SUMMER 2021: reflections on my first year as an assistant professor

On June 16, 2021, I completed my first year at the Gies College of Business. It is hard to bucket this year’s “life lessons” into logical themes but I will try my best to make this relevant for other junior faculty and PhD students.
 
When I asked a few new assistant professors how their work and life changed when they went on from their PhD to their jobs, here are a few things they said:

• “Nothing changed. I still feel like a PhD student.”
• “Life gets a lot busier, but it’s better overall. You make more money.”
• “More meetings!”

 
My perspective and mindset, like with most things, was quite different on this topic.
 
The major changes I noticed were: (a) New institution: I was now part of a whole new university system, a new business school, new department (duh!), (b) More resources: I had a lot more resources for my research and needed to learn the skills to best use them, and (c) Citizen Unnati: I was a citizen of my department in a bigger way and had a responsibility towards colleagues and also students who were either taking courses or working with me.
 
Here is how these not-so-groundbreaking observations helped me in my first year as an assistant professor:
 
(a) New institution

• Getting to know the community instead of working in my own silo: In addition to my own department, I met several great people engaged in quantitative research in other disciplines including Accountancy, Finance, Communications, and even Astronomy! From these informal conversations, I learned about what is out there to be learned, i.e., learning what you don’t know you don’t know. I was introduced to tools for scalable computing (e.g., DASK), how to write good grant proposals (people are usually willing to share their proposal if you ask), and just what’s going on in other disciplines that overlaps with my work. I also made good friends in the process :)
• Learning about what’s happening in my school and on campus: Being part of a new institution, in any capacity, gives you the opportunity to learn about its strategic goals and vision, partners, alumni, etc. and how it may translate into opportunities and/or collaborations. Online learning, one of my research interests, is also a priority for our business school. Initiating conversations with the eLearning team has taught me more about the current sets of challenges universities face, resulting in new research ideas.

 
(b) More resources

• Investing research budgets well and working with students: I haven’t found a lot of advice on this but most junior faculty I have talked to do not seem to be using most of their research funds. Those engaged in behavioral studies typically use their funds to pay the subjects in their experiments. What worked for me was to recruit Research Assistants, e.g., from our MS in Information Management programs. This can be tricky because not everyone works at your level of expectation of pace or skill. I learned this over the course of the year but what worked for me was to (a) assign only one research project to any student (so they develop some understanding and depth, and get relatively more invested in it and in the final outcomes of the research) instead of giving a bunch of cross-project tasks, (b) have weekly check-ins even if a 15-minute call, (c) set up the scope of tasks as far in advance as possible; I usually kept a running excel spreadsheet listing Tasks 1…N in each row, with corresponding datasets and codes they need to run/write and output. I even specified how I wanted the output files named, and finally (d) help them help me – when they got stuck, I asked for immediate communication so they didn’t feel defeated, and I could jump in and write or explain a line of code or get them the information they needed. Overall, my philosophy with RAs is not how much work I can get them to do for me, but how can I make this project exciting for them that they feel invested, motivated to create value, learn something through it (at least for that semester), and perhaps even consider a PhD in future. I’m usually super patient with the learning curve, but my biggest asks are effective and timely communication and organized files!
• Applying to relevant grants: As a PhD student, I did not foresee how useful grant writing skills could be. Unlike the sciences, business schools don’t typically train you to raise your own funds for your research. So, it really never came up. However, at Gies, I started noticing several relevant grant opportunities in our weekly mailers. In my very first year, I applied for at least 9 grants and received 3. Two small grants under $5,000 and thanks to an anonymous donor at the Gies college, one large grant of $32,000. These opportunities were unthinkable as a PhD student. I also received feedback on some of my grant proposals that were rejected, helping me understand what the proposals wanted “more of” – granted, these grant proposals take time, energy and effort, and often talking to multiple stakeholders or attending webinars before you can turn them in. I personally found it to be a nice new challenge and didn’t mind the rejections if I learned something from them.
• Always be learning: On the topic of learning, it’s been hard to find as much time for my own online courses (e.g., online certificates on Coursera) as I did during the PhD days. So that might be one area to capitalize on as much as you can, while still a student. On the bright side, several virtual workshops were offered this year to allow me to spend a dedicated 1-2 days on learning new stuff. Finding informal mentorship has been another way to continue learning both from faculty members at Gies and beyond.

 
(c) Citizen Unnati

• Showing up: I don’t know who said this, but 90% of success is just showing up! There are a ton of department/school meetings and events all year, and zoom fatigue sets in and time is always limited. Showing up for as many as possible, and engaging, or when you can’t go, sending the host a quick note makes all the difference. Since my first year was mostly a zoom-year, I always engaged in private chats to say hi to some of my colleagues (and sometimes those ended up in 1:1 coffee meetups).
• Speaking up: At least when asked :-) I was recently invited to talk about engagement in online learning environments for our summer teaching & learning academy for faculty. Accepting these opportunities, welcoming them, making yourself available, and preparing for them is just being a good citizen IMO. Last semester, I volunteered to speak with our PhD students on “defining your research agenda” – which was probably my favorite conversation of the year. Again, there are time trade-offs, and everyone is busy, but doing a few of these is nice!
• Serving students: My teaching strategies from my online marketing analytics course in Spring ’21 probably deserves its own separate post. Teaching an undergraduate class when I was a PhD student was very different from teaching now. During my PhD, I had to teach only once and the course I was teaching was already being taught by 6 other faculty so there was less scope to innovate. This year, I prepared a new course from scratch using materials from my own research and developing new marketing analytics exercises in R programming. I had a small class size, so I could try new ways of engaging students and get them to also learn from each other and learn by doing. For example, I noticed no one was showing up for office hours so I invited students for optional 1:1 check-ins during the semester (once online and once in-person) in addition to the office hours. These conversations covered not just course-related questions but any support they needed outside of course work. This was the highlight of my semester (and sounded like, theirs too!). Several of these student conversations were memorable. One student asked me, “How do you deal with rejections and failures, and not let them beat you down?” I said, the honest answer is failure perhaps never gets easier, but you learn to focus more on the good stuff. I reminded them they are young and have their whole life to try things, fail at some, and get good at others. Another said, “Everyone else seems to have their act together and be sure of what they want” – and I remembered the 21-year-old me juggling two jobs (journalism and teaching) and trying to get my Masters’. All I could tell her was, “You just have to start somewhere and give it your best shot. No one knows any better.”  At the end of the semester, I was pleased to get notes from the students that said they valued my “advice as a new professor and young professional, and the real-world applications” and even though I was originally nervous about my first-time teaching at Gies, I cannot wait for the next time!

 
Overall, my first year as a junior faculty pushed me to reframe my role, learn new skills, get to know amazing people at my school, and influence students in addition to focusing on my own research as I did during my PhD years. How was your experience?