Early Career Geoscience Faculty

If you're just beginning (or about to begin) a career as a geoscience faculty member, you're probably wondering how to balance teaching, research, and other demands on your time, so that you can succeed without having to sacrifice your sanity. In fact, finding that balance may be the most important skill for you to master, to be successful in academia. Fortunately, you do not need to reinvent the wheel. This page is a gateway to resources you can use to maximize your efficiency with a minimum of stress. This collection of resources is an outgrowth of the series of annual workshops for Early Career Geoscience Faculty.

Jump down to Making Choices: Finding Your Balance * Efficient, Effective Teaching * Developing a Thriving Research Program * Getting Tenure * International Faculty Members * Early Career Geoscience Faculty Workshops * Overarching Career Management Resources

Making Choices: Finding Your Balance

Ultimately, you will be most successful, and feel most comfortable in your chosen career, when you learn how to balance competing demands on your time, both personally and professionally. Here are some resources to help you do that.

Efficient, Effective Teaching

Effective teaching requires being able to decide what to teach and how to teach it, and assessing how well your students have learned what you are teaching. There are efficient ways to do all of this.

Developing a Thriving Research Program

As a new faculty member, your new responsibilities probably include developing a research plan, finding funding for your research program, mentoring student researchers, and carving out the time to actually conduct and write up your research. The most satisfied, successful new faculty members begin this right away, in their first year (Boice, 2000, p. 105). Find out how you can be one of them.

Getting Tenure

The first step to getting tenure is finding out what it takes to get tenure at your institution. Find out how to find that information, and how to prepare a successful tenure package.

International Faculty Members

If you are not a United States citizen but you are staying in the U.S. as a faculty member, you will face challenges beyond those of academia in general. Identify challenges and choose how to tackle them before they arise.

Early Career Workshops

Find out about our annual Early Career Geoscience Faculty workshops, including the details about the goals, expectations, and schedules for each of the past several years. We also sometimes run other workshops for early career faculty; these tend to be shorter workshops offered in association with professional society meetings.

Overarching Career Management Resources

• Robert Boice studied 415 new, tenure-track faculty members, and in 2000 published the results of his studies in Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus. In this book, he describes the work and social habits of the 5% of new faculty who were particularly successful, right from the start. Furthermore, Boice research shows that any new faculty member can adopt the habits of these "exemplary" new faculty, and that doing so increases their chances of being successful (Boice, 2000, p.5).
• Based on her own experiences as a faculty member (in chemistry), Patricia Ann Mabrouk has written an article entitled Advice to a New Faculty Member. (Acrobat (PDF) 102kB Jun28 06) In it, she describes what she wishes she had known as a new faculty member, on topics from general career management to teaching, research, and service.