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Questions for Thought: A Guide for New Faculty and Their Mentors

Before Coming to the University

How should your time be divided among teaching, advising,fundraising, administration, committee work and other service (department, institute, and outside), research, and consulting?
How do you obtain consulting opportunities?
How much consulting should you do?
What resources are there at the university to help you get settled with housing, child care, etc.?
What details do you need to find out about benefits, moving, etc.?
What university publications should you get (Policies and Procedures, Bulletin, Faculty/Staff Directory)?
What offices should you contact?
What mailing lists do you need/want to be on?
Who are good resource people who can answer these questions?
Is there someone in the department, such as an administrative officer who handles supplies, support staff, etc.?

Research and Resources

Are you responsible for finding your own money?
What expenses are you expected to cover?
How much will this cost?
How do you go about getting startup funds?
How (if at all) will your summer be funded?
How do you buy equipment?
What travel support can you expect from your department?
Do you need to write grant proposals before coming to the university? If not, how soon after arriving at the university?
How is lab space allocated? How is equipment maintenance paid for? How much support staff time is covered by the department?
Are labs available for cross-disciplinary research efforts at the university? At neighboring institutions?

Teaching

What is the normal teaching load in your department?
How, if at all, are teaching obligations reduced in recognition of increased research obligations? (e.g., is there a process to buy out your teaching time with research money?)
Does the institution have a policy of giving a light teaching load to a new faculty member in the first year so that she can devote more time to writing grant proposals, setting up new labs, etc?

On Arrival

Who is your administrative officer?
What is his/her responsibility?
How do the mechanics of your department/lab work (e.g., purchase orders)?
How is your department organized (divisions, committees)?
How are decisions made?
What should you expect from your support staff?
What fraction of a support staff member's time is typical?
What kind of work can you expect from him/her?

Research and Resources

How important are grants?
How do you become involved in the process of regular grant writing?
Where should you look?
Who can help you to find out where to meet people, write the best possible proposal, draw up a budget?
How much effort should you be investing in fundraising?
What are the tradeoffs?
Who, if anyone, will "introduce you around" to government and other funding agencies?
Are there any programs within the university for Industrial Liaisons? If so, how do they work, and what can they do for you?

Research and Resources

What conferences should you attend?
Do you need to have papers accepted?
How much travel is allowed/expected/demanded?
Is it better to go to large conferences or smaller workshops?
Should you give the papers or should your students?
If the latter, how else can you gain the type of exposure necessary for good tenure letters?

Credit in Authorship

Should you put your graduate students' names on your papers?
Should you put them ahead of your own?
How important is first authorship? How is alphabetical listing of authors viewed?
Where should you publish?
What should you publish? How much? How often?
Are there quantity/quality standards for promotion?
How do journals, chapters in edited collections, and (refereed or unrefereed) conferences compare?
Should you write/edit a book?
Does it matter if it is a research monograph, graduate text, or undergraduate text? Special issue?
May material published in one place (workshop, conference) be submitted to another (journal)?
How much new work is necessary to make it a "new" publication?
What is expected in reporting prior publication or submission?
Is it worthwhile to prepare technical reports and send them to colleagues elsewhere?
Should you give talks within your department? How often?
How should you publicize your work within your department? What about your graduate students' work?
How are the colloquia in your department organized?
Should you give talks at other universities/industrial sites? How often? Where? How important is this?
How do you get invited to give such talks?
Is collaborative work encouraged or discouraged in your department/field? With other members of your department? With international colleagues? With colleagues who are more senior/better known? With junior colleagues/graduate students? Long- standing collaborations, or single efforts?
How important is it to have some individually authored papers?
Should you form a research group?
What sorts of activities should the group be involved in, as opposed to you and an individual student?

Student Supervision

How important are graduate students? How many should you expect to have? How many graduate students is too many?
How much time/effort should you be investing in your graduate students? How much advising should you expect to do?
How do you identify good graduate students? What qualities should you look for? How aggressive should you be in recruiting them?
Do you need to find money/equipment/office space for them?
What should you expect from your graduate students?
How do you identify a problem graduate student?
How do you promote your graduate students to the rest of the community (at the university and nationally/internationally)?
Similar questions for undergraduate researchers: should you have them? How many? What kind of commitment in time, effort, and resources should you expect to make?
What kind of return should you expect?
What should you keep in files on your students in order to write reviews and recommendations for them?

Teaching

What kinds of courses are you expected to teach? Graduate, undergraduate, seminar, lecture, recitation, special topic, service subject?
Which are the good subjects to teach? Is it good/bad/neutral to teach service subjects?
Is it good to teach the same course, or stay within a single area, or teach around?
Is it a good thing to develop a new course? An undergraduate course? A specialized course in your research area?
Will existing graduate courses be made available for you to teach, or are such courses "owned" and not always shared by your senior colleagues?
How can you use a special-topics course to get a new research project off the ground?
How much time should you spend on your subjects?
Will you have a teaching assistant for your subject?
Who will select him/her? What can you expect a teaching assistant to do?
How much time is appropriate for a junior faculty person to spend in undergraduate laboratory development?
Are there guidelines for grading?

Administrivia

How much time should you spend advising students and supervising theses (graduate and undergraduate)?
How much committee work should you expect? Which committees should you turn down if you are asked to serve?
How much time should you expect to spend on committee work? Department vs. institute vs. outside?
What types of outside service should you perform while nontenured? Paper and proposal reviewing? Review boards? Journal assistant editorships?

Review Procedures

For how long are you appointed? When will you come up for review? What sort of review?
What is the process (who reviews, what do they look for, how will you hear about it)
How will this be repeated during the pre-tenure years?
How should you go about finding people to write references for you? How many will you need? From what sources? International/domestic?
How do you choose faculty references who will write strong letters for you?
What is your department's school's official form for your faculty record? Where can you get a copy?
What does it include? What other vita information should you keep?
What should go into your dossier? Should you send copies of congratulatory letters to your department head? To others?
What types of raises are typical? How and when will you find out about your raise?
How can you get feedback on your performance?

Personal issues

What special resources, if any, does your department/institute have for women and family issues?
What policies does the university have for family/personal leave?
Since most of these policies are administered at the departmental level, how are such things handled in your department?
How visible must one be in the department? Is it acceptable or detrimental if most work is done at home?
Who is the ombudsperson and with what matters does he/she deal?
How should you record any controversial matters? To whom do you go about disputes?

List of General publications available at most Universities

(Should be customized for each school.)

Bulletin and appropriate departmental directories and bulletins
Faculty/Staff Telephone Directory
Student Telephone Directory
Policies and Procedures
Benefits Information
Faculty Handbook
Harassment Guide

List of Resource Persons and Offices at most Universities

(Should be customized for each school.)

Department Administrative Officer (AO)
Faculty mentors
University Ombudsperson
Equal Opportunities Committee/Officer
School Women Faculty Group
Child Care Office