Your First Year

From PsychWiki - A Collaborative Psychology Wiki

You worked your butt off in grad school for years to put yourself into a position to get a good job, applied for every relevant job, landed an interview, and was offered the position. Now what?

This page is designed to help you navigate that first year on the new job.

For example, what is expected of newly hired faculty members? How do you carry out your research, teaching, and service? How do you balance family and work?

1 Why didn't someone prepare me to be a new faculty member?
2 Start with your mentors in graduate school
3 Find "guides" in your new department
4 How to hit the ground running
5 Research
6 Teaching
7 Service
8 For more information...

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Why didn't someone prepare me to be a new faculty member?

Graduate school is based on the apprenticeship model where you are trained in your topic area (and possibly teaching, depending on your department) but there is typically very little guidance in other areas, such as preparation for becoming a newly hired faculty member.
From a purely utilitarian viewpoint most departments probably assume only a number of graduates will land faculty positions so why develop some formal training or class into how to navigate the ivory tower.
Unfortunately this type of information is not typically contained in books or manuals because each discipline has their own unique culture and politics, so the only real way to get concrete advice is to talk to those people who are in that environment... (see next section about how to find those people).

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Start with your mentors in graduate school

If they trained you in graduate school, then chances are they will still provide guidance and training when you get the academic job.
Why are your mentors the best source of information? They can provide their insights from first-hand experience with the challenges they faced while developing into a productive member of the academic community.
They can also provide honest advice because they are not affiliated with your new department (assuming of course you didnt land a job where you graduated from).
They are familiar with the culture and politics of the discpline.
So the next question is how to find someone familiar with the culture and politics of YOUR new department? (see next section)

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Find "guides" in your new department

Only someone familiar with your new department can give you the kind of expert advice that only comes from knowing the people involved, understand how to find resources, where to turn to for advice, navigating the bureaucracy, and etc.

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How to hit the ground running

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Research

You want to start your own research laboratory. The emphasis should be on having trained graduate students and undergraduate students who can collect data so that you can free your time for other duties such as applying for extramural funding and writing publications.
How do you start your own research laboratory? The first step is...
You want to start conducting research that is independent of your advisor from graduate school, and independent of any other outside influences, such as past collaborators or new collaborators. It is important to prove that you can conduct your own independent line of research, especially is you are in a tenure-track position.

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Teaching

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Service

An important step in becoming a productive member of the academic community is to get hands-on experience in "service" activities at the university level, state and/or national level.
Ask the recently-tenured faculty in your department about how important "service" is to the department and/or the other tenure decision-makers. You don't want to spend too much time on service if its not relatively weighted high.
Also ask the recently-tenured faculty which service opportunities are the best or weighted the most by the department and/or the other tenure decision-makers. Why not spend your time on the activities that give you the best chances of tenure success.
Not all "service" opportunities are created equal!
1. Give preference to the service opportunities that overlap with your research and teaching interests
2. Search for service opportunities that help you in other concrete ways, such as making contacts or networking.
3. It is possible there are committees at the university, state, and national level that put in you contact with potential research collaborators.
4. Consider being one of the organizers of confereces because you certainly become more well-known in your field as you
If service is relatively underweighted by your department, then try to find the committees that meet the least or require the least effort. But be sure that the department does not consider you as skirting your service obligations.
Focus first on research and teaching, and then add more "service" to your life if/when you have the time after reaching your researching/teaching goals.
How much is too much?