National support for the postdoc experience

Earlier this month, the OPA and UWPA traveled to Cleveland, OH for the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) annual meeting. This is always an exciting conference, where leaders from postdoctoral associations and institutional offices gather to share best practices, recent research, and to strategize for future efforts supporting the postdoc experience. Here are a few pearls:

Take a holistic approach to postdoc experience. There was consistent advice across presenters that all postdocs need to explore various career choices. This is part of your postdoc training experience, and should be part of your regular work week. Feeling prepared for your next step is key, and is a purposeful investment. Dr. Rafael Luna, former executive director of the Boston-based National Research Mentoring Network, offers this advice: you must determine what you’re good at, what brings you joy, and what the world needs you to be. These are great questions to reflect upon and then discuss with your mentor as you move towards independence. Are you getting the correct experiences to prepare you for this future?

A number of recent students and reports raise concerns about certain issues within the postdoc experience:

The NPA conducted a survey of sexual harassment across postdocs and it is clear from the numbers that too many of you — men and women — have experienced unwanted sexual attention in workplace settings
The NPA will be launching a survey of stress, anxiety, and well-being among postdocs this summer, as we know these are key issues of importance and concern for many.
A session focusing on needs of international postdocs highlighted challenges with visa renewals, funding eligibility*, and transitioning to working in the U.S.
Most institutions have extremely limited information about where postdocs go next, and this limits our abilities to refine training programs, justify additional support efforts, and better prepare you for your futures.

It is clear we have work to do within our institutions, both culturally and structurally. Fortunately, the federal funding agencies are paying attention, highlighted by recent National Academies reports. Drs. Edwards and Mahoney are now on the NPA Advocacy committee, so we will be monitoring and participating in these national efforts in an on-going way and will bring back what we can.

Mentoring Matters. Another recurring theme of several sessions focused on mentorship, and how much having a mentor who is invested in you and your future makes a difference. There was good news from the national survey of postdocs conducted by the University of Chicago (results coming soon) showing that the majority of postdocs were satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their faculty mentor. That said, it can take work to get the mentoring you need. Several speakers reflected the idea we promote at the OPA — you need a mentoring team! One person is not enough to guide you through research, career, and personal support. The federal funders are interested in more accountability for faculty and better faculty mentor preparation. More programming and initiatives are coming.

Finally, there is widespread interest in raising the visibility of postdoc contributions to research, teaching, mentorship, service, and community. Throughout the spring, share a highlight or tell your story on social media with the #postdocstory hashtag.

We anticipate expanding upon these sessions and many more through local workshops or future blog posts. Look for additional recaps from the UWPA in their newsletter. And, please review the meeting agenda; if you have any questions about specific sessions, please let us know and we will be happy to share notes with you.

*FYI: International postdocs are eligible for the NIH K99/R00 award that can facilitate your transition to independent research and a faculty position. If you work in the biomedical, public health, or behavioral sciences, check out your NIH institute to see if they offer this funding mechanism. We will be holding a workshop in the future regarding how to prepare a strong application. The OPA will also be updating our resource list to include additional funding mechanisms available to international postdocs.

Communicating Your Work to a Wide Audience

There are many transferable skills you can develop in graduate school that will prepare you for many types of careers. These may include the ability to synthesize complex information (studying, reading, and engaging in class discussions), manage a large project (a capstone, thesis, or dissertation), prioritize tasks (balancing your studies, work, and personal life), meet multiple deadlines, and work independently or in collaborative settings.

One transferable skill you may consider developing during your time at UW is presenting your research to an audience made up individuals who are not necessarily experts in your research specialization or field of study. Below are tips for preparing and presenting your work for a broader audience.

Communicate your research to a wide audience. Maybe you’re developing a three-minute networking pitch or preparing for a non-academic job talk. Maybe you’re finally ready to discuss your research project or capstone with family, friends, or community groups. Interested in sharing the significance of your project with policy makers? No matter the setting, presenting your research in an accessible manner for different audiences can help you and your work have a broader impact.

Know your audience. As mentioned above, you may be speaking to a potential employer or a local community group. Do your research ahead of time to know what might resonate with your audience and understand why they might be invested in your work. And no matter the audience, it’s important to be mindful that you are not “talking down” to individuals you are presenting to. You are framing your work in terms, stories or contexts they care about.

