No prizes for coming second

I got my first rejection for an academic faculty position. It is a brutal world in academia, and there is no difference between the 2nd place or last (especially when there is only ONE opening). At least I got a rather detailed rejection letter, instead of the generic thank you for your application type. I wonder if it is so because of my PhD advisor (they are friends).

To: takchek
Subject: Re: My application

Hi takchek,

I am sorry to have not communicated with you earlier, but we were still in the process of making decisions. Your application made it to the final top five (out of about 650 candidates), but we had only money to bring in one person from out of state (Ed: seriously?!), unfortunately, so I was not able to invite you up for the final campus interview and visit.

Your application was very strong and the committee was quite impressed by it, and especially by the relevance of your previous research work and your proposed plans fit nicely the focus areas that the department has targeted. Ultimately the final decision was made based on both research experience and the candidates' clear commitment and evidence of excellence to undergraduate teaching (Ed: my Achilles' heel) at a leading liberal arts college.

I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Chair, Faculty Search Comittee

The section below pertains to Philosophy, but it applies to the physical sciences and engineering as well (to the best of my knowledge). I was most likely penalized for the 3rd point, and will need to improve on this to be competitive.

How did we prune our field from 637 to 27? An important selection criterion was holding a Ph.D. from a good university. Members of our department earned their Ph.D.s at Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and University of London. Additionally, City College is known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat,” with distinguished alumni that include nine Nobel Laureates, more than any other public institution in America. Our faculty members are expected to live up to this legacy.

A second criterion was research and publication. We looked not only for quality and promise of quantity, but also for originality. Creativity and individuality are assets for philosophers. We did not want candidates who merely parroted back what they had been taught at graduate school.

Third, we needed evidence of undergraduate teaching ability as well as versatility. We offer a broad range of electives to a diverse student body; a narrow focus does not serve our pedagogic needs well. Most applicants submitted extensive teaching portfolios including syllabuses, reading lists, student evaluations, and observations by senior professors. We looked for evidence of outstanding teaching ability, variety, and potential for curriculum development.

Finally, we wanted evidence of administrative service. Ideally, the candidate would also possess some ability to raise research funds, although this is not too prevalent among philosophers. Even so, a good many applicants had raised funds: either minimally in the form of postdoctoral fellowships, more broadly for organizing conferences, or most notably for research projects (either solo or collaborative).

Sigh.

US Public Sector Employees' Salary Data

Feels kinda weird when one's salary is available for the whole wide world to see. Information on University of California employee salaries as well as that of the other states can be found here.

Economic Stimulus Job Opportunities in Academia

The money is getting out. If you want to do research in your dream school, now it's the best time to grab the opportunity.

From my department's Secretary for Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Scholars:

Subject: Economic Stimulus Postdoctoral Job Opportunities at Duke

Duke University anticipates receipt of award funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the Economic Stimulus Act. Postdoctoral positions may be available as a result of this funding. If you would like to express interest in a potential postdoctoral appointment at Duke, please visit: http://www.hr.duke.edu/jobs/stimulus/

Postdoctoral position listings may also be found at http://www.postdoc.duke.edu/openings_at_duke.php

If you are interested in applying for the positions and meet the
eligibility requirements, please activate your application soon. If you know of other colleagues who might be interested in this Economic Stimulus opportunity, please forward this email to them.

Obama's New Deal for Academia

I will be honest upfront - things were really looking bad for us folks in academia (and pretty much everyone else too) in last few months. Well, they still are, but things are looking up with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the economic stimulus package) signed by President Obama on Feb 17.

In an email last semester, my PhD advisor actually had to send out a letter to the group (in addition to a pep talk during the regular group meetings) with encouraging words:

Dear group,

This (financial crisis) is a good opportunity to clarify and reinforce the positive things about our group. First of all, my primary concern is, and will continue to be, the welfare of my students. I will do anything (legally of course) and everything to keep your work going and with the best resources possible, and to help you make the most of your time here.

