Faculty development programs are essential for helping academic researchers grow their skills, advance their careers, and meet institutional goals. But let’s face it: not all faculty development programs are created equal. Too often, they’re generic, overly theoretical, or disconnected from the real challenges faculty face. So how do you design faculty development programs that actually work? Programs that engage participants, … Read More
Raising Your Profile: How to Be More Visible to Advance Your Research and Career
Among the various promotion and tenure (P&T) metrics commonly applied to research faculty, one of the more nebulous is “reputation”. Where papers and grants can be quantified with numerical targets, reputation is harder to define with numbers. The vague nature of this assessment criterion understandably poses challenges to faculty who wish to establish their reputation but aren’t sure what exactly … Read More
AMA: What exactly is a NOSI and does it change the way you prepare a grant application?
When we help investigators seek research grants, we often need to translate the lingo that funders use. There are a lot of nuances that can be tough to know or remember when you’re not applying for grants every day, and the tendency toward acronyms doesn’t do a lot to aid understanding. In this vein, a key part of grantsmanship is … Read More
Shifting from “Either/Or” to “Both/And” Thinking: A Powerful Approach for Research Career (and Life) Success
Scientific and health research lends itself to viewing the world in either/or perspectives: data either refute or support a particular hypothesis, sometimes based on statistical tests that indicate “different or not different”. However, it can be distressing when data don’t fit into tidy boxes, and might even create uncertainty in how to move forward. Like with research outcomes, many situations … Read More
Setting Boundaries for Effective Rest and Recovery
Ok, we need to talk about rest. In a recent conversation, an amazing, brilliant, hard-working academic researcher lamented to me that their time off over a long holiday weekend didn’t restore them as hoped. As we chatted through why that might be, several things came to light: 1) They still checked email and other notifications over this “time off”—just like … Read More
The secret to effective communication: Concepts to help your grant proposals, papers, and more
Whether you’re writing a grant proposal or technical manuscript, giving a research talk, or having a conversation with a senior or junior colleague, you probably want to be understood. You might also want the other party(ies) to agree with your perspective, or to take action based on what you share. No matter the desired outcome, there is one key to … Read More
Averting an Energy Crisis
The laws of thermodynamics describe the behaviors of energy in systems. Famously, the 1st law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; energy can only change forms. This change in form is more specifically captured in the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which in part indicates that every energy transfer will result in some amount of energy becoming less useful … Read More