Prepare content. Utilize a guide for preparing effective slides or visuals or get advice and support from the UW Research Commons Design Help Desk. Regardless of your chosen visual format, identify a powerful anecdote, a quotation, or a question that can capture your audience’s attention and is connected to the main point of your presentation. Less is more — so include two or three sub-points that connect to your research question or finding. Avoid including a lot of technical or academic jargon, as this may unintentionally lead to audience disengagement. Finally, consider closing with a question, anecdote or visual that ties everything together captures the audience’s attention.

Practice your talk. Schedule times to practice in front of peers outside of your department, loved ones, or even co-workers before your actual talk. Ask for feedback to learn if your audience can follow your story, if they feel engaged, and if they have a clear take home message from your presentation.

Want to see 10 UW graduate students from across disciplines each present their work in three minutes, while competing for cash prizes?! Next Thursday, attend the second annual UW Three Minute Thesis Competition to see them do just that in front of esteemed judges and a live audience. Plus, the audience votes on a presenter to receive the People’s Choice Award! Following the presentations is a reception with light food and refreshments. This event is free!

Three Minute Thesis Competition:
Thursday, April 19, 4–5:30 p.m.
HUB 145, Seattle campus

Best,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

When the mentee becomes the mentor

As a grad student, you may have the opportunity to mentor an undergraduate student, or even a beginning grad student. But how do you make the most of this opportunity?

As a mentor, you are in a position to provide intellectual, professional and social guidance to your mentee. If you are working with an undergraduate in a research setting, giving your mentee a full picture of your research project is a good place to start. This helps set an overarching goal and get the undergrad excited about your project. You should also be sure to set clear expectations and make the steps of the research process explicit to help your mentee stay on track.

Foster professional development opportunities for your mentee by encouraging them to speak at lab meetings or professional conferences. You may benefit from this in an unexpected way: by hearing a fresh perspective on your work.

As a graduate student, you also provide undergrads with valuable insights into what it’s like to be a graduate student. Be prepared to field a lot of questions about preparing for graduate school, picking a research topic, or applying for funding. Also, you will have the opportunity to model resiliency in responding to setbacks in the research process — or in finding funding, taking exams, practicums, and the like. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still a vital lesson.

Mentoring can be time-consuming, but the benefits are also far-reaching. In reflecting on their own experiences as mentors, PhD students have detailed how they strengthened their communication skills and even fought imposter syndrome by becoming a mentor.

If you are working on building your relationship with your own mentor, check out these UW Graduate School resources.

Graduate students, do you have experiences or questions about mentoring others that you want to share? Comment below, or email us!

Ask the Grad School Guru is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guru doesn’t know the answer, the guru will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guru is not a medical doctor, therapist, lawyer or academic advisor, and all advice offered here is for informational purposes only.) Submit a question for the column →

Slowing Down, Being Present

As the spring quarter begins, we know that many of you will be experiencing anxiety over fulfilling requirements for your very first —or final — year in your grad program, planning your career trajectory beyond the UW, or managing your time to balance work, family, and graduate school. As the weeks go by, the work will seem to just pile up. This is real.

The good thing is, you can approach being a graduate student from a totally different perspective — by being intentional and mindful. We invite you to take a deep breath (really, a full breath in and out), create some space for yourself to slow down, and check out some possible strategies for being mindful that you can consider incorporating into your schedule.

Resist busyness. There’s an unspoken culture in graduate school that perpetuates the idea that over-productivity is a good thing: that performing and talking about how busy we are is key to being successful in a graduate program. Stanford Career Coach Dr. Chris Golde offers a different perspective and states, “Graduate students report more than can be done.” She recommends slowing down “to make peace with [our] limitations,” and says “there will always be those around you — students and faculty — who accomplish far more than you do. Hold yourself to a standard of what is realistic for you.”

Set achievable goals. It can be tempting during this time of the year to be overly ambitious about your goals, and setting an unrealistic standard for yourself can actually lead to you not achieving what’s most important to you — whether you are in career planning mode, completing your capstone, thesis or dissertation, or working on or off campus. Again, we invite you to slow down. We know that when we were in graduate school, goal setting wasn’t something that we suddenly knew how to do. Take some time to map out and visualize your goals. And finally, we encourage you to reward yourself for each task you complete towards your end goals.

Be mindful. Mindfulness can simply be defined as taking time to observe your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations from moment to moment, without judgment. Why would this be beneficial to practice while you are in graduate school? Research has shown that over time, mindfulness can help us be more compassionate to ourselves and people in our communities, help us be less reactive and more calm in the face of conflict, and help us increase our focus to what truly matters in our lives.

