One way my career before graduate school helped me was preparing me to “manage up.” When we think of the word manage, the process that most often comes to mind is a supervisor monitoring, training, and evaluating a subordinate. But management really happens in both directions in the workplace. Supervisors give assignments, but their employees …
Last week, I listened to the Professoring podcast episode on Academic Break Ups. The co-hosts discussed a range of kinds of break ups they experienced as graduate students including breaking up with advisors who were no longer a good fit. The podcast (which I highly recommend) got me thinking about finding advisors and committee members …
Research, teaching, and service are often framed as the three pillars of a tenure-track faculty job. This framing arguably simplifies the job and overlooks a core role that faculty play as mentors and, relatedly, career coaches. For both undergraduate and graduate students, faculty serve as role models and sources of information about what it means …
A lot of social science departments have goals to diversify their graduate student bodies by recruiting more people of color applicants. It is a worthy goal, but also one raises questions, such as where are these potential people of color applicants and how do we get them to apply? Even at universities with diverse undergraduate …
When you first start graduate school, you’re assigned an advisor usually based on the faculty you mentioned in your application statements and/or the research interests you described. For those of you in the social sciences and in programs to which your funding is not attached to an individual faculty member, it is perfectly normal for …
I work in a department (and a university for that matter) that highly encourages collaborative research between graduate students and faculty. We have a system in place that allows this to happen regularly, so I have been thinking a lot about how I want to engage in research with students. While there seemed like only …
Feedback is a central part of the work of someone with a PhD. Colleagues and friends ask for feedback on papers. Conference organizers ask us to give feedback on presentations as discussants. Journal editors ask for our feedback on manuscripts submitted for publication. Regardless of whether you’re a professor, a research professional, or a graduate …
Some of the most stressful moments of grad school arise around making what feel like career defining decisions. Choosing which faculty members to work with is one of those moments for many grad students whether it’s picking an advisor or committee members for MA papers, qualifying exams, or the dissertation. Even though you have to …
There’s an inherent tension with being a faculty of color in a Predominately White Institution (PWI). Faculty of color face higher demands than their white colleagues in terms of mentoring, advising, and counseling due to the underrepresentation of non-white faculty across academia, but junior faculty are frequently advised to “just say no” to any work …
One missing part of many social science graduate programs is learning how to work with others. Research in graduate school is predominantly a solo endeavor through the MA and dissertation. Additionally, there are limited opportunities to work on research with faculty, other graduate students, and undergraduates, particularly for those doing qualitative research. Unfortunately, I’ve found …
practical phd 