I know that situations like this can cause stress to rise and may lead to uncertainty among the group. First, I want to assure you that this will not fundamentally alter our ongoing research plans.

Secondly, it is obvious that the composition of our group is changing rapidly…mainly because of graduations. This is a good thing and it is normal. People are supposed to graduate and leave. So, there will be turnover in any organization. I wish that the group number were not fluctuating so largely, but that is only partially within my control. Grants get funded at unpredictable times, and about 5 years ago I had a lot of grants get funded all at once. I had a bunch of students join the group. Now those students (you know who you are) have finished or close to finishing.

The group size is small right now, and it’s going to get smaller temporarily, and this is intentional.

Let me explain:

In order to avoid this type of fluctuation in the future I have been attempting to take on only 1 student a year for the past two years. I have been writing only enough proposals to support this rate of growth (so I don’t have to take 3-4 people at once). So, this is part of a greater plan to provide more stability in the future.

Thirdly, about funding: Professors who have been in this business for 40 years (like the department chair) will tell you that they have never seen funding as tight as it is right now. So, writing only a few new proposals to grow the group 1 student per year is risky, which is why I was not planning originally to take on 2 this year. Another issue is that my current projects are non-overlapping –purely by chance – the main projects get renewed at the same time (January) each year. This means that at the end of the year I have to be careful – just like you do at the end of each month. So, if I look over your orders more carefully it is simply for this reason. It doesn’t mean that support for your project is going away and should not be a cause for your concern. I’ll take care of, and worry about, the funding. You guys (and gals) can worry about the research.

The quantity and quality of research output, and the type of job you get, and how long it takes you to graduate is rarely a direct function of the quantity or type of funding anyway. It is true! Some of the most highly-cited papers have come from poorly-funded research, not only in my group but in general throughout science. And some of the most well-funded work has produced few papers. I have other sources of funding to keep ideas afloat between big grants. It is not an impediment and I have always gotten the funding I sought.

When you go on a job interview, no one will ask how much funding your advisor had! What is important are the indicators of the quality and quantity of your work: how many papers, presentations and in what journals / conferences.

I am confident that our research is on the cutting edge and that each of your projects is going to lead you to an exciting career. For example, the number of citations of previous students’ work from my group is at an all-time high. It is among the highest of any associate professor at this university. My h-index is 20.

I will talk more about these things at our next group meeting, and until then my door is of course open to speak about this.

Regards,

Prof X

Yesterday my postdoc advisor had the whole group summoned:

Congress had given federal granting agencies (NSF, NIH, DOE) stimulus money for colleges to spend. There are opportunities for us in getting some of that package money. I want to help Congress spend those money and I want each and everyone of you to come up with ideas by Friday on how to tack on our existing NSF, NIH and DOE grants with more funding.

Focus on the "near-term" and ready to start projects, as these are especially advantaged in this environment.

Government-Wide Timeline

All agencies are under significant pressure to begin distributing the funding in the stimulus bill to States, organizations, and individuals as quickly as possible. The overall timeline announced by the Administration for the next few months is:
• February 19, 2009: Federal Agencies to begin reporting their formula block grant awards.
• March 3, 2009: Federal Agencies to begin reporting uses of funds.
• May 3, 2009: Federal agencies to make performance plans publically available; to begin reporting on their allocations for entitlement programs.
• May 15, 2009: Detailed agency financial reports to become available.
• May 20, 2009: Federal agencies to begin reporting their competitive grants and contracts.
• July 15, 2009: Recipients of Federal funding to begin reporting on their use of funds.

In addition, the Office of Management and Budget has set targets for implementation of programs by the agencies. Individual agencies have additional deadlines; for example, NSF, NIST, and NASA have been directed to deliver a spending plan to Congress by April 18, 2009.

I live in exciting times...plus it helps that I am in involved in the development of new, clean, renewable energy sources, one of the hottest areas (pun unintended) of research right now.