We hope these strategies are helpful to you as you as you navigate the new quarter!

Your mental health and well-being matter to us,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

Are you ready for an academic career?

We know from reviewing national data that most entering postdocs believe they want a career in academia. And yet, a few years later, this career path becomes much less desirable. What happens? After seeing up close what your faculty go through — grant seeking, publication struggles, promotion demands, and other daily elements of the academic enterprise — the academic path may no longer be so attractive (we understand!). We also know you hear plenty of stories about how competitive it is “out there.” These concerns are real. And, we know that all of you can be a successful academic, if that is the path you truly want to pursue. We have several programs that can help support you in making an informed decision, or in gaining the skills you need to be the strongest candidate for an academic career.

Assess Your Readiness: What do you need to be ready to go “on the market”? It depends. The team at University of California developed a simple tool to help you self-assess whether you have the elements that hiring committees are looking for, whether it is at an R1 institution, a primarily teaching-focused institution, or a position with a mix of research and teaching. The Academic Career Readiness Assessment is a free PDF that provides milestones to work toward.

Seek Diverse Role Models: Who is successful with diverse funding portfolios? Who is managing the kind of work-life balance you would need? Who is a great mentor and effective research group leader? Who believes in you? You need more examples of how to be a faculty member than just who you might be exposed to in your immediate research group. Talk to junior faculty in your field and ask how they have navigated their transition to independence.

Learn What You Need: One great place to learn more about what you might need to be competitive on the academic job market is the Future Faculty Fellows program, which is sponsored by the UW School of Medicine and is open to all UW postdocs. The 2018 two-day program will happen June 11–12. Need more teaching experience? Apply to be a fellow in the Science Teaching Experience for Postdocs (STEP) program next year (applications due September) or ask around where you might be a guest lecturer. You can also ask to shadow a faculty member you admire.

Ready to Go? Seek Internal Reviewers: Tailoring the cover letter is so important for each position, as is getting feedback on all elements of the faculty package. Unsure what to include? In addition to the resources provided by the Future Faculty Fellows program, check out the numerous guides for each element at the UW Career & Internship Center. Ask for a friendly but critical review from your mentoring team, as well as a handful of near-peers. The more eyes you get on your application, the more you can fine-tune it and make sure you stand out from the crowd.

As always, feel free to check in with us in the Office of Postdoc Affairs, or make an appointment with our faculty advisor. We are here to help you strategize and would welcome the opportunity to advise you on your next career steps.

Find tax help as a grad student

This Guru post has been updated from a previous inquiry. Happy filing!

Filing taxes seems more complicated than it should be, and there seems to be no help from the university, despite the fact that many graduate students have very similar tax situations. What’s the best way to file to maximize our return (where do we put student fees and union dues and all of the other things that we can claim to reduce our tax liability)? Are there good tax help resources available? —Anonymous

Why are taxes so complicated? Albert Einstein once said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” Anyway, yes, the UW does provide tax help! Student Fiscal Services is holding student tax workshops specifically for graduate students Friday, March 23, 1:30—2:30 p.m. and Thursday, April 5, 1:30–2:30 p.m. Additional workshops are offered for U.S. Residents and Non-U.S. Residents. All workshops are held at UW Seattle, Odegaard 220.

Also, the Seattle Public Library offers one-on-one tax help at various branches. United Way offers free help at a few additional sites, including at the UW, where they’ve partnered with your peers in the MS Tax Program. No appointment necessary: drop by Mackenzie Hall Room 132 on Mondays and Wednesdays, 4—7 p.m., and Fridays noon–3 p.m. The Guru has used this service, and can attest that it’s very helpful. (You must have made less than $66,000 in 2017 to be eligible for their free help. Probably not a problem for grad students?) Good luck!

“Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either.” —Gerald Barzan, humorist

What to do if you experience sexual harassment or assault

This article was written in consultation with Valery Richardson, interim Title IX coordinator, Compliance Services.

We hope that you will never face sexual harassment or assault here on campus, but we understand the reality that you may. This week, the Guru will walk you through the steps you can take, and resources that are available to you at the UW, if you are a victim of sexual misconduct.

Sexual harassment — including sexual violence or sexual assault — is prohibited by Title IX. The best source for UW information can be found on two websites: the Sexual Assault Resources website and the Title IX website.

