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Advice Category: Fellowships & Finances

Make your professional travel budget stretch! Here’s how.

Professional meetings, international workshops, and annual society gatherings are essential activities in your professional life. These regional, national, and international gatherings are where you hear about innovations in your field, grow your network, identify mentors and collaborators, receive critical feedback on your research, and learn about new and emerging directions. And yet, most of us have extremely limited travel budgets we can access, if any at all. The question is: how do you make your limited professional travel dollars stretch?

We pooled our collective experience, polled academics and trainees, reviewed travel advisors, and share just a few of the top tips here. This advice isn’t meant to endorse one service over another, but rather to give examples of ways you can seek alternatives when attending expensive national meetings.

  • Submit your work! It is easier to receive travel awards and cost reductions from the meeting organizers when you are presenting. Plus it is good for your career, obvi. Some conferences have childcare scholarships too.
  • Apply for travel scholarships from your professional society, or from other professional organizations that support young investigators. Email the Graduate Funding Information Service if you want help finding travel grant mechanisms that will fit your needs.
  • Volunteer! Often meetings need support with registration, panel facilitation, evaluation distribution, and numerous other tasks in exchange for a reduced registration rate. It can be a great way to meet people too.
  • Stay anywhere but the meeting hotel. Even with a meeting discount, you can often use a house-share site (like Airbnb or Couchsurf or Servas) to find something nearby for a fraction of the cost. Your dollars can stretch even further if you can room with colleagues and have access to a kitchen to use, even for morning coffee.
  • Take a ride-share or public transportation from the airport. If you take SeaTac as an example, you can take light rail into downtown for $2.75 vs. taxi in for $45 (plus tip). Innovations like UberPool let you have the convenience of a taxi without the cost.
  • Bring your own lunch or snacks for the airplane (healthier and cheaper!). If you are staying at the meeting hotel, consider shopping at a local market for snacks or beverages, rather than getting stuck with expensive hotel meals and refreshments.
  • Download “cheap eats” or happy hour apps for the area and seek deals for your meals not covered by the conference.
  • Choose a red-eye flight to arrive the day-of the meeting and save one night of lodging expenses. Find cheaper flights with a flight aggregator like Momondo.
  • Use your own wifi hotspot or find a local café rather than paying for the expensive hotel wireless access.
  • Join hotel membership groups (for free) and get access to benefits, like wireless, for free, and eventually earn points to use toward hotel nights or car rentals.
  • Mail your meeting materials in advance. it can be cheaper than paying for baggage fees depending on your airline.
  • Apply for an OPA travel award if you are presenting independent research and have specific career activities planned for a professional meeting. Check out our award winners and timeline for application.

    Some of these tips may also not be for you. Some of you will prioritize food over lodging, or decent flight times over everything else. Let us know what works for you!

Diversify your research funding! Here’s how.

With federal budgets getting tighter and the future uncertain, having a strategy for diversifying your funding portfolio is key to success. Gone are the days where an academic researcher might have a career fully funded by a single organization. Not only is it good for your bottom line, but diversifying your funding sources can also be good for creativity: some foundations or non-governmental organizations have different parameters and flexibility about what kinds of projects they fund.

In December 2017, we heard from two highly successful UW faculty, Drs. Chet Moritz from the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine, Physiology & Biophysics and Dan Ratner from Bioengineering, who shared their strategies for success with diverse funding sources. We share a few of their tips and insights here so you can try a few yourself:

  • Federal funding is diverse. Many UW faculty and postdocs have experience with NIH and NSF. But experience shows it can pay off to look beyond these traditional sources that are more competitive. For example, the Departments of Defense and Energy fund a significant amount of innovative research. Get creative about how your science can fit within other priorities and desired applications. Add a collaborator with relevant expertise, pivot to a new application, and find an informant with experience who can help you navigate the new language and formats of the applications.
  • Take your work to the next level. The NIH and NSF invest in basic science and innovative discovery. If you are interested in bringing your innovations to implementation, dissemination, translation, or commercialization, you often need to look elsewhere for funding support. Fortunately, many foundations are highly motivated to bring discoveries to impact, and other entities such as the State are interested in implementation and commercialization. Search the state budget for line items dedicated to specific problems lawmakers are motivated to solve. Search the Foundation Directory to find a match for your research area and a foundation who values and invests in those areas.
  • Don’t shy away from smaller grants. Do you need funds to kick-off new ideas? Small grants can help you get preliminary data or demonstrate a proof of concept. Smaller grants can help you build a relationship with a funder (governmental or private sector). At UW, postdocs have access to the Amazon Catalyst awards. Junior investigators can have an edge. Institutions and funding organizations want to invest in young, exciting researchers.
  • Build a relationship and grow your connections. Once you get your foot in the door, build a relationship with the funder. Success breeds success, no matter how small. Celebrate and make visible what you’ve accomplished and who made it possible, whether the funder, the institution, the state, Congress, etc. Know your audience (your funder) and dedicate some time to a feedback loop that will grow and sustain your relationship.