The 9 common types of PIs

J.W.Yewdell, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 9, 413-416 (May 2008)

*

Writing a research statement/proposal is taking far longer (and more difficult) than I had anticipated. How would you know/guesstimate how much you can accomplish in the next 3 - 5 years? It's like writing fiction.

*

NTU is on an aggressive hiring spree for my discipline. The department concerned wants to expand by another 20% over the next 5 years.

Perks of being in Academia

Congratulations on landing a tenure-track faculty position in one of America's finest research universities! Maybe one day we will be colleagues in rival schools.

You can also start thinking about this soon. After all, it is good to hear that your (future) employer is one of those that provides tuition assistance and preferential admissions consideration to the Other Legacies: Fac Brats.

Imagine offering this carrot to your prospective bride: "I may not be as rich as my peers in Wall Street, but I can guarantee our kids a higher chance of getting admitted to this super-elite university and paying no college tuition for 4 years."

College towns are also islands of (economic) stability, and regularly rank amongst the best places to raise a family in the US.

*

I think there are many advantages for exposing children to an academic environment early in their lives. They get *easy access* to some of the best facilities available - well-equipped libraries, sports complexes etc. If you are a faculty member in the engineering/physical/biological sciences, your children may get to see some of the most sophisticated (read: expensive) equipment and view for themselves what happens when you add X to Y, or how a yeast cell is like under the Atomic Force Microscope before and after budding, or how the fourth state of matter can be used to completely remove organic residues from a Si wafer.

For those who are more inclined towards the Arts, it doesn't hurt too to have them know your colleagues in the humanities departments.

They might get that edge when it comes to college applications time. What better than to be able to see what your child is up to in college? :)

(Note: This is NOT helicopter parenting.)

*

I come from a family of teachers. There has always been an emphasis towards excelling in school. It's not just about getting an A, but about doing the best you can. If your best means being able to top the cohort and you failed, it doesn't matter even if you get a distinction for the subject. You would have disappointed the family. Conversely, if your predicted grade is a C but you get a B, it is considered an achievement worthy of praise.

That said, I always felt I was subject to a higher standard than my peers simply because my mum is a teacher. I am expected to do well.

*

Does Steven Chu's family history sound very similar to the typical high-achieving Asian American family?

Competition vs Collaboration in Academia

Found from YoungFemaleScientist - a classic case of what can happen when a fresh PhD/post doc interviews for his/her first faculty position.

The hardest part of a faculty job search for any candidate is to define the area of research he/she wants to get into. For obvious reasons, you cannot expect to continue to work on what you did for your PhD. That would mean direct competition with your advisor, and chances are you will lose. After all, he/she is the one with the stature and prestige, and you are the Apprentice.

So most people would try to do one or two post docs to gain expertise in different area(s), before starting their careers as junior faculty. The hope is that they can combine them to do novel research in a hybrid field.

But sometimes when the field gets too crowded, the Assistant Professors, being at the lowest rung of the academic professoriate, get the shaft.

*

Which is why I have seen many of my peers/classmates/groupmates, some with multiple national/college awards for their research/publications, quit academia and leave for the industry after their PhD.

The pay is much better, even if the competitive nastiness remains the same.

Can a marriage with no kid(s) survive?

In the past 3 weeks, I had this discussion separately with 3 groups of folks - my mum, my fellow Las Vegas travellers, and a peer from grad school.

The grad school friend: "You should be wary if she doesn't want kids. She might just walk out on you, demand half of your assets and scoot off with another guy with your money." (With reference to the 'hordes' of mail-order brides in China/Vietnam.)

Unanimously, they all said no. In the Sg blogosphere, I already know of two prominent married but childless couples dissolving their unions. Of course, having children (a painful process for the womenfolk) does not guarantee a marriage will survive. Then yesterday I came across this post, which mirrors the arguments put forth to me earlier.

I hope to be able to find a life companion, but I am not sure if I want to be a parent. "Then why marry?", asked my mum.

What do you think?

