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Denise
Kirschner (Microbiology and Immunology)
Let me touch on lots of different things, fill in some of
the comparisons and contrasts with what Michael outlined with
the humanities in terms of both mathematics and perhaps physics
and engineering as well as compared with more medically-oriented
sciences. So the first thing that I would say is don’t
rush your graduate career. I think there’s no reason.
I mean, you’ll have a job for the rest of your life.
So, there’s no reason to rush your career. And if you’re
still not sure about when your end date is for finishing up
your thesis, if you’re in those stages, I think there’s
no reason to push it. The job market will still be there the
following year.
And then you have to make a decision at that point, certainly,
whether you are going to go into academia or not. So, I think
I’ll focus more on talking about academy, but if there’s
questions about going into industry or the government, I’ll
address those as well.
And then, I think, the decision becomes postdoc or no postdoc.
In the sciences, certainly the medical sciences, it’s
almost a necessity if you want to be at a top level school.
But in mathematics and physics, for example, it’s becoming
much more popular. So, in the past where it wasn’t necessary
to do a postdoc in math, you are only competitive on the market
now if you have one. And again, this is directed towards lots
of different levels of application, so you can send your applications
all to Harvard and Yale and Stanford and Princeton, and then
you can send them to the next tier school and you can work
your way down, and I’ll talk a little bit about that
– what your MO should be in that regard. Clearly, if
you want to end up at a school where research is important,
doing a postdoc is only going to facilitate your acquiring
of that position. It’s going to give you more time to
either hone the skills in your area or perhaps to broaden
them – add new tools to your toolbox, and that’s
always looked upon in a very positive light.
And the length of time that you could spend in a postdoc
can vary anywhere from a year to five years, depending on
what the norm is for your individual discipline. I can advise
you that a one-year postdoc is probably a really bad idea.
That’s because you’re just getting your feet wet
at about six month and then you have to get on the job market
right away, and when you’re on the job market it’s
really hard to focus on other things. You’re spending
lots of time doing paper shuffling, hopefully going and doing
interviews, finding out about the places where you’re
going to be, so putting a lot of energy into other things
is difficult.
I can tell you that when I applied for my first faculty position
at Texas A&M in the mathematics department, there were
1200 applications received for the position I got, and I can’t
even imagine how they found me in a pile of 1200 applications.
You have to imagine what it is that makes you stand out over
other individuals. But there are a few things that I think
are important.
I think your research letter is extremely important in the
sciences. Again, this is geared more towards universities
where research is part of your expectation. With regard to
that research summary, people are looking for what your potential
is for future independent research as well as for acquiring
grants. That is the major mainstay of science and medicine
today is acquiring grant funding and you have to have potential
for that. Whether you had it as a graduate student –
you were funded on a special grant – that should be highlighted
in your application. If you are going for a postdoc, whether
you were able to get that funded independently – you
were hired on with a faculty member who later helped you acquire
a grant independently. And then afterwards, that you have
potential for grant funding on your own after that. That is
so important in the sciences and the medical field, I can’t
stress that enough.
Again, at the upper lever schools, but certainly even at
the schools where teaching is the priority. There is so much
funding out there nowadays for teaching initiatives that involve
current research, incorporating that research into the classroom.
Because – face it – there are a lot of smaller schools
that are stale in their curriculum. And what they want to
do is to breathe new life into that, and they’re looking
for this next class of people to do that. And so it’s
up to you all to impress them – whether it’s on
the teaching side or research side or both – that you
are the one who can do that. You have to impress them that
you’re the one in that pile of 1200 that they should
hire. And so I think while you want to stay away from the
sales approach, which is the more resume oriented, bullet
cover sheet that says, “I do this and I’m great”
and all of this. You still want to make that known –
through all of your documents – that you really are going
to contribute something very important to that university
or college where you’re going to go.
The other thing that I would suggest – given today’s
market in science and medicine – is not to limit your
search. I never intended to come to Michigan. Even though
I’m born and raised in Brooklyn, I decided never to come
back to the North again; it’s just too darn cold. And
when they called me about this position, I actually said,
“No, I’m not interested. I’m not coming up
for the interview. I don’t want to live in Ann Arbor.”
Which, of course, was just a ludicrous idea. So, I was convinced
that it was a good idea to come. I’ve never been to Ann
Arbor. Come, check it out. And within twenty-four hours, I
was just in love with this place, with the university, with
the town, with everything. So, don’t limit yourself for
stupid reasons. I mean, if your ex-husband lives in a certain
city and you never want to live there, then that’s probably
a good reason not to move someplace, but otherwise leave yourself
open. And that goes not only for geography but also for the
level of schools. I applied to everywhere from Ann Arbor down
to community colleges when I was on the market. I sent out
75 applications, and that was ten years ago. So, I would say,
be willing to make sacrifices, and a lot of times you’ll
find out that it’s not a sacrifice at all. You’ll
get someplace and it was exactly where you were supposed to
be. That’s happened to a lot of colleagues of mine and
to myself as well.
