Conducting Interdisciplinary Research

Co-Authored By Tina Brown and Michèle Schlehofer

Due to the complexity of human behavior, emphasis is increasingly being placed on the need for and conduct of interdisciplinary research. We’ve all heard that interdisciplinary research is the hot new trend. It can lead to the development of innovative methodologies to support the interdisciplinary integration of social/behavioral disciplines with other disciplines. It can spur integration of various levels of analysis ranging from individual to aggregate levels. And, there’s clearly a big push among some of our biggest funders (namely, NIH) for interdisciplinary research. However, conducting interdisciplinary research can be a somewhat intimidating endeavor.

We started at our university within a semester of each other, and this was our first faculty position for both of us. Partly driven by a need to develop a program of research and partly driven by a need to develop an ally on campus, once we realized that we had overlapping research interests, we formed an interdisciplinary psychology (Michèle) and nursing (Tina) research collaboration. It’s been fruitful: we’ve become known in our respective departments for being productive researchers; we’ve presented our work at several conferences; we’re preparing manuscripts for submission to journals in our fields; and we’ve received a few small research grants.

Obviously, interdisciplinary research has its rewards. We’ve been able to expand the size and productivity of our research lab by having each of us bring on undergraduate research assistants from our respective departments. Having someone to share theorizing and writing with is nice, too. And, we serendipitously found that each of us brings certain strengths to the table: Tina has many well-established contacts in the local community, allowing us to do community-based work, while Michèle is strong in statistics. The benefit of having a colleague outside your department (and who is also outside your department’s politics) who you can use as a resource is phenomenal. Finally, it’s been rewarding for us to get visibility in a field other than our own. For instance, Tina is now a member of SPSSI, and attended the 2008 conference and plans to attend the 2010 conference in New Orleans, as well.

However, we’ve also found that navigating the field of interdisciplinary research can be tricky. We soon came to realize that there were subtle differences in standards of what constitutes “good” research across our two disciplines. Experimental manipulations, a cornerstone of social psychological research, are not considered ethical to those in the nursing field. And, theories and methodologies often used in nursing research are foreign to social psychologists.

Publishing our work has proved further problematic. One thing that we’ve learned is that psychologists and nurses just write “different.” The differences are subtle, but have an important impact on manuscript decisions. It can be difficult to learn another discipline’s language. And, because psychologists and nurses write “different,” journals in the nursing and psychology fields have different criteria for accepting an article, and may even have different criteria as to how the manuscript is prepared.

We are interested in hearing other’s experiences with interdisciplinary research. What has worked? Have you been successful in publishing your work, and if so, do you have any tips to share? What hasn’t worked? Is interdisciplinary research supported and encouraged at your institution or organization? Or perhaps is it discouraged? As SPSSI scholars, what value do you see in conducting interdisciplinary research?

We look forward to reading your comments, questions, and learning from your own experiences!!