***

On a sidenote, my professors broadly fall into two groups:

The first is so totally devoted to his/her research that they remain childless. Usually their spouses are as equally career minded; if they aren't they are divorced.

It is typical for them to chide their grad students if they get married/have kids during grad school, as has happened to a friend. Everyone else sent him congratulations, but his advisor emailed him - "I hope you don't slack off else you won't get your PhD from me."

They drive their students hard, and will be in the lab with them on weekends/public holidays. If you want to make it big in academia, these are the professors to work for. Just don't expect to get hitched while being a lab rat.

The second will settle down and start their families upon getting tenure. They are unlikely to be promoted to the Full professor rank, and most will retire as Associate professors. Their students generally will have an easier time compared to the first group.

My present company ain't much better; the divorce rate is higher than the (US) national average given the constant tight deadlines most groups have to meet every quarter.(Read: Overtime)

Even the most prestigious solicits

I don't know whether to blame Royal Mail, the US Postal Service, or the School's internal mail system for the lag.

As the Graduate Studies Chair was telling us grad students in my first year here, "if you can get your paper published there, I am sure your advisor will let you graduate right away."

Yeah...right. (Not that I published in Nature or Science.)

Check out your competitors if you are entering the academic job market

Taken off the Chronicle:

Who's Hot? Who's Not?

From the issue dated September 22, 2006

Online rumor mills shine a light on faculty job searches but may also intensify the star system

By ROBIN WILSON

With 11 campus interviews and an offer from Yale University, Susan D. Hyde quickly emerged as the darling of last year's faculty job market in international relations.

Her good fortune was clear to anyone with an Internet connection, courtesy of a new blog that tracks jobs in her discipline. Through anonymous postings, the blog followed Ms. Hyde's nearly every move, from her interviews at the University of Virginia and George Washington University to her decision to accept the offer at Yale.

Too bad I can't find (yet) a rumor mill for my discipline.

-----------------------------------------------------------

ONLINE RUMOR MILLS IN ACADEME

IR RUMOR MILL
http://irrumormill.blogspot.com

Started January 2005. The international-relations blog lists fellowships and faculty job openings and offers discussion forums. On the forums this year, posters have asked whether some candidates got job offers because they were female, and whether candidates' political views influence departments' hiring decisions.

AMERICAN AND COMPARATIVE JOBS
http://americanandcomparativejobs.blogspot.com

Started May 2006. The politics blog will follow its first full job season this year — from advertisements in the fall to offers in the spring — with separate listings for American politics and comparative politics. Postings on the comparative section started in August this way:
Anonymous: "Good luck to everyone on the market. May the best scholars win."
Anonymous: "Are you joking? The market is seldom just about quality of research."

MIDDLE EAST HISTORY ACADEMIC POSITIONS (THE RUMOR MILL)
http://mideast-history-jobs.blogspot.com

Started July 2006. The blog, begun by a doctoral student in the field, offers job listings plus an overall 2007 job-discussion forum. "Please comment here," it says, "if you wish to discuss (or, most likely, complain about) the 2007 job market."

POLITICAL THEORY AND PUBLIC LAW JOB MARKET
http://politicaltheoryrumormill.blogspot.com

Started January 2006. The blog has separate listings for jobs in political philosophy, political theory, and public law. It also tracks moves by senior scholars in those fields.

ASTROPHYSICS JOBS RUMOR MILL
http://www.hp-h.com/b/astromill

Started in 1999. A sophisticated Web site, known as the "astromill," that offers a color-coded listing of jobs for postdoctoral fellows, assistant professors, full professors, and department heads. Job rumors are submitted by e-mail to an anonymous moderator at edwinhubble@hotmail.com (named after Edwin P. Hubble, the astronomer).

ASTROPHYSICS JOB RUMOUR MILL
http://cdm.berkeley.edu/doku.php?id=astrophysicsjobs

Started July 2006. Martin White, a physics professor at the U. of California at Berkeley, started this wiki to provide the same kind of information as the established astromill, but faster. Because the wiki — a communal Web site — can be edited by anyone with a computer, the information does not have to go through a single moderator. The site uses a single, easy-to-read table to follow openings for tenure-track jobs.