Finally, grant writing inevitably involves disappointment. It can take seven submissions to get to one successfully funded project. Pay attention to reviewer feedback, do your best to match your idea and proposal to the funder’s priorities and formats, and develop resilience and persistence. It will pay off! We know you can do it, and we are right there working at this alongside you. Funding your research is a lifelong endeavor and the landscape is always changing; your ability to be responsive and pivot when needed is key.

Additional references: 

Meet the Winners of the Grad School’s Distinguished Thesis Award

Matthew Coates, Kate O'Neill. Jan WittenbecherThe Graduate School recognizes exceptional scholarship and research at the master’s and doctoral levels. These awards recognize a thesis and a dissertation in four categories: Biological Sciences, Humanities & Fine Arts, Mathematics, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and the Social Sciences. Meet the winners of this year’s Distinguished Thesis Award (awarded in three of the four categories).

[expand title = “Biological Sciences: Matthew Coates, master’s in public health in Global Health Metrics and Evaluation ’17, Department of Global Health”]

Matthew Coates, Biological Sciences

Thesis: Quantifying Selection Bias from Birth History Estimates of Child Mortality

Please summarize your thesis in lay-person’s terms: We underestimate how many children die in countries without good health data because we can’t ask deceased mothers if their children have died.

Post-thesis life: research associate, Harvard Medical School

What sparked your interest in this topic?

I was working at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at UW on estimating mortality rates around the world. A newer colleague asked me a question about a gap in the way child mortality rates are estimated, so I started looking into different approaches that the field had used to determine whether or not the data gap led to consequential differences in results.

You earned your master’s degree in Summer 2016. What are you working on now?

I earned my Master’s degree in August 2016. I started working as a Research Associate with the Program in Global Noncommunicable Disease and Social Change (PGNDSC) at Harvard Medical School in the fall of 2016. The PGNDSC houses the Secretariat for the Lancet Commission on Reframing Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries for the Poorest Billion (Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission, http://www.ncdipoverty.org/). I support the Commission’s efforts by doing quantitative research relating to the burden of disease and intervention strategies for the poorest groups in low- and middle-income countries.

What do you see as the potential public impact of your research?

Child mortality is a key measure used to track progress in global health and development. Many methods used to estimate child mortality depend on mothers answering surveys about their children. Estimates are likely too low in populations with a high proportion of children who are orphans and in which the gap in survival between orphans and non-orphans is large because their mothers cannot be surveyed. Others have done work to account for this limitation in data and methods in populations affected by the HIV epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, and my thesis work tries to account for this limitation in the data by using another source of survival information (sibling questionnaires) from the same surveys. More research could be done to validate the approach I took. My hope would be that more can be done to assess the degree to which this challenge in estimating child mortality impacts estimates in other populations that could be affected (for example, in post-conflict settings).[/expand]

[expand title = “Social Sciences: Kate O’Neill, PhD student, Sociology”]

Kate O'Neill, Social Sciences

Thesis: “The Adolescent Empathy Paradox and Juvenile Offending: Why Sex Differences in Empathic Ability Can Explain the Gender Gap in Juvenile Offending Behavior”

Thesis, loled: Being a teenager is the worst and boys adapt by being jerks.

Post-thesis life: PhD student, Sociology 

How did you become interested in this topic?

Prior to graduate school I spent several years teaching an anger management class to men convicted of domestic violence and working with recently released violent and serious offenders. We did a lot of work on empathy building, but when I went to the literature to find out why I was surprised by how little there actually is on the topic. Furthermore, almost none of the literature I encountered discussed gender differences in empathy and offending in tandem. I saw an opportunity to fill a gap in existing literature and was lucky enough to have the data to do so.

What do you see as the potential public impact of your research?

