technician job candidates
Running an academic lab can be challenging. One of the challenges is hiring. This is important to get right. In this post I’m talking specifically about hiring a technician, though some of the issues are similar for grad students and … Continue reading