Advocacy and Early Career Scholars – Making the Connection

Researchers can often be the best communicators of their findings to decision makers in Washington and anywhere else that social policies are being formulated. So why, exactly, don’t more scholars get involved? Many don’t believe that they are qualified or knowledgeable enough about the policy making process in order to truly influence change. The reality of the situation is this: If you are interested in learning how to conduct personal social justice advocacy, nobody is in a better position to disseminate information to policy makers than those conducting the actual social science research! There is no question that face to face meetings with members of Congress, aides, local legislators and policy directors representing various advocacy-oriented organizations are the best possible options for sharing your material. A personal discussion followed by a “leave behind” including reading material and talking points is always more valuable than an e-mail or phone call – but it’s not only lobbyists and government relations specialists that can take advantage of these kinds of meetings. Scholars interested in personally representing their research should not hesitate to contact the offices of those policy makers and advocates with a strong interest or stake in respective social justice issues. Finding out which members in particular require the specific information that you have to share can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, but more often than not, conducting the extra legwork is an extremely worthwhile exercise, as the payoff tends to be much more significant then when operating blindly, without any quality leads. In my capacity as SPSSI’s Policy Coordinator, I can assist you with this part of the process. Staffers in congressional offices in particular, genuinely prefer to speak with individual experts in a particular field rather than with uneducated lobbyists simply shilling for organizations with little knowledge, concern or understanding of the underlying research behind their positions. Knowing your own data and its implications inside and out holds a special appeal to policy makers and issue advocates, and entering an office for a meeting with a legislative staffer armed with a PhD is a significant advantage that early career scholars should feel strongly confident in taking advantage of. One important final element of consideration to keep in mind, however, when discussing office visits, is that those involved in the policy world do not read academic journals or texts under any circumstances. The shorter and more to the point your leave behind, the better the odds that it won’t soon be discarded. This is simply an unfortunate and unavoidable reality of the Capitol Hill universe in which advocates must operate, and where in five minutes is considered a long meeting. Advocacy requires tremendous amounts of patience. More often than not, you will find that months, or sometimes even years after a personal meeting with a particular individual, you may begin to receive regular phone calls from that person soliciting your thoughts on similar policy matters to that which you discussed with them previously. In an instant, you can become an expert resource to those whose job it is to turn research into policy, and that, in and of itself, should be considered a huge victory on behalf of your work. Aside from office visits, there are a variety of other options for making certain that your research ends up in the hands of a policy maker, an advocate or a policy aide capable of reviewing and making use of the material. While not always as effective as sit-down meetings, phone, fax and e-mail correspondence with offices can also be valuable, and sometimes just the act of reaching out in any capacity is enough to constitute the all-important first step in building a relationship with a staffer that will end up existing for a long time. Another important means of reaching policy makers is talking to the people who talk to them. Thousands of issue-oriented non profit organizations will be more than happy to learn about and make use of the research findings that you can share. Individuals representing these groups are no more than an e-mail or phone call away. This type of contact can lead to coalition building and often succeeds in raising awareness of particular issue areas significantly. The importance of networking as an advocacy tool cannot be emphasized enough. If you are interested in personal advocacy, first and foremost remember that finding the appropriate policy audience for your research should serve as your primary goal. How you accomplish that is often a matter of logistics and personal preference, but regardless, making yourself available to those who can benefit most from your work is a terrific idea, and a wonderful public service. For assistance with a personal advocacy project, for more information about getting involved with personal advocacy, or for advice concerning “packaging” of your data for policy makers, please contact SPSSI Policy Coordinator Chris Woodside at cwoodside@spssi.org.

Grant Writing- No Map and No Compass

If your grant-writing experience in graduate school paralleled mine, then you probably earned your degree with no idea how to go about tackling external funding. Although some of my grad school friends worked in labs that regularly wrote NIH grants, the lab I belonged to was quite grant-free.

When I arrived at my tenure-track job bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I had absolutely no aspirations for grant work. The entire world of NSF, NIH, and others just seemed out of reach, mysterious, and downright scary. But then, in my first semester, a funny thing happened. I learned that my university provided competitive internal grant opportunities designed to serve as seed money for faculty research projects. With the full expectation of not being funded, I wrote up a 10-page proposal for a diversity course effectiveness study I was planning for the next semester. Much to my surprise (seriously, extreme surprise), I was awarded one of those internal grants to get started.

Of course I am not writing about this to chronicle my internal grant efforts. When I began thinking about some of the challenges early career SPSSI scholars face, the pursuit of grants must be one of the greatest unknowns we will encounter. Those of us in the academic realm face the confusion associated with exactly how grants fit into the promotion and tenure package. Do I have to pull in external grants in order to get tenure? Is it optional? No one knows!! Early career scholars in professional settings outside academia may feel grant pressure to secure their future employment. And that is even more stressful. The question for me is- where do we get the training for this?