In addition to further supporting empathy-enhancement rehabilitation programs (like anger management), I hope this research illustrates the danger of reifying gender roles. Specifically, when we reinforce the association between femininity and empathy we are blocking boys from accessing an emotional management and/or communication tool that deters crime.

What’s next for you? Are you building on the same research for your dissertation, or moving in a different direction?

For my PhD, I hope to explore how sex-segregated peer groups in adolescence predict crime across the life course. In layman’s terms, I want to know if having opposite sex friends when you’re a kid helps transmit norms and values that deter crime more so than exclusively having friends of the same sex. From my perspective, this is an extension of my MA work as I ultimately want to speak to gender differences in emotional development and their consequences for offending trajectories across people’s lives.

[/expand]

[expand title = “Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Engineering: Jan Wittenbecher, master’s in mechanical engineering, ’17, Department of Mechanical Engineering/MSME “]

Jan Wittenbecher

Thesis: Contributions to the Analysis and Design of Mechanical Systems for a Series Hybrid Chevrolet Camaro

Thesis, loled: Hybrid muscle cars would be great if anybody bought such a thing.

Post-thesis life: Emissions certification engineer, General Motors

What sparked your interest in this topic?

The desire to win the EcoCAR 3 competition – an automotive engineering competition sponsored by the Department of Energy and General Motors – and to prove the feasibility of a hybrid muscle car.

Describe the process of the EcoCAR 3 competition.

I was part of a UW team with more than 50 members, competing against 15 other schools. The goal of the four-year competition (2014-2018) is to convert a 2016 Camaro into a series hybrid and add other innovative technologies. This required removing the entire original powertrain (engine, transmission, etc.) and replacing it with a team developed architecture: a very challenging effort for a team of students doing this in their spare time. We had to develop our own mechanical, electrical and software components, source additional ones from suppliers and integrate everything to a working system.

How did your experience writing a thesis impact your career and your position now at GM?

EcoCAR was basically the platform for my thesis work. I wrote about the deep dive I did in three specific areas of mechanical design and analysis for the car (suspension design, engine efficiency analysis and gearbox component design). Writing this thesis had a great impact on my career in two different ways: I learned a lot about automotive technology and regulations which helps me at my job with GM as an emissions certification engineer. It also gave me a lot of exposure to the team’s GM mentor which ultimately lead to me getting a job offer from GM.

[/expand]

Seven Strategies for Negotiating Salary

At a GO–MAP Power Hour, a group of women of color discussed salary negotiation strategies. Here are seven key takeaways from their conversation:  

1. Confidence is key

Believe in your abilities and strengths. Don’t sell yourself short.

2. Do your research

Use Glassdoor to figure out the salary ranges for the organization and position. If the organization is a non-profit, this information will be available on their 990 forms (tax returns). Don’t be afraid to ask for a salary range at the end of your first interview, so you have a ballpark going in. And research doesn’t need to be web-based – use your friends and networks to gather information about salaries at companies and industries that interest you.

3. It’s about more than salary

Look at your entire benefits package, not just your salary, when considering an offer. Use a list or spreadsheet to track the many facets of the offer. This can help facilitate comparisons between offers and aid in negotiations, especially for academic jobs where an offer will include line items for research, summer salary and the like. Not sure what a package might include? Here are some other important benefits and perks to consider:

  • Medical insurance, including dental. Pay attention to premiums and out-of-pocket caps.
  • Short and long-term disability
  • Life insurance
  • Vacation allotment
  • Maternity leave
  • Sick leave
  • Stipends for medical expenses
  • Transportation benefits

4. When asked how much you’re looking for…

You may want to give a range, which can help with negotiations later on (it can also be considered a risk, others said). If you give a range, the bottom of the range should be the minimum you would accept to feel comfortable at that job. The top of the range should be no more than 20% of the average salary of that position in the city. For example, if the average salary is $45,000, the top of your range should be $54,000.

5. Plan ahead

Don’t just negotiate for how much you need to survive — picture yourself thriving. How much will you need to earn if you want to start investing, or saving toward a major purchase?

6. Negotiate differently

Say the salary at the job you really want is too low, but totally fixed. Consider asking to work fewer hours — say, 32 instead of 40 per week — for the same amount of pay. Then use those eight free hours to start a side-hustle!

7. Continue the conversation

Organize a group of friends and peers to share tips and strategies for negotiating salaries and other resources on professional development.

