Emily Read, PhD, RN

Professor’s Notebook: Wrapping Up your Semester of Teaching

The end of term is a busy time that often involves a lot of final assessment activities for the courses you are teaching. It can be challenging to go the extra distance to make sure that you stay organized during the transition from one semester to the next. Today I’m going to share with you what I consider the “must-dos” to close out your semester, stay organized, and learn and grow as a teacher.

1. Submit your final grades on time

This should be low-hanging fruit but you’d be surprised how many faculty members either do not keep track of the deadlines for grade submission or struggle to get all of their grading done on time (especially with final papers/essays). You need to know your institution’s policy and dates for submitting final grades. It is very helpful to add the relevant dates for each course you teach to your calendar and plan your assignments and exams in a way that gives you enough time to grade them and submit the final grades on time.

As an aside, we usually underestimate how much time it takes to grade assignments so it can also be helpful to do some time tracking when you grade so that you have a more realistic estimate of the time you will need to block off in your calendar for this. Time tracking is simply keeping track of the amount of time you spend doing things and can be as basic as writing it on a piece of paper or in a Word document. Even timing grading a random sample of papers can give you a decent estimate of your average grading time for that assignment.

Obviously, it will vary by course, level, quality of writing, etc. but moving forward, this information can help you make informed decisions about the assignments you develop for your courses. There is also the whole AI thing which means we could be (some are) moving away from more traditional scholarly papers or essays or that we need to allocate more time to grading smaller scaffolded assignments throughout the term. We may (probably) also need more time to deal with AI cheating issues for some types of assignments. Even so, you need to get your grades in on time and make a plan that allows you to do that.

2. Clean up and organize your teaching files

You should have a personal filing system that makes it easy for you to find information. Personally, I have a main folder called TEACHING with a subfolder for each of the different courses I’ve taught and another level of subfolders by year for the courses that I have taught multiple times. You might prefer to organize by year. There isn’t one best way to organize your files but you do need a system that is consistent and works for you.

When it comes to teaching, there are basically three types of files: 1) content that you’ve created for teaching and learning, 2) content that others have created that you are using for teaching and learning while minding copyright laws (e.g., book chapters, journal articles, etc.), and 3) content that your students have created during the course (e.g., assignments, discussion posts, exams, etc.).

In my view, the student-created content and your evaluations of it require the most consideration due to privacy concerns and the potential for grade appeals. As a general rule, I would recommend finding out how long you are required to keep student work at your institution and then deleting the student work once that time has passed. For example, if you need to keep it for 1 year, then at the end of this term you would delete/electronically shred all student work from the Winter 2023 term. This includes discussion posts in your LMS.

The exception to this would be excellent work that you would like to use for accreditation/program review purposes or as examples to share with future classes. If you would like to save specific pieces of work from students for these purposes, you should ask them for permission to save and share their work in those ways now and file it in a special folder. The best time to ask students is now after you’ve just taught them (and after submitting final grades). Generally, I would ask for this permission via email and then if the student replies giving their written permission, I save the email thread as a PDF in the folder with their assignment.

The other types of files that you have (created by you and resources created by others) can be kept indefinitely in your personal filing system. I like to have folders organized by class or by week of the course and then a separate folder for assignments. I also create a brand new folder for each time I teach the same course. While this does create some duplication, it means that I have an archived version of the course for each time I taught it. Note that I always update and revise my courses to improve them so no two offerings are identical.

3. Read your student teaching evaluations

It might not be your favourite thing to do, but you really do need to read your student evaluations. Yes, there are known problems with student teaching evaluations – most students are not experts in teaching and learning, people have personal biases that negatively affect their ratings of women and members of minority groups who are professors, hard classes/subjects are viewed less favourably than others, and students with strong extreme opinions are most likely to complete the evaluation – however, there can still be helpful nuggets that can help you improve as a teacher so I wouldn’t advise ignoring them or sticking your head in the sand.

I would advise you not to take the feedback personally and to approach your teaching evaluations like a researcher instead. This is data after all. Print out your evaluations and go through them with different coloured highlighters. First, highlight all of the positive feedback in one colour. Then, highlight the negative feedback in another colour. I would ignore comments that are irrelevant to teaching (for example, comments about your appearance which yes, does happen when you are a woman). Look for common themes in each category. Are students consistently saying they didn’t like the textbook? Is there a 50:50 split on loving and hating an active learning strategy that you used? What is the data telling you overall? Write a brief summary of the overall feedback and consider what you might do differently next time to improve your teaching and students’ learning. You might also want to talk to your teaching support center or colleagues, do some research about the scholarship of teaching, or attend a teaching professor conference. Excellence does not require perfection, but it does require effort and there is always more to learn.