For me, having some success with internal grants gave me the confidence to pursue my first external grant with NSF. I am still working on finding external grant success, but getting through the first submission made it easy for me to consider future NSF grant proposals. My advice to early career scholars is to check into possible internal grant opportunities. Not only will it give you some grant-writing experience, but it will also help you collect the necessary pilot data for your external grant. Even better- get to know the friendly people in your local Office of Sponsored Programs (or some other title for the research office). You might be surprised by all of the grant allies you will find hiding there!! During my own feeble attempt at NSF funding, I learned that there are people on campus that understand the federal grant application process who could support me through each hair-pulling stage. They already understood the NSF language, the forms, how to upload everything properly, and how to handle the budget request.

Considering my grant-writing experience at this point is still probably less than many graduate students, my main hope is that this blog post will inspire much discussion of your ideas about finding grant sources, making time to write the grant proposal, tricks and tips, or advice for early career grant-writing. While waiting for your comments, I will re-read my NSF reviews and hope that I have better luck next time!

As always, please send me any ideas you may have for future Early Career Scholar blog topics at caseki@uhcl.edu.

Involving Students in the Research Lab

We all work really hard and log 50-60 hour work weeks to make sure we fine-tune our teaching methods and get those fantastic course evaluations at the end of each semester. We also attend meeting after meeting seemingly every day of every week to ensure our service expectations are met both on and off campus -  all the while meeting with students about academic advising, registration, graduation, graduate school, and even personal issues. Wait a minute...are we missing something? Oh, that's right, what about research? In addition to teaching and service, we also have that third elusive component which also counts toward our overall performance and leads, of course, to promotion and tenure. But when in the world do any of us have time to be as productive in the research lab as we'd like to be? Well, I think I've found a solution that has certainly helped me to be more productive in my research and just might help many of you.

The answer is students. Involving students as assistants in your research endeavors is by all accounts a "win-win-win" situation. It not only provides you with extra bodies in the lab to help get things done like data collection, analyses, etc, but it also helps you by showing your dean and promotion committee that you are engaging in the type of pedagogy that we sometimes forget, but is valuable both for the students as well as faculty by teaching students about the entire research process. Moreover, engaging students in research clearly benefits them by providing an excellent background in the literature, training them to follow research protocol, and teaching them how to maneuver statistical software programs. These experiences make your students significantly more competitive when the time comes for applying to graduate programs.

Back to the first point on getting things done, I will say that this has been the biggest benefit for me as a researcher. As a mother of 5, whose husband is gone every third day as a firefighter, time is my most valuable asset, and one which I never have enough of. That being said, having a group of extremely competent and motivated students helping me in my lab has lifted a tremendous weight when it comes to completing the research, meeting submission deadlines, and even preparing and presenting at research conferences around the country. For the past year, I have had an excellent research team working with me and our goals are fairly simple: TO GET THE RESEARCH DONE AND DISSEMINATED.  Here is how we accomplished this:

First, let me say that I did not end up with this fantastically productive team by chance or by magic; rather, I planned way ahead, chose very specific students whom I thought would be a good fit, and interviewed many students who were interested in the positions of RA on my team. Some of the key qualities that I looked for in my research assistants when interviewing are drive, tenacity, intelligence, commitment, and organizational ability. (Little hint: Try to get students who have all the qualifications, but are NOT seniors -- this way, you can hold on to these gems in your lab for more than just one year!)

Second, once my team was set, I scheduled weekly meetings for the team to assign and review projects. Before the project assignments, however, we set forth very specific goals and deadlines. The goals were things like "complete data collection on the Eating Disorders project by XX date; or complete the HSRB proposal on longitudinal study by XX date, etc." With several different research projects running in my lab, I had to break the team into pairs and assign them specific duties on their assigned projects. Each week we would meet to determine whether we were on track to meet our goals and what we need to do to make sure that things are getting done correctly and on time. There were times when people had to jump in on another project to help other team members meet deadlines and this ended up being an excellent experience in team work!  Of course, I had a hand in each of the projects and would help my RAs anytime they got stuck or had questions. 