 

Postdocs, Know Your Rights!

Along with key partners such as the the Career & Internship Center, and UW Schools & Colleges, the Office of Postdoc Affairs (OPA) works to support over 1,100 postdocs at UW. The benefits and rights of being a postdoc vary based on your funding source and position. We want every postdoc to know your rights, as the University of Washington has worked hard to offer fair benefit packages to postdocs – in most cases, commensurate with the faculty. We want to support you in getting your benefits, and Academic HR can always help as well. We created a new one page resource to outline the basics, and we highlight a few key items here. When in doubt always consult your department administrator.

Salary/Stipend: All postdocs’ salaries are recommended to align with the NIH NRSA salary scale where possible. The NIH NRSA scale is adjusted yearly and has increased by 20.9% since August 2012, including increasing the minimum salary/stipend in December 2016, and accounts for years of experience.

Health Insurance: For all postdocs funded through the university, health insurance is the same as other Academic Personnel. Information can be found online.

Holidays: Postdocs are usually not required to work on the 10 university holidays. An alternative day off should be given if the postdoc is required to work.

Leave Benefits: Postdocs with appointments of Research Associates or Senior Fellows are eligible for 90 days of approved paid sick leave for an illness or injury during each academic year. Paid sick leave covers your own serious health condition as defined by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), temporary disability due to pregnancy, childbirth, or recovery therefrom, and to take care for a family member with a serious health condition.

Leave Without Pay (Partial Leave): In limited circumstances and for a limited period of time, a postdoc employee may be permitted to take a partial leave of absence without pay for reasons related to family obligations.

Professional Development: Given the dual nature of postdoc positions as employee and trainee, a reasonable amount of a postdocs’ paid time may be used for career development activities, even when hired under a federal research grant.

Appointments: Postdoc positions are intended to be temporary positions to advance research careers. National guidelines recommend no more than 5 years in a postdoc position. Currently the majority of UW postdocs are in appointments intended for no more than 6 years after confirmation of terminal degree. Exceptions must be approved by Academic HR.

Appointment Termination: Termination of Research Associates should be notified at least 6 months in advance. Termination of Senior Fellows should be notified as soon as possible, with at least 60-days’ notice required. Termination, or non-renewal of contract, can occur for documented performance reasons or documented loss of funding.

Grievances: The OPA and the Ombud can provide guidance on strategies to resolve conflicts informally. Research Associates may be eligible to pursue grievances through the faculty code process. Senior Fellows may be eligible to utilize their school-based grievance process.

Individual Development Plans (IDP) and Annual Evaluation: OPA highly recommends every postdoc develop and implement an IDP, and the supervisor is encouraged to review and discuss IDP with the postdoc. Postdocs will also receive at least one written progress evaluation each year, and have the right to receive expectations that serve as the basis of these evaluation. Postdocs, along with other Academic Personnel, are eligible for annual merit raises based on this annual review.

Non-Discrimination: As members of the UW community, postdocs are protected against, and may have remedies for, instances of discrimination and sexual harassment by addressing these situations through the University Complaint Investigation and Resolution Office (UCIRO) and/or the Title IX Office.

Time and Effort Commitment: Postdocs have a 12-month appointment, and are expected to work 11 months (eligible for one paid month off per year). Arrangements for time off are made beforehand with their supervisor. Postdocs work at least 40 hours per week. In keeping with professional standards, the OPA suggests that work schedules must be reasonable and related to research needs.

Health and Safety: Postdocs should have access to a relevant health and safety training, and should refuse a hazardous assignment until it has been remedied or determined to be safe. UW Environmental Health & Safety can assist with necessary training or workplace needs for chemicals, substances and equipment. For other campus safety issues, UW SafeCampus is available 24/7.

Funding options outside your department’s TA/RA-ships

Why are most RA/TA positions open to Masters AND PhD students? Unless you’re an exceptional Masters student, it’s almost impossible to compete against PhD students for positions that are open to both, as PhD students usually have more experience/education. Why not have RA/TA positions that are only for Masters students so they can reduce the amount of student loans they have to take out and increase their experience/desirability for future employers? Masters students typically receive less funding (other than loans) than PhD students since, at least in the School of Public Health, PhD students are usually part of a research team for their dissertation. –Anonymous 

December 2018: This response has been edited slightly to reflect changes in UW’s job boards and to provide more widely applicable advice. 

