- A Dynamic Daily Devotional of Mentoring
I love books whose contents far surpass their titles, and this one fits that bill to a tee. At first glance, it seems to have a gimmicky organization. I’m not a big personal fan of reading lists, and the thought of trudging through 75 short recommendations on mentoring frankly re...
- Leading a Lab: Compass Program for Leadership and Management Training
This fall I had the opportunity to participate in Compass (Wash U Compass: Elevating Biomed Professionals (researchercompass.org)), a leadership and management training and mentoring program for early career researchers. An NIH-funded program led by a team at Washington Universit...
- Order from Chaos
For the last few years I’ve been juggling more and more balls. I was barely able to keep up with the endless emails and tasks – both at work and at home – and I felt like I was on the verge of losing control. On top of that, my long-term goals remained vague notions and even ...
- Tools for Making Progress in Academic Life
This post is particularly focused for the population I work with – graduate students and postdocs – but can be helpful for any stage of an academic career – whether as the person struggling or someone trying to help them.
Academia attracts bright, ambitious high achievers capa...
- Unpacking Mental Health: A Book Review
The words “mental health” and “mental illness” are frequently thrown around these days in both society and academe. However, their true nature is rarely defined or understood. Much of our culture simply doesn’t know how to talk about these topics constructively, allowing their ...
- Advice for (New) Assistant Professors Extravaganza
Originally posted in #MHAWS: Mirya Holman's Aggressive Winning Scholars Newsletter.
Hello darlings!
Welcome to the annual “Mirya Holman gives some advice to (new) assistant professors” extravaganza! MHGSATNAPE just rolls off the tongue, right?
Here’s the advice I gave last y...
- NIH’s New Data Sharing Policy: Not So Scary
NIH now requires a formal data sharing plan for each grant they receive. (A few exceptions, primarily T32s and F grants, exist.) It sounds complicated, but they've actually made it pretty easy. You're probably already doing some of what's required.
First of all, there's a ...
- The Art of Being Helpful: Mentor vs. Coach vs. Advisor vs. Sponsor
Imagine that someone you’ve been mentoring for the past few years walks into your office one day and says, “Thank you so much for being a great mentor to me. I was thinking about applying for a leadership position that just opened up. What do you think?”
You remember that ...
- Lessons Learned While Building a Career: Grants
I’ve written lots of grants. Some of them even got funded! Here are some things I learned in my journey from foundation grants to K08 to R01.
Grants beget grants
I was fortunate to have a T32 fellowship during my post-doc, after my clinical training. This helped me gain add...
- De-Mystifying Single IRB: Let IREx Help!
As you travel the long, often winding and shadowy trail of initiating a new study across multiple sites, you may suddenly find a fork in the path to your welcoming mead hall – a requirement to use a single IRB (sIRB). From afar it seems simple enough to traverse, but what doe...