Third, part of the motivation students had in addition to meeting goals and learning new things as individual students was the fact that each student got her name on whichever study they were working on when it came time to present. This meant that they got visible credit and were able to "beef up" their CVs to include presentations at both regional and national conferences in the form of posters and talks.  Each of my research team members has either presented at a conference and/or been listed as co-author on a publication. Working together, our lab has produced quality work that has been presented at conferences such as the Southwest Teachers of Psychology Conference, the Southwestern Psychological Association (SWPA) Conference, the St. Edward’s University SOURCE annual research symposium, the Advancement of Computing in Education International Conference, and the American Psychological Association Interenational Conference. Our research has also produced two journal articles in the American Journal of Psychological Research, which features faculty-student research collaboration.

My students are now well-versed in research protocol and I am the proud sponsor of both excellent students and excellent work. This system has worked well for me, but I am always in search of new, innovative ideas. I hope that my experiences and recommendations can be useful to other new faculty struggling to be productive in the research arena in addition to excelling in teaching and service.

How to Write Less During the Summer

Today is the last day of the semester. For me, this is a time of reflection, of remembrance, of muttering under my breath like an under-caffeinated madman who has found the end of his rope and hopes to menace the nearest grade-grubbing undergraduate with it. But each end is a beginning, and for academics the end of the spring semester heralds the beginning of that glorious, shining time—summer.

Professors and grad students talk about the summer with an eschatological fervor. When the last and final things have been graded, when the students have retreated to the beer-and-vomit encrusted hovels they came from, then real writing can begin. Phew. Now we can start (or finish) that article, book, thesis, dissertation, or grant. Finally.

Yearning for summer is bad. Academics look forward to summer writing time like pre-teens look forward to vampire novels: the anticipation is intense but the result is disappointing. The summer has grim demands of its own. There are windows to paint, minivans to clean, and dogs to bathe—writing isn’t the only thing that we’re good at putting off. The juice-boxes, animal crackers, and Mapquest printouts and won’t clean themselves from my Toyota Sienna, despite my months of patiently waiting for them to do so. (I’ll give them a few more months—there’s no need to be pushy.)

And our bad habits and counterproductive mindsets don’t change when the semester ends. The academic lifestyle lends itself to booms and binges followed by busts and burnout. We write little during the semester and then crank it all out in hypomanic binges during the weekends and breaks. If we treat the summer as a chance to binge, then we are perpetuating the binge-and-burnout cycle. We might get a lot done over the summer, but then the semester starts, so we wait for the Christmas break, and then for Spring Break, and then it is summer again.

I suggest a simple alternative, one so straightforward that it sounds alarming: we can choose times for writing during the week, and then we can write during those times. (If you have read my little book How to Write A Lot, this notion of a “writing schedule” will sound eerily familiar.) Imagine, for a moment, that you have chosen to write 6 hours per week, perhaps 9 to 11 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. If you write every week, then it doesn’t matter if that week is the frenetic first week of class, the dismal last week of class, or even a breezy week in July. Choosing time to write will flatten your writing output—you’ll write the same amount, more or less, every month. This slow-and-steady approach is not glamorous, and it takes a bit of discipline at first, but it is the reason why some people write a lot and most people struggle.

If you have a writing schedule, the summer weeks are like any other week, only sweatier. You could choose to spend more time writing during the summer, but you needn’t. You could, horror of horrors, take time off. You could rediscover why the summer months are called “summer vacation” by people with normal jobs and well-balanced lives. You could say “I’ll save that writing project for the fall semester.” You could, dare I suggest, even clean your minivan—but that might be going too far.

Is there ever balance on the tenure track?