This week’s answer is courtesy of Helene Obradovich, director, UW Graduate School Office of Fellowships and Awards 

Individual academic programs determine which of their students are prioritized for funding, and what type/duration of funding. In some academic programs on campus, all Ph.D. students get guarantees of funding, but master’s students may not get any kind of commitment with admission. Other academic programs may guarantee funding to a portion of their PhD students and a portion of their master’s students. Many of these decisions rest on the amount of available funding that the department has, whether they offer coursework that requires the assistance of TAs, how much grant funding faculty have, etc. The vast number of different graduate programs in disciplines that span the academic spectrum means that departments, schools and colleges all have a different focus in their graduate student funding opportunities.

What you also seem to be asking, though, is “how do I find funding if my own department doesn’t provide opportunities for RAs or TAs?” In that case, we highly recommend that you do several different things:

  1. Because hiring decisions are made by individual units on campus, inquire with other units to see if they hire students from outside of their department for TA or RA positions. For instance, if your undergraduate major happened to be in Biology, you might contact that department to see if they ever hire TAs from outside their own student population. If you have knowledge of a language, you could do the same with a unit that offers that language instruction on campus.
  2. Occasionally there are administrative units that hire graduate students into SA (staff assistant) or RA positions. Centers, libraries, and other departments that don’t have a ready supply of their own graduate students will advertise those positions to the general campus population. Resources to help you in this search include the UW Jobs website (look under the “academic student employee” category), the Graduate Funding Information Services blog (GFIS, in the Library), and Handshake through the Career & Internship Center. There’s not a particular time of year that all departments are hiring ASEs, so it’s something you should to check on regularly.
  3. I highly encourage you to check with GFIS. Not only is their blog really helpful for funding opportunities of all kinds ( you should definitely subscribe!), GFIS also helps graduate students search various funding databases for opportunities that suit their background.
  4. Lastly, do not underestimate the power of networking. Make it known to the faculty who teach your classes that you’re interested in TA and RA opportunities. Talk to other master’s students who appear to have landed TA and RA positions and find out how they landed them. Don’t limit yourself to speaking only with people in your department!

Finally, share your concerns with your department administration and even possibly your school/college administration. While in almost all cases they are dealing with prioritizing a finite amount of available funding, they should absolutely be aware of how their decisions are affecting their students on an ongoing basis.

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 →

Dread and Taxes

This Guide 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 Wednesday, March 19, 2:30—3:30 p.m. and Thursday, April 4, 1:30–2:30 p.m. Additional workshops will be offered for U.S. Residents and Non-US 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 help at a few additional sites, including at the UW in partnership with students in the MS Tax Program. No appointment necessary: drop by Mackenzie Hall Mondays and Wednesdays from 4–7 p.m. or Fridays noon–3 p.m.. to receive free help from United Way. (You must have made less than $66,000 in 2018 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

Ask Your Grad School Guide 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 →

Finding Funding

I came across a scholarship that seemed like the perfect opportunity for me… until I found out the deadline was two weeks ago. How is it possible to find these types of awards at the right time? —Anonymous

(This week’s answer is courtesy of Michelle Drapek, Counseling Services Coordinator, UW Graduate School Office of Fellowships and Awards)

Nationally (and internationally) competitive awards can be a bit tricky to fit into plans for funding your graduate education, but the key is to plan ahead. Most fellowship competitions have deadlines six to 12 months prior to their award dates, so you should typically expect to be applying for opportunities the academic year before the funds are actually needed.

The good news is, most national fellowship competitions follow similar timelines for application deadlines and award notification — expect to see most deadlines fall sometime between September and late November. The Graduate School offers a number of fellowship opportunities exclusively to UW graduate students each year, and most of the deadlines occur throughout the winter quarter.

So how do you find these opportunities? In addition to UW-only fellowships, The Graduate School’s list of fellowships also includes popular nationally competitive funding opportunities that are relevant to a number of disciplines. If you haven’t done so already, we also encourage you to subscribe to the Graduate Funding Information Service (GFIS) blog, which regularly advertises national/international and on-campus funding opportunities. The GFIS website provides helpful guidelines for navigating a number of larger funding databases to which you have access through your UW net ID. Keep on the lookout for emails from your department’s Graduate Program Advisor that may also advertise discipline-specific scholarships. Successful awardees suggest staying organized and tracking deadlines by through an Excel document or similar mechanism.

