Perspective on Power

So my labs are almost done. This is actually pretty amazing since that the lab space I was given was built in the dark ages - not literally, but the space pretty much had to be gutted and rebuilt from scratch - new floors, new ceilings, etc. They even cleaned out the ductwork in the building while they were at it.

Now that this is done, I have to fill it. This may sound like a fun task, but it really isn't. I started rounding up quotes in April/May - yes, many months ago. I then started submitting purchase requests at the end of June. With many requests, I even submitted secondary forms stating that this vendor was the only vendor in the universe who made this item, and the school shouldn't bother to look elsewhere.

It is now August. Many of my quotes had 90day expirations. I have been contacted by some of the salespeople because they know that their quotes have expired and they want to know if I would like a new (and non-expired one). Um, why wasn't the PO issued a month ago?

I can tell you - Purchasing (in their infinite wisdom) decided that they knew best, and sent the item out for bid to see if I was indeed right. So, instead of my item getting ordered in June/July, it is now August, and the item has yet to be ordered. And my labs are done, and I have items I can put in them, but no single complete system. Therefore, all of the individual items are essentially worthless. Like have screws without the screwdriver.

I experienced this to a lesser degree at my graduate/post-doc institution and to a non-existent degree at my undergrad institution (but then I didn't really order anything over $200 there, so it probably doesn't count).

I can really see this slowing down my research to a huge degree in the future, and causing major problems. I'm not sure how to correct this - or if this is even something that can be "corrected".

I know people often use personal credit cards to fix this (purchase immediately then get reimbursed), but putting several 100k of equipment on my CC isn't really an option - and the school "discourages" purchases over 5k. I can't really being doing anything that the school discourages.

So, right now, I'm just really frustrated. However, this whole thing has given me some perspective. When you are an undergrad/grad student, it seems like the professors have infinite power. Once you become a professor, you realize the people in purchasing and in grants administration have all the power.

Space, the final frontier

No, I'm not referring to the region that contains Mars and Jupiter, though I did finally watch In the shadow of the Moon last night, which is really good, if you haven't seen it. I'm referring to lab space, or lack there of. And the constant battle for it. Older professors always want "more". Younger professors just want "some". And there is never enough to go around.

Then someone retires, and there is suddenly some open space, and everyone turns into squatters. I'm pretty sure if it worked how land rights did in the "Wild West", I would see professors sending grad students into empty labs with sleeping bags. (The professors wouldn't squat themselves).

Similar, but more vicious, battles happen over new lab space in new buildings. And, as that involves a lot of space, those battles are more like world wars between departments.

Right now, in my department, both types of battles are occurring - buildings being built and people retiring. Not this year or next, but a couple years down the road. But the fighting has already started. Which is actually kind of funny, if you have the presence of mind to take a step back. What this really means is that while right now, space is really, really tight, in a couple years, we will all be floating.

But everyone is fighting over everything - meaning, each professor is fighting for each space, so to an outsider, it looks like every professor wants everything. When really they are all just panicking that they won't get anything - which won't happen, the chair is a pretty level headed guy. If everyone just sat down, wrote down a list of what properties they needed in a lab (low vibration vs. fume hoods vs. high voltage vs. etc), this could probably be solved by a computer program, instead of a playground brawl.

But, apparently, the more degrees you get, the less rational you become. Or maybe you just become more greedy. In any case, I know I'll get more space. The chair has said so. Every month or so, I re-iterate my concern, but he seems confident it won't be a problem, which makes sense as the sqftage of the dept is almost doubling. And he makes the final call anyway.

Travelling

Last year, with job interviewing and conferences, I traveled a lot. I was usually home on the weekends, but very rarely during the week. By the end of this period, I was completely exhausted, and didn't want to see the inside of an airport terminal for a long time. But, on a positive note, I'm now an elite member of more than airline (premier, executive, whatever). This doesn't get much, but at least I have cool, shiny FF cards.

Anyway, I vowed not to fly again for a while, and actually managed not to travel (for work) for several months. This meant missing one conference, but in the end, I think it was actually for the best, and I learned what my travel limits are. And what my husband's limits on my travel are.

Now fall is approaching, and I'm looking straight down a long list of tightly packed travel itineraries. It is not nearly as complex as last fall, but it still isn't enthralling. In early summer, I thought it would be best to try to squeeze all of my travel into the fall, since I'm teaching in the spring (I have a teaching reprieve fall semester). I was given several invited talks for fall conferences, which I accepted, so I am traveling at least once a month, if not more often. At least, I'm never attending more than one conference in one week. That happened last year.