I was in a workshop last summer and someone—a retiree who, among other things, taught time management—made a statement that will forever stick with me. He said something to the effect of “I hate it when people say they ‘don’t have the time.’ Of course you do! There are 10,080 minutes in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a night, that leaves 6,720 minutes. If you work full time (40 hours a week, plus an hour a day drive time), that leaves 4,020 minutes. Let’s estimate another 3 hours a day devoted to getting ready for work, cooking dinner, and doing errands. That still leaves 2,760 remaining minutes a week, or 46 hours! Where does all that time go?” Assuming I did my math right, where does that time go, indeed? Put like that, I am at a loss to explain why I haven’t yet cleaned off my desk, started to remodel my bathroom, or learned to cook gourmet food. I offered to start this month’s blog post on “work-life balance” because I think this is an important, but often overlooked, concern that we should have. How can we, as new faculty members, obtain work-life balance and still achieve the coveted “tenure”? I see “balance” as one of those elusive concepts—we all want it, we all suggest that others have it, we are respectful of those that have it, and yet, at the same time, many (most?) of us can’t quite seem to obtain it for ourselves. I often have such a hard time with just what I call my “work-work” balance…that is, balancing my teaching and research...“life” seems to get squished in around it. And personal time? Once I add in the fact that I’m a mother of a toddler, I find very little (or no) time for myself. I remember starting graduate school with the philosophy, “hit the ground running.” I was going to go in, wow everyone with my diligence and productivity, and make it to the top of the class. I am not sure if I actually accomplished all that, however, I can say that I worked to the point where I felt unable look out of windows because natural light hurt my eyes too much. Then, my advisor dropped the bomb: graduate school was the “fun” time, and I should enjoy it now, because the workload would only increase once I obtained a faculty position. My immediate thoughts were something like: What?!? Even the military only gives 110%. And, is it possible to hook an energy drink up to an IV?!? Then, while I was working on my dissertation, I had my son. At the time I was also a single parent. Finally, a revelation: I physically, mentally, and spiritually could not live the rest of my life putting work first, second, third, and fourth. So, at that point, I started to take other’s advice on balance much more seriously, and make “balance” a personal goal. Now in my second year on the tenure track, I like to think that I’ve improved a bit upon work-life balance since my graduate school days. There are concrete markers of this; for instance, I no longer have to wear sunglasses indoors because my eyes hurt. However, I also think I have quite a ways to go. I’m balancing things much better: I do all the usual tactics to prevent work from overwhelming me, such as be very selective in my commitments, learning to say “no,” becoming more organized, prioritize, etc. However, that old friend “guilt” nevertheless creeps up on me at the most inopportune moments, reminding me that my personal and family time is short-lived, as tasks are hanging over my head. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I haven’t been able to let myself enjoy a family function or even a movie because I can’t stop thinking about everything else I “need” to be doing. Or, how many times I’ve brought work to a family function to do during my "downtime" (usually, when everyone else is having a great time playing a game of touch football or eating pie). Unfortunately, I think that those of us who are parents also get guilt both ways: guilt that I have to stay late in the lab, or that I have a weekend work commitment, and hence will not be home to spend time with my son. So, my questions for us all are: What have others used to try to achieve balance on the tenure track? What has worked, and what has not? What can we do to alleviate this “work is hanging over my head” feeling, so that the time we take for our family or ourselves is more enjoyable? And, what can we as new faculty members do to support one another in these efforts?

Controlled Chaos: Collecting Materials for Administrative Reviews

So you landed the coveted tenure-track position. Although your application was originally one among 200 or more, you rose to the challenge and are on your way. Of course congratulations are in order!!

Imagine the thrill. Coming home after a long day of lecturing to find a letter stating that yet another on-site interview resulted in the job being filled by some other phantom (and apparently superior) candidate. My luck would change in less than an hour at 5pm when I received the Dean’s call offering me my first choice position. To describe my reaction using some extreme understatements, I was elated, overjoyed, excited, and of course relieved. To be sure, I was not, at the moment, overwhelmed. I mean really, this was the moment I had been waiting for throughout the drudgery of job searching. All of the position announcements, carefully crafted cover letters, phone interviews, uncertainty, and anxiety-provoking campus visits had led up to this miraculous news. All of this pure joy lasted approximately 1 hour. Upon hearing the news that we would be moving to Houston for my tenure-track position, my partner and I loaded up in the car and headed out for our celebratory dinner. It was during this dinner that reality hit me. Uh oh- now I have to worry about getting tenure!!