How much time do you need? Preparing fellowship applications may take anywhere from one to three months, or longer. In some cases, if you’re planning to travel overseas, you may need time to establish a host affiliation in your destination. If letters of recommendation are required (and they usually are), you will want to make requests to letter writers at least three weeks in advance. Recommenders can write most effective letters when given sufficient time and information about selection criteria and your particular proposal, so even planning to have a rough draft available by the time you make an ask can be helpful. If there’s an on-campus process, make sure your letter writers know to submit by the earlier deadline.

All in all, especially for awards with autumn deadlines, it’s helpful to start thinking about your proposal as early as spring quarter, and highly recommended that you plan for the bulk of your work on the application to happen in the summer. Remember that everything happens more slowly in the summer (people are traveling, away from email, etc.), so it may take more time to get in touch. Fellowships and Awards offers advising services all year long, including during academic breaks, and can provide support with most nationally competitive opportunities.

Last bit of advice we’d like to impart? Apply for as many opportunities as you can find that are a good fit and for which you’re able to put together a solid application package! You never know where you’ll be successful, and you can deal with what to do if awarded from more than one funding agency once the situation arises.

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 →

Update on FLSA Salary Issues

We are very pleased to report: approximately 600 UW postdocs are receiving raises effective today, Dec. 1, 2016, as a result of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) initially, and now with the support of UW leadership.

Vice Provost for Academic Personnel Cheryl A. Cameron shared with the community the following message on Nov. 29, 2016:

“As many of you are aware, Judge Amos Mazzant, a United States District Judge in Texas, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on November 22, 2016, enjoining the Department of Labor’s Final Rule that increased the FLSA salary minimum threshold in order to qualify for an overtime-exempt position.

As a result of a meeting today with UW leadership, President Cauce and Provost Baldasty have determined that we will continue to move forward with the following actions:

1) They re-affirmed that current Senior Fellows, Senior Fellow-Trainees, Research Associates, Research Associate-Trainees, and Visiting Scientists are required to be full-time employees (i.e., 1.0 FTE) and must earn a minimum monthly salary of $3,957.00 (even if they are only partially paid by the UW) by no later than December 1, 2016. Furthermore, all new appointees, including full and partial paid directs (PDR), must be paid a minimum monthly salary of $3,957.00, as well as hold a 1.0 FTE.

2) In limited circumstances and for a limited period of time, an employee who holds an appointment in any of the above job class codes may be permitted to take a partial leave of absence without pay in order to support an effective career development/family obligation balance (information regarding this process was communicated on November 10, 2016).

3) The Office of Research is continuing with its plans to implement its Bridge Funding program. In addition, NIH has recently indicated its intention to continue with its plan to increase the stipend levels on T32 and F32 awards. Please refer any related questions to research@uw.edu.

4) Current Senior Fellows, Senior Fellow-Trainees, Research Associates, Research Associate-Trainees, and Visiting Scientists who are 100% paid direct (from independent sources) will be handled separately on a case-by-case basis; follow-up communication will be forthcoming.

5) For any of the above five appointment types sponsored on J-1 visas, please refer to the revised J-1 funding page, which has been updated to reflect the new requirements, including that personal or family funds are not to be considered when calculating the appointee’s salary.

If you or your department administrators have any questions, please contact Assistant Vice Provosts Shelley Kostrinsky or Rhonda Forman, with whom they have been working on this issue during the past few months.” So, how to buy Titan gel in Vietnam ? Buy directly Gel at the manufacturer’s website, customers will be discounted up to 50%.

This message has gone out to all deans and was planned for release to all departmental administrators as well. We encourage postdocs to check in with your departmental administrator if you have any questions or concerns about the implementation of the raises in your area. If anyone has questions or encounters challenges, in addition to the Academic HR contacts listed above we in the OPA are very interested to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out anytime at: uwopa@uw.edu.

And for those who are interested in following progress on the national level, the postdoc-advocacy group Future of Research has made a statement and also been very active following institutional response to FLSA.

Funding Opportunities for Postdocs

We understand it can feel daunting to find funding sources for postdocs, and that NIH or NSF mechanisms can be highly competitive and slow to respond.  The Office of Postdoc Affairs worked with our UW Graduate Funding Information Service (GFIS) to identify additional mechanisms for postdocs or early career researchers.  We found these mechanisms can include non-profits, corporations, professional and academic associations, foundations, and government agencies. These tips and links below will be archived in a blogpost on our OPA website for future reference – we highly recommend checking some of these out!

