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Advice for new faculty?

Last week over at Daily Nous, Justin ran a helpful post soliciting advice for new graduate students. I was thinking it might be helpful to run a similar post here for new faculty. As someone who vividly remembers how challenging it was to transition from grad school to my first job, I thought it might be good to:

  1. Catalogue some common or potential pitfalls new faculty can run into; and
  2. Offer experience-based advice on how to avoid those pitfalls, start off on the right foot, and succeed in a new job.

I'm short on time this morning, so I'm going to simply open up these topics for reader discussion–and I'll weigh in too in the comments section!

Posted in

5 responses to “Advice for new faculty?”

  1. jdkbrown

    Know your institution’s tenure requirements, and prioritize your teaching/research/service accordingly.
    Learn to say “no.” You will be asked to take on all sorts of tasks, big and small, and many of them may be things you actually want to do. It’s easy to overextend yourself; you need to pick and choose where you’re spending your time and energy.
    Find departmental and institutional mentors. It’s crucial to have people who support you through your transition from grad student to faculty.

    Reply
  2. Mike Titelbaum

    Here’s a simple thing for people on the tenure track: Create a “tenure” file, and just dump everything into it that might eventually be related to your tenure case. For me, this was a folder in my gmail account, but some people prefer to print things out and keep a physical file. When I finally went up for tenure, I looked back through the file and found records of all sorts of relevant things I’d done and interactions I’d had that I might not have remembered without the file.

    Reply
  3. Recently Hired

    Spend the money to find a decent place to live now that you can afford it. It’s amazing how much disputes with landlords can cost you in terms of time and emotional resources.

    Reply
  4. Marcus Arvan

    Recently Hired: been there, and second that. My first year was a nightmare due to not doing my homework and living in an unlivable situation with a landlord who wouldn’t let us out of our lease.

    Reply
  5. Recently Hired

    Marcus: I even did my homework, and still ended up in an unlivable situation! This all is happening during the start of my first term with a heavy teaching load.
    Luckily, I soon realized three things. (1) Tenants have very explicit legal rights. (2) My landlord was not a reasonable person who was going to treat me like a reasonable person to deal with problems. (3) The training you receive as a Philosophy PhD really helps in drafting official letters, legal complaints, etc., researching legal statutes, and making phone calls to various people to make things happen.
    When I came to grips with these three facts, I started taking concrete legal steps to remove myself from the situation, and hopefully I can move out soon. Still: spend the money and don’t put yourself in this situation, people!

    Reply

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