THEORETICAL PARTICLE PHYSICS JOB RUMOR MILL
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/rumor/doku.php

Started 1995. John Terning created the site with a colleague when he was a postdoctoral fellow in physics at Boston U. Now an associate professor at the U. of California at Davis, Mr. Terning still runs it. Above its easy-to-read listing of faculty job openings, the Web site includes this disclaimer: "The following information is based on rumors submitted by our correspondents from around the world. Since many physics departments will not verify this (in principle) public information, we cannot guarantee that any information is accurate. This information is provided as a public service, no warranty is expressed or implied. Your mileage may vary."

Peer competitors

A week ago, a lab groupmate (as well as my prof) announced that she has been awarded a competitive PhD fellowship by one of the (U.S) federal agencies. This makes three in my own (small) lab group, being holders of prestigious national fellowships. If I include folks from the other lab groups in the department, the numbers go up further.

A year ago, another labmate was awarded the Intel PhD fellowship. As an indication of its selectivity:

The Intel Foundation Ph.D. Fellowship Program awards two-year fellowships to Ph.D. candidates pursuing leading-edge work in fields related to Intel's business and research interests. Fellowships are available at select U.S. universities, by invitation only, and focus on Ph.D. students who have completed at least one year of study. This is a highly competitive program with approximately 40 fellowships awarded annually. The two-year fellowship is renewable for up to two years pending review by the Intel Foundation.

Two years ago, another was awarded the NSF graduate fellowship.

Even my advisor was given tenure early, after 4 years (instead of the usual 5).

This is so depressing for me, to be surrounded by overachievers. Yeah, a number of my friends' publications have also been awarded "best student-authored" prizes by various academic/professional organisations.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This takes the cake:

(Soccer-mad) Friend, SMF: You should expect it what. Grad school sieves out the pretenders from the contenders. (Ed: wtf???) Besides, you have been immersed in competitive environments since secondary school. Then JC, army and undergrad. So what's new?

Me: I am getting tired. I'm always running and benchmarking myself against my peers. It's so hard to do your work and then you see your peers getting recognised for their efforts while you struggle through with your experiments. Then I see my seniors going places.

SMF: Dude, you are now playing in the Champions League. (Ed: I like this analogy, heh) Undergrad is like the Serie A or Premiership, there are weak teams for you to beat easily and end up in the top 10%. Now your competitors are the US and international champions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The department secretary sent out this email:

Dear Department Head:

As you know, the National Research Council of the National Academies sponsors a number of awards for postdoctoral researchers at federal laboratories. These awards provide generous stipends ($36,000 - $65,000), and the opportunity to do independent research in some of the best-equipped and staffed laboratories in the country.

We ask your assistance in informing doctoral students in your department of these opportunities by copying this message to each one.

Detailed program information, including instructions on how to apply, is available on the NRC Research Associateship Programs Web site at:
www.national-academies.org/rap
Questions should be directed to the NRC at 202-334-2760 (tel) or rap@nas.edu.

There will be four review cycles annually. Upcoming deadline dates are:

February 1, 2006

May 1, 2006

August 1, 2006

November 1, 2006


Applicants should begin a dialog with prospective advisors at the lab as early as
possible, before their anticipated application deadline.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely yours,
H. Ray Gamble
Director of the Fellowship Programs
National Research Council
The National Academies

Soon.

Singaporean Faculty at US universities

This blog is still getting hits from readers who keyed in "Tracey Ho" (with "MIT" thrown in at times) on google and yahoo. If you don't know what I am talking about, see this and this.

It has got me thinking. She is definitely not the first Singaporean to get an academic appointment in a US university, nor will she be the last to do so. So, the question now becomes: How many Singaporean (or someone with extensive Singaporean roots) faculty are there teaching/researching in the US?

