The Compleat Academic
A Career Guide
XING WAN
Agenda
 Starting a Career as a PhD candidate
 Different from master and undergraduate
 Job options
 Teaching and Mentoring
 Teaching
 Mentoring
 Research and Writing
 Research Grant
 Writing Journal Article
 Setting Up Your Lab
 Managing your career over time
Starting a Career as a PhD candidate
A Guide to Ph.D Graduate School
Job Options for new PHD graduate
3 Job Options for new PHD graduates:
 Postdoctoral
 Faculty
 Industry
What’s their pros and cons?
Job Options for new PHD graduate
Postdoctoral
Faculty
Industry
Pros
Cons
•Facilitate the transition
•Broaden research domain
•Research Utopia (No burden)
•Need funding and sponsor
•“Transition” job
•World expert with Prof. title
•Tenure (Job safety)
Balance your time
between Teaching and
Research
•Higher compensation
•Exciting career track
•Can leave the work behind
Less job safety
Advantages of a Postdoctoral Fellowship
How to Find A Postdoc Fellowship
Preparation for Careers outside of Academia
 Transferable skills
 Certain skills not trained enough in graduate
programs
 Social skills
 Having a positive can-do attitude
 Needs more flexibility
Is PHD’s social skill really not that good?
How to Apply for Faculty Position
Key: Vita
 Start by listing everything you have done
 Displays all your relevant skills.
 Include your work "in progress", especially your
thesis proposal, and your future research directions.
 Might also include a list of courses you could teach.
Be neither parochial nor grandiose.
Besides Vita, are there any other things we need to
prepare?
How to Apply for Faculty Position
Key: Job Visit
 Research the institution, the department and the
audience of your talk.
 Present your ideas in a less complex way
 Mention that you know the limits
 At the end of the talk make a brief but explicit
statement regarding future research directions
 conclude with a summary of what you have shown.
Prepare a 5 minutes mini-talk about yourself and your
research.
Teaching & Mentoring
Effective Teaching
 Make good use of the binding contract: the Syllabus
 Engage students in numerous study sessions
 Establishing student communication channels:
office hours; email
 Take a firm, rational, but caring approach by
accepting the excuse but asking for verification.
 Do not cover "everything" in detail
 Be careful not to inadvertently impose your political,
moral, or religious beliefs on students
Effective Teaching
 Save everything.
 Keep good records
 Create your own versions of the teaching
forms
 Build a directory of useful information to
refer students to various kinds of help
Mentoring
 Testing a student's research ideas
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What are you interested in doing/finding out?
Why are you interested in doing this?
How does what you are interested in doing relate to what's
already known?
How does this research differ from and/or extend previous
research?
How are you going to do this?
What do you expect to find?
Fit between you and the student?
Research & Writing
Obtaining a Research Grant
 Develop a research idea and
then pitch it to potential funders
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Select your ideas carefully
Think broadly about the applications
of your work
 Call the relevant program
officers
 Be prepared with follow-up
questions
 Hedge your bets
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Submit your ideas to various agencies
Writing the Empirical Journal Article
 An article is written in the shape of an hourglass.
 Broad general statement
 Specifics of the study
 More general consideration
 Introduction
 Method
 Results
 Discussion
 Title and abstract
Setting Up Your Lab
 Not enough funding
 Buy what you absolutely need to begin your research
program
 Save some money for later
 Start small and make sure your lab works with right
people
Managing Your Career Over Time
The Academic Marathon
 Thinking about the future: make concrete plans for
small chunks of time and more general plans for the
more distant future.
 Short-term planning: build time for writing and
research into your schedule
 Medium-term goals: six-month chunks of time is a
good choice
 Long-term goals: range beyond concrete behavioral
objectives to the category of dreams, hopes, and
aspirations.
Enjoy the Pure Joy of Research!
 Faculty have pretty flexible
schedule, but can never leave
the work behind.
 The joys are the primary reasons why
this stressful, ill-paid line of work is
worth pursuing. And what drives us
ultimately is the pure joy of research:"
Those moments.... When suddenly
there is a synthesis of the human
intelligence.. And to know every day
that it might happen again." (Gornick
1983, p.52)