I would also say that along with this research summary, I
think it is important to do a teaching summary. And, I’d
say almost every university is interested in what you have
to say about teaching. It doesn’t have to be lengthy
unless they actually call for a lengthy one. And I think it
should be completely based on – to stay away from the
generalities that Michael was describing – based on your
own experience. If you’ve never had any teaching experience,
then it’s almost ludicrous to sit down and try to write
a philosophy about your teaching. But if you can say, “I
taught part of this course, and I thought it was really interesting,
and I was a little frustrated by the way I had to interact
with freshman, but my interactions with the sophomores…”
Whatever it is, you can formulate it in a way that will let
them know that you’re drawing on experience and you’re
not just being grandiose in your ideals about it. That’s
important and that will come too, but it’s probably not
going to be determinative in making you stand out in the application
process. Again, if the university that you’re applying
to or the college is teaching-oriented school then you’re
going to want to focus a lot more energy on that document.
I know that mine was two pages long and I was applying for
all tier schools, and I included it with every one of my applications.
So, I think that it is extremely important.
Now, I also want to get back to the curriculum vita a little
bit. Now every field is different in terms of what is expected
on the CV. I don’t really think there is a general CV
that covers all academia. My CV when I was in a mathematics
department looks very different from the one now that I’m
in the medical school. So, I would say, get a copy of your
advisor’s CV if you want to be in that area. Of course,
yours won’t be 50 pages long, but you’ll understand
what the categories are. And I would do it today, and then
I would find out which categories you have nothing to say
about. And I would try really hard to at least get one item
in that category before you send your CV around. And it’s
actually pretty easy to do. You go to one conference, you
present one abstract, you try to give one talk. Even if you
can get your advisor in English to get you to give a talk
next door over in the Humanities department or something.
You can make it happen in the short amount of time that you
may have before you are applying for jobs. But I think that’s
really important.
And I would also say along those lines, each individual discipline
has its own way of getting jobs, and so there’s no way
I can sit here and tell you what it is for every discipline.
I can tell you that in mathematics, you have to attend the
joint meeting – the AMS and the SIAM. If you don’t
go to that joint meeting, then you’re probably not going
to get a job in the math world. In medicine, it’s very
different. You have to network more and come from labs that
are really well known if you want to be at the high tier places.
So you really need to discuss this with your advisor and your
mentor and find out exactly what the MO is. And also where
the best advertisements are for your particular area. In mathematics,
all jobs are advertised in one particular place. In medicine,
they’re all over the place. So, I think it’s really
important to find out what happens in your discipline, and
people know the answers to those questions. A lot of the time,
the administrative assistants in your departments actually
have all this information, and they’re really helpful
at supplying it to you.
There’s one question
here that I thought was really interesting, “What pieces
of information carry the most weight in the packet?”
On the search committees that I’ve been on, it turns
out that the letters are really important. I think people
read those first and foremost, because somebody in your department
will know one of the people that wrote for you. And so that
letter is going to be really determinative. So finding out
who to write you a letter is really important. Now,
if you don’t have a letter from your advisor, and then
you don’t have one from your postdoc advisor, it sends
up a red flag immediately. So, if you don’t have a letter
from those guys – and there’s probably a good reason
for that – and so you might even want to discuss that
in the interview process if it comes up. You know, “Well,
you came from Jerry’s lab, why don’t you have a
letter from him?” There may be a reason why you’ve
chosen not to get a letter from your advisor. But, for the
most part, certainly a letter from your advisor should be
in there.
And probably – again, depending on what type of university
you’re applying to – someone in the department has
an idea about your teaching; they’ve read all your teaching
evaluations, they’ve kept up with your teaching. Try
to get somebody to get a letter for you just focused on your
teaching, and usually the first sentence is, "This will
not deal with Sally’s research, it will only deal with
her teaching and my critique of her as a teacher." What
you can also do is everybody who does teach gets evaluations.
I photocopied all my evaluations and put them in my packet
when I applied to schools where teaching was really important.
Particularly if there were comments – you know they used
to hand write the comments on the back of those evaluations
– I photocopied those all and cut and pasted them and
put them in there. Because I thought – well, you know
– if you want to know about teaching, ask the students,
and there's what the students' comments were. And so I would
have a little caveat, explaining "Well, that guy –
he got an F in the class. He said that about me but he really
didn't do very well anyway." And again you can discuss
these things more in person.
So, that brings me to the interview, and I think that the
interview itself is probably the determining factor. So, all
this stuff will get you invited there but if they don’t
like you as a person, then you’re not going to get the
job. Most of the time, people are thinking about that being
the first date and then the commitment is to be married after
that point. So, you have decide after the first date if you
want to marry this person, because you’re going to be
spending faculty meetings, decision, lots of things with them
for a long, long time, and if you don’t like them or
you don’t think that they’re going to contribute
then it’s a turn-off right away. So, the best advice
then is to be yourself. You really have to be yourself. Don’t
try to impress anyone. Don’t work really hard. I can
tell you when I came from that Ann Arbor interview, I still
wasn’t convinced and I didn’t care at all. And it
was the best interview I ever gave, because I didn’t
care, and so I could completely be relaxed and be myself.
So, try to do that old proverb of everybody’s in their
underwear and I don’t really care about what’s happening
here and it can be really successful. If you can step outside
the situation and just take a deep breath and do that, I think
it will work to your favor because going in tense and uptight
and trying to think about what the right answer is to questions
and discussion where there is none is not helpful. So just
be yourself and be the best scientist or best academician
that you can be.
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