For email or phone support, SafeCampus is staffed 24–7 and is a good place to start if you have personally experienced harassment or assault or receive information that someone else experienced harassment or assault. SafeCampus can provide immediate safety planning, provide important information about your rights and resources, and connect you with a confidential advocate who can help you consider all of your options and how to make a plan for your situation.

For victims of sexual assault, SafeCampus loosely breaks down your options into steps — which you could choose to initiate in any order that makes sense to you.

Anyone who has experienced harassment, assault, or another form of sexual misconduct is encouraged to contact an advocate. Advocates will confidentially provide support, information and resources. An advocate will allow you to share your experience in as much or as little detail as you would like, discuss your options for medical and mental health care, and help you make a plan for your safety and for reducing the impact of this experience at the UW. Meeting with an advocate does not trigger an investigation by the UW or the police.

If you have been sexually assaulted, seeking medical care can help to treat or prevent illness and injury. It’s also important for preserving evidence. You may also seek a disability accommodation if you are experiencing the impacts of a medical condition.

You have the right to report sexual misconduct to the University, to the police, to both or not at all. If you choose to report an instance of sexual harassment, sexual assault or sexual violence to the UW, the University will conduct a prompt, fair and impartial investigation to determine whether a University policy or code — such as the Student Conduct Code or Executive Order No. 31 — has been violated.

If you choose to file a police report, you have the right to have a support person or advocate with you. You may choose to file a report without pursuing an investigation or prosecution. For more information about criminal and civil proceedings that can result from a sexual assault report, please see the Sexual Assault Resources website.

If a friend has experienced sexual misconduct, there are ways you can provide support. Remember to be a good listener, avoid passing judgment, and provide your friend with options and resources for healing, emotional processing, and for learning the steps to file a complaint.

If you wish to take action to reduce sexual violence on campus, you can learn about bystander awareness and join a group of Peer Health Educators through SafeCampus.

Strategies for Communicating with Faculty

For the past three years, Core Programs has hosted a communication skills workshop with the goal of sharing effective strategies international graduate students can use when communicating with faculty. Below are a just a few of these communication best practices. These tips are useful not only for international graduate students but also all graduate students across the University of Washington.

Be proactive. Faculty panelists at our workshops have stated that despite their busy schedules, they truly appreciate hearing from their graduate students who need guidance or mentoring. As such, it’s important to take initiative if you need to connect with a faculty member. Whether you need feedback on a project or paper, are in the process of searching for a thesis or dissertation advisor, or are seeking letters of recommendation for an internship or job, taking steps to communicate your needs to faculty in advance are steps towards success in graduate school.

Email etiquette. Just like with every mode of communication, there are general guidelines for writing that very first (or fortieth) email to faculty. Some of these tips may seem like common sense to some, but it’s always helpful to remember that all of us start at the beginning, no matter the task. First, have a clear subject line like “Request to Schedule Meeting to Discuss My Research Progress.” Include a professional greeting, and keep your message short and to the point. If you want to convey updates about your work, include an attachment (or ask what the faculty you are contacting prefers) rather than including long updates in the message body. Finally, include a closing statement that thanks the faculty for their time, followed by a closing phrase and your signature. Then proofread your email (with a peer or co-worker if needed) at least one time before sending.

When you are in doubt, clarify. Making a point to clarify what you are discussing in meetings with your faculty advisor is important to being successful in graduate school, whether or not you are an international graduate student. For example, you can use the repeat or rephrase strategy by saying, “I’d like to make sure that I heard you correctly…” If you’re still unclear, you could ask, “Do you mind clarifying what you mean by…?” Finally, it’s always a good idea to take meeting notes and email them to your advisor soon after the meeting, “This is what we discussed… Here is how we are moving forward…” Emailing your notes allows you and your professor to document your meetings and progress.

Letters of Recommendation. Asking for letters of recommendation from faculty can be intimidating, and it’s something that just takes practice. Whether you are seeking a letter of recommendation for an internship, job, or fellowship application, try out these tips. In the body of your email, include a very brief description of the job or fellowship you are applying for. Mention aspects of the job description or fellowship that are relevant to you. Include a bulleted list of the skills or experiences that make you a strong applicant. Make sure to include the deadline for the faculty’s letter of recommendation, the submission link or mailing address, and thank them for their time and efforts. Finally, attach the most recent, updated copy of your resume or CV, proofread your email, and send!

We hope you find these tips useful, and let us know what has worked for you!