Search in specialized funding databases. More strategic and specific than a Google search, these resources can surface new-to-you funding opportunities. Be sure to look in more than one place (in addition to consulting your network!), as there is no single, comprehensive postdoctoral funding database.

SciVal Funding
This powerful funding database is geared toward upper-level doctoral students, postdocs, and faculty researchers. Covering many disciplines, SciVal Funding allows you to search across funding opportunities from government, non-profit, corporate, and other sources. This database indexes the abstracts of successfully-awarded grants, and UW users can create a profile, allowing them to export results and set up search alerts. Requires UW NetID login.

UCLA GRAPES
The UCLA Graduate and Postdoctoral Extramural Support (GRAPES) Database is an open resource aggregating a variety of external funding opportunities, not only opportunities available for UCLA students. This is a growing and up-to-date funding database, and postdoctoral funding is easily targeted through the “Academic Level” filter on the left-hand side of the page.

Grant Forward
More easily searchable than SciVal Funding, Grant Forward offers UW users an additional funding resource, with features including results exporting and search alerts. Grant Forward (formerly called IRIS) offers broad disciplinary coverage. Postdoctoral opportunities are best found by applying the “Early Career Investigator” applicant type filter or by using postdoc* as a search term. Requires UW NetID login.

Harvard Guide
Harvard’s GSAS Postdoctoral Fellowships database enables searching by academic area, citizenship, career stage, geographic location, fellowship duration, application deadline, and more. Tips for searching the database help ensure you get the results you’re looking for.

Select External Funding Opportunities

All Postdocs Regardless of Citizenship
Amazon Catalyst Grants
Amazon Catalyst at the University of Washington provides students, faculty, and staff of all trades, fields, and disciplines with funding (from $10,000 to $100,000) and mentorship to help them grow early-stage ideas into successful endeavors.

Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program
Provides early career individuals with the opportunity to spend 12 weeks at the Academies in DC learning about science and technology policy and the role that scientists and engineers play in advising the nation.

Dan David Prize
Scholarships to registered doctoral and post-doctoral researchers studying at recognized universities throughout the world and doing research in one of the selected fields for the year in which the application is made.

DataONE Summer Internship Program
DataONE offers summer research internships for undergraduates, graduate students and recent postgraduates. DataONE is a virtual organization dedicated to providing open, persistent, robust, and secure access to biodiversity and environmental data.

Google Travel & Conference Grants
These grants are available to traditionally underrepresented groups in technology (including, but not limited to, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, persons with disabilities, women, and veterans) for selected conferences in Computer Science and related technical fields.

Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Research Fellowships
3-year fellowship to support early postdoctoral research training in all basic biomedical sciences. Annual $50,000+ stipend and $1,500 research allowance.

Kluge Fellowships at the Library of Congress
4-11 months of research support to enable use of the Library of Congress collections, with a stipend of $4,200 per month. Recipients of terminal advanced degree within the past several years in the humanities, social sciences, or in a professional field such as architecture or law are eligible.

U.S. Citizens & Permanent Residents Only
American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Fellowships
Major fellowship to support women scholars who are completing dissertations, planning research leave from accredited institutions, or preparing research for publication.

CAORC Multi-Country Research Fellowship
Supports advanced regional or trans-regional research in the humanities, social sciences, or allied natural sciences for U.S. doctoral candidates and scholars. Awards of up to $10,500. Other fellowships also available.

Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Fellowships including a $45,000 stipend for individuals committed to a career in teaching and research.

Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Awards
Open to U.S. scholars who have recently completed their doctoral degree, typically within the 5 previous years. Awards are available in STEM fields, the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Reed Foundation Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund
$10,000 to $60,000 per year for research, including field studies and related expenses. Areas of supported research include, but are not limited to, aging, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, immigrant and minority populations, culture and education, language and identity, and religion.

International Postdocs Only
American Association of University Women (AAUW) International Fellowships
Fellowship is awarded women scholars who are doing full-time study or research in the United States. Both graduate and postgraduate studies at accredited U.S. institutions are supported.

Acknowledgement to Rachel Wishkoski, former Graduate Funding Information Services (GFIS) Manager who contributed greatly to the above list.

 

Originally posted on July 21, 2016.