Not to give the wrong impression, I do love going to conferences, giving and hearing talks, and interacting with my peers. However, traveling is very disruptive to both my personal and my professional life, and neither is very sympathetic.

Maybe next year, when I'm teaching both semesters, I'll try to spread out my travel more evenly. However, for this year, I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to attend any more events.

Unless I can get to them in under 2 hours...

Interviewing

I wrote earlier this week about the proposal. As one professor told me, the proposal is the most important part of your application packet (tied with you recommendation letters - but you have very little control over what other people say about you at this point so don't worry about what you can't control). That is, until your get the interview. Then the interview becomes the most important part. So, today I'm going to write about the interviewing process.

There are lots of posts about interviewing - but most talk about it from the interviewer's perspective. This is an important perspective, but there are several points which get overlooked.

Just to be clear, I'm discussing interviewing for faculty positions at the assistant professor level.

These interviews (at least from my experience) lasted anywhere from 1 day (morning to night) to 4 days. Consisted of 1 formal seminar talk to 2 talks and one informal discussion. I heard of schools also requesting a class to be taught - but I was never asked to. The interview typically starts with breakfast and ends with dinner, each day. So keeping this in mind:

1) Never have more than one interview in a week. They are exhausting. You are being interviewed from 7am (breakfast) until 9pm (end of dinner) each day. Usually for multiple days - most were 2.5 days. Trying to squeeze in two interviews in one week was just a bad idea, especially when flying gets involved - even if one is 2 days and one is 1 day.

2) Buy 2 suits. You are being interviewed. It doesn't matter if everyone else in the department is wearing jeans. You should be in a suit.

3) Treat everyone equally - secretaries, professors, head of departments. At the end of the day, everyone will be asked their opinion of you. The department is hiring a colleague and they want someone who everyone (including staff) will get along with.

4) Ask for a schedule before you arrive and look over the different research areas. The worst thing you can do is walk into a meeting with a professor and say "so, what do you do". At the very least, know the general area of research of everyone you are scheduled to meet with.

5) Don't over-indulge at dinner. One glass of wine/beer is fine. One bottle is not. And being hungover the next day is not good either.

6) Make sure your hotel room is not next to the elevator/ice machine/etc.

7) Ask to meet with assistant professors as well as tenured professors. The tenured professors can give a broad scope of the department and the direction it is heading whereas the assistant professors can let you know about what type of support system is in place for asst. professors. Both are important.

There are a lot of other pointers too, but these are the main ones.

Fostering Productivity

Everyone is always talking about research productivity as measured by some meaningless parameter (# of papers or citation index or whatever). And people love doing comparisons: productivity of men vs. women. Married vs. single. Children vs. no children. And this often comes up in discussions of expected performance as an assistant professor level - where productivity is especially important. But really, how important is important.

I have known (not been friends with, but known) Asst. Profs who essentially took role call 6 days a week. at 7am. Then a natural disaster of sorts hit the lab, and no research could be accomplished for 6 months. The lab had to be re-built and equipment had to be re-ordered. The building still existed (to be clear: this was not New Orleans).

The graduate students all got to take a vacation. The PI got to see his kids. And, at the end 6 months (when the lab was re-built), new science was still there.

I view this as a sign or maybe a lesson. All of science and engineering isn't going to be solved in a day or a year or a decade - but time flies. In the famous words of Ferris: life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you might miss it.

Productivity is really in the eyes of the beholder. And science can't be forced. I could make my students show up to work at 7am. But they may have nothing to do at the lab - maybe they are in the middle of some process that doesn't require them to actually be at the lab. My behavior would just create resentment, which doesn't exactly foster the type of creative atmosphere necessary for innovative science.

But I'm new at this. My peers keep telling me that in a couple years I'll come around. I really hope not.

Faculty Proposals

Last year around this time my time was pretty much fully occupied with writing my proposals for faculty positions. So, since the next generation (if I can presume to claim a generation gap) of prospective faculty applicants is currently engaging in the same activity I thought I would share some advice (for better or worse).

Each field is different - engineering vs. biology vs. chemistry vs. etc. So, a proposal that is great in one field is not great for another. Chemistry proposals will be long (5+ pages) whereas engineering proposals will be short (2-3 pages). Therefore, if you have a friend read your proposal (and definitely do this), make sure they keep this in mind.