Best Regards,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

Many thanks to Ziyan Bai, graduate staff assistant for Core Programs and PhD Candidate in Education for doing an outstanding job of organizing these workshops. We also extend gratitude to the following faculty who have offered their time and insights as panelists and guests at these workshops over the past three years (in no particular order): Liz Sanders (Education), Sara Goering (Philosophy), Mari Ostendorf (Electrical Engineering), Wendy Thomas (Bioengineering), Xiasong Li (Chemistry), Kelly Edwards (Bioethics), Gino Aisenberg (Social Work), Gojko Lalic (Chemistry), and John Sahr (Electrical Engineering).

Postdocs, you are more skilled than you know!

Postdocs often reach out asking for advice regarding what to look for in a future career. You may have wondered yourself: Should I stay in academia or consider moving to an industry setting? I enjoy talking about science, should I get a job in policy, outreach, or K-12 education?

It is important during these times of uncertainty to look at all you have accomplished during your graduate and postdoc training (you should be celebrated!) and realize that worrying about your future career is completely normal. While it might not seem clear at the moment, you have developed a large number of skills that are valuable, no matter where you work next.

During the 2017 National Postdoc Association annual meeting, Peter Fiske, science communicator and CEO, shared a list of transferable skills graduate students and postdocs likely developed during their training — without even realizing it. A sampling of these skills are shared here:

Public speaking experience
Ability to support a position/viewpoint with argumentation and logic
Ability to conceive and design complex studies and projects
Ability to implement and manage all phases of complex research projects and to follow them through to completion
Ability to combine and integrate information from disparate sources
Ability to evaluate critically and to problem solve
Ability to do advocacy work
Ability to acknowledge many differing views of reality
Ability to suspend judgment and work with ambiguity
Ability to make the best use of informed hunches
And so many more!

These are all skills that are highly valued in careers both inside and outside of academia. You just need to step back and determine how they apply to your unique experiences.

Research Culture and Climate: It’s On Us

NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris spent a week at UW in January 2018, and some of us (including postdoc leadership) were able to spend time with him. His recent book brings together much of the published literature and personal stories about the “reproducibility crisis ” in research, biosciences in particular.

We pressed him to identify possible solutions, and — as this is a multi-faceted issue — there are several. As postdocs, we are the current and next-gen researchers and is truly up to us to collectively shift research culture and practice.

We feature a few of the top issues individual researchers can take on now, and you may consider how they can play into your current or next phase of work:

Seek diverse opinions. When developing a research methodology, study design, statistical analyses, or interpreting results for publication, consult with several different people with diverse expertise, experience and backgrounds. Daily judgment calls are made in research, and as you develop your best approach and continue your own training, it can help to get a wide breadth of input.

Be a good scientific citizen. There is a broader movement toward open science with the goal of accelerating progress, minimizing waste and identifying errors to improve our collective learning and potential impact. Since negative results, null findings, or reproductions of experiments are not published in peer-review journals (though Richard Harris says journals are changing practice on this and we need to catch up), it can help to have back channels to share findings, data sets, and analytic strategy so your field can move forward and we can use less research dollars on ineffective studies. There are badges and ways of annotating your CV that can help demonstrate your citizenship.

Get beyond impact factors. The editors of top-tier publications have banded together to speak against the use of impact factors in hiring or promotion decisions, as they don’t mean what we have come to make them mean within academia. Some Schools and Colleges, Universities, and even the NIH, are evolving their criteria to look for a broader spectrum of metrics to demonstrate real impact of your work. Whether your results allowed a research group across the country to move ahead and make a breakthrough, or your publicly shared findings resulted in a policy change, there are other ways to track the reach of your work. When seeking future positions — inside or outside academia — ask about promotion criteria. What things are genuinely valued? If the department is still just counting papers or dollars, and you do not share those values, you may do well to keep looking.

UW graduate student and Lindau Nobel Laureate Fellow Blythe Adamson wrote a book review of Harris’ work and summarized his tips for young scientists:

Use valid ingredients.
Show your work.
No HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results of the study are Known).
Don’t jump to conclusions (and discourage others from doing this with your results).
Be tough. People may try to discredit you if your hypothesis goes against their life’s work, or for any number of reasons.
Be confident in your science.
Recognize the tension between your own achievement and communal scientific advancement.

The more we talk together as a community, the more we learn, avoid reproducing outdated assumptions about what works, and begin shaping our collective futures. We encourage you to start a conversation in your research group or department, or come chat with us about any of these issues if you are looking for a way to get started! Office hours are always open.