Although my peace was shattered for the moment, I managed to block that out, go to my happy place, and enjoy dinner. But the panic evoked by the thought of meeting tenure requirements loomed overhead. As is my usual approach when such a long-term task plagues my thoughts, I immediately began collecting data, both research-based and anecdotal. In this blog, I aim to share what I learned (and what I made up along the way) with other early career scholars. My hope is that we can generate even more ideas as people begin posting comments in response.

Occupying the role of new Assistant Professor brings with it many distractions, responsibilities, and stressors that can easily temp us to put off tenure planning until year two, three, or (hopefully not) four. However, there are some simple steps that may be worth your while and save you much time, energy, and regret down the road.

Talk to people. Sounds simple right? You talk to people everyday as part of your new position, so why not use some of that time strategically? Look for people who just achieved tenure, those about to undergo P&T review, and anyone else you can find. The more information you can garner up front with regard to the expectations at your institution in your department at this point in history, the more you can plan ahead to meet them.

Identify a potential mentor within your department (someone who knows the ropes; someone you can trust to tell you the truth about your work and standing in the dept), then ask s/he to be your mentor.

The minute my cohort stepped on campus in August for faculty orientation, our associate dean immediately began chanting “Become a pack rat!” I took his advice and developed a system for easily and quickly filing away evidence of my teaching, research, and service activities. For example, where is that conference program from your first semester that lists your name and the title of your brilliant presentation? Where did you leave those thank you cards from students that experienced a major paradigm shift in your course? Easy- you filed it neatly away in your “T-R-S bins.” Okay, maybe you did not create the bins your first semester, but now is a good time to start. For a cheap bin solution, I used paper box lids and marked them each with a sharpie in huge letters: Teaching; Research; Service. They reside in an out of the way, but accessible spot in my office. After I speak at the Psi Chi induction ceremony, the program goes directly into my service bin. When it came time to produce my third year review binders, all of the evidence was at my fingertips and ready for me to organize.

Create a word document for recording everything you do (teaching, research, service). When it is time for annual review and P&T, you will not be able to remember all you did in the last 12 months or all you did during the last 5 years.

Always keep your vita updated. What’s that? You just got the email saying your conference paper was accepted? Close that email and edit your vita right now!

Use the third year review (or second or fourth year for some institutions) to your advantage. Truly approach this as your dry run for tenure. Organize and present your materials just as you might plan to do for the official P&T review. If your university, school, or department does not currently conduct the formal pre-tenure reviews, consider asking your friendly neighborhood associate dean for an informal review.

Self-promote. Writing your tenure narrative is far from the moment to display your modesty. Quite the contrary. This is the time to get comfortable with self-promotion and let go of the idea that nice girls and boys don’t highlight their successes.

Based on the feedback I have been able to gather, the tenure narrative is your chance to illustrate not only what you have accomplished as a junior faculty member, but also your ability to reflect on your research, teaching, and service. Your P&T document provides the opportunity to clearly explain how your work connects with the work of others and what you contribute to psychology as a whole. In addition, consider the impact of a solid narrative that succinctly describes how your teaching, research, and service intertwine and compliment one another as chapters of your professional story.

Think ahead about possible external reviewers. As you jet set all over the world to conferences on your undoubtedly unlimited travel budget, keep an eye open for associate professors at comparable universities that know your area. Introduce yourself and get to know these people because they may be willing to serve as external reviewers later on. I currently have a colleague in panic mode because she must send out her P&T materials in two months, but never thought to network at conferences to identify possible external reviewers.