Don't send the same application to every position. Make sure you point out why that school should hire you, and name the school in the application. Yes, this will take more time, but it will "speak" to the committee. Point out things like (and I'm just hypothesizing here) how the school's new microscopy facility will enable your research or the fact that the school has an interdisciplinary center will attract students interested in your research topic.

Similarly, don't send the same teaching statement. It is important to explain how your teaching interests align with the school's interests and every school is unique. Read over the school's/dept's curriculum. See if there is a place that you could contribute a new course or if there is an existing course you are particularly excited about or if they do something (senior thesis, specialty minors) that you really like and comment on it. Again, this requires more time, but it shows the committee that you are applying to their school.

Find out who the chair of the committee is and address your cover letter to her/him and the search committee. This information may or may not be posted in the listing. But, call the department secretary. If she/he is hesitant to give out the information (job applicants can often be seen as pests), simply explain why you want the information and state that you will not call or in any way directly contact the professor. They will most likely give you the professor's name. This will personalize your application.

In your actual write-up (proposal of your research), assume that the committee has a very, very broad background. There will most likely be theorists and experimentalists on the committee. Sometimes, there is also an out of department person. Make sure to put the research in context. Include pictures.

Apply to a lot of schools. And make sure to attend a lot of conferences and department seminars this year. If you see someone at a conference who is a professor at a school you applied to, introduce yourself, your research, and mention you applied to the open position - even if it isn't in their department. Practice this introduction - it should be 3 minutes or less (called an elevator speech) and contain all of the important information about you concisely.

As far as departments go, don't limit yourself to your department. Apply to positions where your research fits, not where you got your PhD. Departments usually are looking to hire in a given area. This is very true for engineering. Chem/Phys/Bio departments primarily hire people with Chem/Phys/Bio PhD's.

Follow up on reference letters - specifically, make sure that the schools received them. Professors forget to send them, they get lost in the mail, they get lost at the school, etc. Don't let your application not get reviewed because it was lacking a reference letter.

Finally, save a copy of each application packet. When you get an interview, it will be handy to be able to go back and review what you sent them.

I'll continue this train of thought later this week - with either more information on proposals or information on interviewing.

Committees

When I took this position, I was concerned about how I would be viewed in the eyes of my peers. Would they ask for my opinion on things, would they ask me to be on committees, etc?

Apparently, that is not a problem. I'm not sure if it is the whole "we need a female on this committee and you are the only one" issue or if they actually want my opinion, but I have barely stepped foot in the department (let alone on campus as a whole), and I've been asked to be on far too many committees. Even non-department committees - like faculty board committees - where they have a much larger pool of female profs to pull from.

I'm not sure if my fellow faculty members quite realize what they are getting into. I'm not exactly the demure female that my stature would imply.

To point: I gave a talk last winter, and a member of the audience actually came up to me afterwards and said something like "I saw you take the podium and I almost left the room because I assumed that your talk was going to be inaudible and monotone. (Here he mumbled something about how this was because I was small and female and requested to be miked.) However, you genuinely surprised me with the enthusiasm you projected about your research. I really enjoyed your talk."

At the time, I wasn't sure how to take this - it was both an insult and a compliment. But, at least, in the end I changed his opinion about me, and maybe next time he won't be so fast to judge (not likely, but maybe). And I always request to be miked in large rooms (200+ people). It is just safer and that way I don't need to worry if my voice is reaching the back of the room. To be judged because I care that my audience can hear me seems a little bizarre. But whatever.

In any case, getting back to the point, I think I'm going to have to start turning down committees pretty soon. I'm not sure what the tenure service requirement is, but I'm pretty sure I've hit it. I heard that a 40/40/20 balance was suggested (or something similar) where it was research/teaching/service. I thought this was interesting as it puts teaching and research equal with each other. I heard another story where it was 50/40/10, which I might believe more. Another version was 50/35/15.

I think the more important thing about these ratios is that the teaching/service portion was never less than 50% of the total sum. As has been brought up many times, teaching is becoming more important. Not that research isn't important, but teaching is also important. Which then begs the question - what about service? Where does that factor in? And how is one to balance all of these? Time isn't limitless. (And I'm not even going to get into how one is supposed to fit in a family while achieving these metrics).

I would like to spend more time on service - not committees. But things like outreach: going to middle schools and high schools. There was a report in Science about how even though ~48% math majors are women, only ~10% of engineering majors are women. I'm in that category, and I really think my time could be better spent on outreach than on a committee deciding if the undergraduate curriculum should include 2 semesters of PE or 3.