I obviously do not have the answer, but just to start the ball rolling, I will put those I know in the list below; I encourage readers to submit addenums/ point out errors that you see and I will edit this post accordingly.

Why: Every year, a number of Singaporean students decide to head to the US for graduate studies. Encounters with peers at a certain local research institute applying to the US universities showed that while 'hard' information about the universities' research (and the *USnews rankings*) is readily available online, 'soft' factors such as the local living conditions, congeniality among the various research groups in the school (an important factor that is most often overlooked by incoming grad students) are not easily forthcoming. So, in having this list, Singaporeans coming over here will have an additional resource in asking opinions about their fields of study and the school/city where they will spend the next 2 - 5 years of their graduate studies. What better advice than someone who shared your social/academic background and understand where you are coming from? They can also serve as some kind of model figure (*for those of you thinking of getting a faculty job here, ie quitters :P*)

This list is pathetic not exhaustive very short for now, and I look forward to expanding it.

List of current Singaporean faculty at US schools, broken down according to disciplines (Not exhaustive)

Business
Linda Y.C. Lim - Professor of Corporate Strategy and International Business; Director of the Center for South East Asian Studies, University of Michigan (tip: L'oiseau rebelle)

Xuanming Su - Assistant Professor, Operations and Information Technology Management, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Teck-Hua Ho - William Halford Jr. Family Professor of Marketing; Chair, Marketing Group; Acting Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, UC Berkeley

Mawder Foo - Associate Professor, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado - Boulder

Noah Lim - Assistant Professor of Marketing, C T Bauer College of Business, University of Houston

Chemical Engineering
Simon Ng - Professor and Co-Director of Alternative Energy Technology Program, Wayne State University

Jackie Ying* - Professor of Chemical Engineering, MIT

Communications
Pauline Hope Cheong - Assistant Professor, SUNY - Buffalo

Economics
Bee-Yan Aw-Roberts - Professor of Economics, Penn State

Chih Ming Tan - Assistant Professor of Economics, Tufts

Electrical Engineering
Changhuei Yang - Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering & BioEngineering, Caltech

Tracey Ho - Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Caltech

English
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim - Professor of English, UCSB

Environmental Engineering
Kai Loon Chen - Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University

Geography
Jessie P. Poon - Professor, Director of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center, SUNY - Buffalo

Mathematics
Melvin Leok - Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Purdue University

Chek Beng Chua - Combinatorics & Optimization, Department of Mathematics, University of Waterloo**

Boon Wee Ong - Lecturer, Penn State Erie, Behrend College

Wei-Yin Loh - Professor of Statistics, Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Mechanical Engineering
Kok-Meng Lee -
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech

Chee Wei Wong - Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University

Plant Molecular Biology
Nam-Hai Chua - Andrew W. Mellon Professor, The Rockefeller University

Psychology
Michael Goh - Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Taiwanese, but did her secondary education in Singapore. Concurrent Executive Director of IBN.

**Canadian institution

Wandering Scholar(s)

Two months ago, Mr Wang blogged about a PSC scholar wannabe, and how his thoughts (and most likely that also of his peers in the premier junior college in the Bishan-AMK area) is a slap in the face for the local universities' aspirations to become world-class institutions.

Today I read in a Technology magazine about an ex-President's cum Lee Kuan Yew Scholar being selected by a distinguished panel of judges as one of the top technology innovators under age 35 (as of October 1, 2005). Now, don't get me wrong. She definitely did Singapore proud, although I was surprised at her in taking up a faculty position at Caltech. I was expecting her to return to NUS or NTU as a member of the teaching/research staff.

It was only last week that the Economist had published a slew of articles on the state of global higher education. Competition for talent is now global; if you are one, the world will be your oyster, PSC scholar or not.

"Better brain drain than brain in the drain." - Rajiv Gandhi (1944 - 1991), late Prime Minister of India

I have provided a copy of the Economist article (in pdf format) in case anyone had missed last week's issue.


Good job, Tracey!