Today I want to answer an urgent query from readers that I am asked at least once a week, about the etiquette of thanking a department that has hosted you on a campus visit. And then tell you about three new webinars that are coming up this month. The webinars are “Writing Your Book for Tenure,” “Managing Your Career Once You Have a Job,” and “What Grad Students Need to Hear.” Keep reading to learn more.
How to thank a department: it is appropriate to write an email thank you to the department head, to the search chair, to the department secretary who helped arrange the visit, and then to any other individual faculty member with whom you feel you formed a special connection. Beyond that, it is unnecessary, and undesirable, to thank anybody else. Many readers inquire anxiously whether they should thank every single person they met. No, you should not. It is appropriate, if you wish, to send a thank you card to the department, addressed either to the department head or to the departmental secretary, but it is not required. Emails are the norm.
Now, without further ado, please read on about the three new webinars I’ve developed for Spring 2013. They are coming quickly (the first is next Wednesday), so if you’re interested, don’t delay. By the way, I’ve created a special discount code for the third one, “What Grad Students Need to Hear,” to make this webinar more easily affordable for the grad students who most need to attend it. The code is Grad25 and it gives you a 25% discount for that webinar only.
1) Writing Your Book for Tenure (4/10)
In most fields of the humanities and social sciences, a sole-authored monograph is the primary criterion for tenure, and getting the book done in time for tenure review is the leading source of stress for new assistant professors. You can do it, but it takes advance planning and organization. In this 90 minute webinar I walk you through the basic timeline for getting it done in time. We will cover the following:
conceptualizing your dissertation as a book
getting leave time to write
coordinating publication timeline and tenure review
writing a proposal
submitting your proposal
approaching editors
choosing a press
getting an advance contract
knowing what to publish as journal articles
setting up a writing schedule
dealing with positive and negative reviews
revising the mss.
details of indexing, copy-editing and cover art
As always there will be time for Q and A at the end.
Avoid unnecessary anguish and stress by understanding the process and planning ahead.
This 90-minute Webinar is scheduled for Wednesday 4/10 at 2 PM Pacific/5 PM EST/22:00 GMT. Cost: $100
After completing payment by clicking below, you will be redirected to the dedicated Go-To-Meeting Webinar Registration page, where you will fill out a registration form and be given instructions and an access code to sign in on your chosen day.
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2) Managing Your Career Once You Have a Job (4/17)
Congratulations! You have secured the tenure track position! Now what?
This 90-minute webinar explains the basic organization of a successful academic career, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls besetting the naive new assistant professor. We’ll cover:
The all-important skill of time management
Learning to say no
Learning when to say yes
Teaching well but not too much
Dealing with colleagues
Understanding departmental politics
Handling service obligations
Managing your image
Applying for leave
Carving out time for research and writing
Charting your tenure course
Creating and maintaining your national reputation
Aiming for the next job
As always there will be time for Q and A at the end.
One of the most elusive achievements of the tenure track period is any kind of work-life balance. With a clear sense of the obligations and challenges of the tenure track period you can improve your chances of achieving this balance and having a career that is satisfying and life-sustaining.
This 90-minute webinar is scheduled for Wednesday 4/17 at 2 PM Pacific/5 PM EST/22:00 GMT. Cost: $100
After completing payment by clicking below, you will be redirected to the dedicated Go-To-Meeting Webinar Registration page, where you will fill out a registration form and be given instructions and an access code to sign in on your chosen day.
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3) What Grad Students Need To Hear (4/25)
Graduate training across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences is in the midst of a massive upheaval as higher education downsizes abruptly. Graduate students are caught between two competing trends: the pressure on departments to increase Ph.D. admissions to handle the teaching that professors no longer do, and the wholesale replacement of tenure track jobs for those same Ph.D.s with short-term adjunct positions.
In short, Ph.D. students vastly outnumber the available permanent positions for employment at the tenure track level. Meanwhile, faculty in Ph.D. granting departments rarely acknowledge these realities, preferring to increase their Ph.D. enrollments for the sake of personal or departmental prestige, while viewing the real suffering attendant on the Ph.D. job search with indifference at worst, passivity at best. Few graduate students are told the truth about the real financial risks of doing a Ph.D., and more importantly, the specific steps that can be taken to protect yourself, reduce those risks, and chart a course that maximizes chances of secure permanent employment after completion of the degree.
This webinar is dedicated to filling that gap. It covers:
Preparing for your job search from year 1 in the program
Understanding the financial risks and losses of a Ph.D.
Evaluating the status and job placement rate of your graduate program
Evaluating the effectiveness of your advisor for job placement
Changing advisors when necessary
Assembling a committee
Choosing a dissertation topic
Reading trends in your field with an eye to the job market
Setting a 5-year timeline to completion
Understanding the role of grants
TA-ing vs. teaching
Participating in departmental life
Avoiding excess service
Attending national conferences
Networking
Strategizing your recommenders
Building your CV
Producing the all-important peer reviewed publications
And finally, most important: Thinking like a t-t search committee.
As always, time for Q and A at the end.
Let no grad student proceed uninformed!
This 90-minute webinar is scheduled for Thursday 4/25 at 2 PM Pacific/5 PM EST/22:00 GMT. Cost: $100
After completing payment by clicking below, you will be redirected to the dedicated Go-To-Meeting Webinar Registration page, where you will fill out a registration form and be given instructions and an access code to sign in on your chosen day.
I am curious what you think about department heads who do not write a thank you letter to you after the campus visit. A friend and I both had campus visits with the same school and she received a thank you letter and I did not. Now, there was not a massive error or facepalm during my interview, but afterward, as my friend and I shared our experiences and when I had some distance to reflect on the day, it is clear I was never being seriously considered for the job (something I had a feeling about during the day, but pushed aside). However, I still think a thank you letter would have been nice. Am I wrong?
Oh absolutely anyone invited for a campus visit SHOULD get a thank you. But these niceties are fading away in our uncivil times.
Why is it “undesirable” to thank other faculty members who took 45+ minutes to meet with you?
It’s hard to articulate, but basically, they are just doing their job; it’s not a special favor to you that they met you; they are rather executing the obligations of faculty in a search. Thanking them individually is thus excessive and makes the candidate look a little unhinged. It won’t be a major issue either way, but candidate anxiety about the necessity of individually thanking every single person they met is misplaced.
I’m interested in polite language candidates use to turn down a (generous) offer – especially in cases where the reason is because the institute is simply not the right fit for him/her (that is, the candidate has no other offers on the table yet, so cannot use that as the reason). Do candidates generally provide one or more reasons they turn down an offer?
In preparing to write a thank-you note after a preliminary interview, I looked online for examples. All I found were from business, where the candidate wrote a full-page letter re-emphasizing interests and qualifications. I decided not to follow that lead, as it seemed over-eager and pushy. What do you think a good academic thank-you note should aim to accomplish?
I’m also wondering about whether one should “read into” non-replies to thank-you notes from candidates, or, worse, no communication after campus interviews? Wouldn’t the committee want to stay in communication with their top candidates (especially if they might be their future colleagues?)
Non-replies are unfortunately the norm now.