Set up multiple ways to get student feedback. Course evaluations often give limited information and are at the end of the term. Get student feedback on assignments, lectures, class activities, quizzes & exams earlier in the semester. Make appropriate adjustments and let students know you take their ideas seriously. Keep these materials for use in your P&T packet.

Don’t be shy! If you work with a student for a year on research or serve as faculty advisor to a club, ask students to write recommendation letters that can be used in your P&T materials.

Research early and often. Hit the ground running and make the most of years 1-3. Given journal lag time from acceptance to publication, these years are extremely important.

Remember- not all service is equal. Ask mentors what types of service are most valued by administrators. Ask those that have served on merit review committees or P&T committees before.

Keep stellar records of any service activities you do such as flyers highlighting the talk you gave to a psychology class at the local high school. Service is one of the most difficult areas when it comes to providing evidence, so keeping good records is even more essential.

Get involved with professional organizations like SPSSI to establish professional service.

Books & websites to peruse during boring meetings-

Advice for New Faculty Members (2000) by Boice

The Compleat Academic: A Career Guide (2003) by APA- Editors Darley, Zanna, & Roediger

Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year (2005) by Lang

Preparing for Promotion, Tenure, & Annual Review: A Faculty Guide (2004) by Diamond

Getting Tenure (1993) by Whicker, Kronenfeld, & Strickland

Chronicle Careers- http://chronicle.com/jobs/

On the Tenure Track- http://chronicle.com/jobs/sidecol_library/tenuretrack.htm

Previous Chronicle Advice Columns- http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/column_list.htm

Tomorrow’s Professor Blog at MIT- http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog/

For more tips on surviving the tenure track, visit SPSSI’s Early Career Scholar website at http://www.spssi.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=1089&parentID=475

As P&T review creeps closer and closer for me, I cannot say that preparation such as my T-R-S bins have erased all of my tenure anxieties. However, my own use of the tips outlined above certainly eased many of them. Hopefully, you will find at least one gem of an idea here that you can use to reduce your pre-tenure stress and get you one step closer to the “Associate” title. The SPSSI Early Career Scholars Committee invites you to comment, post more ideas, share your P&T fears, ask for feedback, and send this blog along to all your early career colleagues and friends.

Advising the Advisor: What Am I Doing, What Should I Be Doing?

Welcome to SPSSI's Early Career Scholars blog. We hope this blog site will facilitate discussion among new faculty and will serve as a forum for us to share ideas and ask questions. For this 1st blog, I chose a topic that is very current for me and I'd appreciate your feedback. A little background first. Hi, I'm Jeannetta Williams and I'm in my 4th year at a private liberal arts university in Texas. I'm an assistant professor in the psychology department, which is the largest major on our campus (around 350 or so students). Recently I received some good news--that I'm our school's nominee for the university's outstanding advisor award. As part of the nomination application, I'm required to turn in lots of materials--my CV, letters of support from students and colleagues, and my "Advising Philosophy." A what?! So, you can guess what I'll be writing for the next few weeks. I've been working with students for several years so I must have some idea of how to advise students, but I've never thought about writing it down. I did some cursory scouring of the Net for advice on advising and I've come up pretty short. Most of what I've found has focused on getting students ready for graduate study in psychology. This is helpful, but only a small part of what we do as advisors. In chatting today with our director of the teaching excellence center, she remarked that advisors play a critical role in student retention, but few institutions require an advising statement in faculty applications (although the # is growing). I didn't receive any specific training during graduate school on the do's and don'ts of faculty advising, but I don't know if my experience is unique. I'm lucky that our university provides training for advisors, but the expectations for each department vary widely. Here's where you come in. I n your view, what are the essential characteristics of being a successful advisor? How do you manage all of the varied aspects of advising, such as formal academic advising vs. informal advising? Sharing information about careers inside and outside of academe? Advising student organizations? Bringing professional development opportunities to students? What do you know today about advising that you wished you knew while on the job market or in your first faculty position? Thank you for your feedback and please feel free to suggest future blog topics to the SPSSI Early Career Scholars Committee.