- Not that Kind of Advice: It Is Never Too Early to Be a Mentor
The further I get into running my own research program, the more I realize the significant impact good mentorship has had on my career. My mentors have trained me scientifically, provided career advice, and supported work-life balance. A large impetus for starting this blog has b...
- What I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My K
Three K awardees (K01, K08, K23) share the advice they wish they'd received before preparing career development awards. Writing your K? Listen up.
Training Plan and Mentors
Have an endgame, and goals to get there. In your training plan, you should be able to articulate your res...
- Which Study Section Should I Pick? Try the Assisted Referral Tool!
One important aspect of submitting grants to the NIH is selecting an appropriate study section. While the general descriptions on the CSR website can be helpful, they often require further investigation, which can (and should) include contacting SROs, talking to current or forme...
- Read This: Insights on Priorities Including Doing Less
We hosted Dr. Paul Harris, mastermind of REDCap and ResearchMatch and local guru of efficiency lifehacks, for a seminar on honing your professional edge. He shared these choices as an eclectic mix currently engaging his thoughts.
Habit 3 audiobook
by Steven Covey
“E.M. Gray ...
- Empowering Women through Mentoring
I still remember my first time in a lab. I was doing my last year of college and I got a fellowship to collaborate for a few hours a day in a research lab. It was an old and rusty lab, and my PI was in the first steps of her career, trying to get tenure, taking care of her kids a...
- Not that Kind of Committee Meeting: Tales of Faculty Mentoring
Now that you have assembled your faculty mentoring committee, it is time to prepare for your meeting. A week before the meeting, I send out an updated CV and any documents that I want reviewed, like grant pink sheets or a manuscript draft. I also include an extensive document det...
- Q&A: How to Give a Chalk Talk
You have a whiteboard, a marker, and an hour to convince a department to hire you. How will you handle it?
Three senior faculty who have been involved in multiple searches and seen numerous chalk talks came together to answer questions about this common interview component. ...
- Not that Kind of Committee: Tales of Faculty Committee Design
If you are like me, one of the best parts of completing graduate school was no longer having committee meetings every six months. Oh the glorious freedom of doing research without having to prepare for these meetings! Then I started working on my career development award and quic...
- Think You’re an Imposter? Here’s How to Know for Sure
In my work as a consultant helping young scholars navigate the demands of academic life, one of the most common fears expressed by my clients is that they don’t belong. For them, every paper submitted or experiment conducted carries not only the stress of the task but also the ...
- Three (Grant) Peeves in a Pod: Appearance Matters
Since the holy trinity important things have come in threes—listen up. Beauty is in the eye of the reviewer and we like simple elegance:
1) Avoid gratuitous attention grabbing.
Really? All caps, bold, italics, and underlining in the same paragraph? If your use of emphasis i...