4. Take a day off (at least)

Lastly, it’s important to take at least a day off and decompress after a busy few weeks. Go do things that you enjoy and let go of the stresses of the semester. If you can take a vacation (at least a full week) I would highly encourage you to. Sometimes it feels like there is never a good time to take one but it is super important for your health and wellbeing, and, perhaps counterintuitively, taking vacation benefits your productivity at work long-term. Burnt-out people are not productive people so let’s avoid going down the burnout path 😉

And that’s it for today. Go wrap up your teaching semester and enjoy a well-deserved break~!

On Liberal Arts Education

Worker shortages across industries are creating intense pressures to create shortcuts to educate people to fill in the holes in the roster as fast as possible. We need tradespeople, we need nurses, teachers, doctors, and the list goes on… Yes, we definitely need more people in the workforce. But, we need the right people and we need them to know what they are doing (and also, to have the insight to know what they do not know and need to learn).

The trend to shorten education programs and view them as a type of factory that produces workers for the system leads to devaluing learning that is not directly linked to on-the-job tasks and skills that are visible and obvious to non-experts outside the field. For example, as a nurse, it is absolutely essential to understand ideas beyond the knowledge and skills necessary to do medical procedures like giving medications, inserting IVs, and so forth. Understanding the human condition, the determinants of health, the structure, history, and politics of the health care system, and the ethical aspects of care are also very important.

Teachers also need to have a broad understanding of the world, civic engagement, human development, social and political issues, science, arts, history, technology, and more, along with developing their skills and knowledge specific to teaching including curriculum and lesson planning, teaching, evaluation, and classroom management. It takes time to learn all of that.

Arguably, the purpose of education is not just to provide graduates with a career (though, yes, this is important too), but also to develop their critical thinking abilities, introduce them to new ideas, inspire them to think differently, and learn more about themselves and the broader world. Liberal arts education especially provides students with the opportunity to do this because it requires students to take a variety of courses across different disciplines and prepares them to be engaged and thoughtful citizens.

As a student, I didn’t really understand what liberal arts education was or why it was important, but in retrospect, I think it has been instrumental in my personal and professional development. For example, the English courses I took early on were challenging and required me to become a critical reader and thinker, as well as further develop my writing skills. These skills were incredible assets as a kinesiology and nursing student, as well as in my career as a professor. I also learned about different ways to think about and understand the world that I had not been exposed to growing up in smalltown rural Nova Scotia.

Even as a PhD student, my supervisor required me to take graduate courses outside of nursing. Instead of the minimum four courses, I took 10, including courses in instrument development in the Department of Psychology and courses in advanced statistics and teamwork at the Ivey School of Business. These courses introduced me to valuable new perspectives and new ideas outside of my home discipline which are still highly relevant to the work that I do now.

The benefits of liberal arts education and the perils of not exposing students to broader ideas and knowledge seem even more relevant today, with the pace of social and technological change. For example, it is readily apparent that we are not well-equipped to deal with the wide-ranging negative consequences of AI, many of which involve ethical and moral dilemmas. We are also living in a society that is increasingly influenced and polarized by the echo chambers of the internet and social media. Unfathomably, science (and education) is under attack and many people lack the knowledge and skills to critically appraise information and sources. Now, more than ever, we need to foster intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and philosophical conversations and debates about social and ethical issues. We need liberal arts education.

Academic Coaching for Student Success

In sports the role of a coach is obvious to most people: the coach’s job is to bring out the best in their players and team and win. In my books winning doesn’t just mean beating the other team on the scoreboard – it means doing your very best and holding nothing back. In the words of John Wooden, one of my favourite coaches of all time “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

The best coaches help people identify and set goals and develop a plan to achieve them. They provide specific, constructive feedback and help their coachees identify strategies to overcome roadblocks. Coaches can also make learning and practicing new skills interesting and fun, and therefore help people stay motivated to achieve their goals.

Coaching is also relevant to many other contexts outside of sport such as parenting, personal training, and career coaching. In higher education, academic coaching is becoming more prevalent in response to increased numbers of students who are unprepared for university. In my discipline of nursing, we also see clinical coaching emerging as an effective strategy to support students who need extra support to develop their competence in clinical practice.

So what exactly is academic coaching?

The Coaching in Higher Education Consortium defines academic coaching as “fostering individualized relationships with students that promote their agency, self-understanding, growth, effectiveness, and persistence within the realm of education and across their lifespan” (1).

Academic coaching services usually provide students with tailored, individual sessions with a skilled academic coach to identify goals, strengths, areas for improvement, and strategies for success. Collaborating with an academic coach can empower students to build and refine skills required for academic success including self-regulation, time management, notetaking, studying, test-taking strategies, and planning and writing academic papers.

It’s worth noting that many universities and colleges have dedicated academic coaches with expertise in academic coaching. Professors are not expected to be academic coaches, nor are academic advisors who focus on academic regulations and course/program planning. Alzen et al. (2) provide a nice diagram showing the differences between counseling, academic coaching, and student advising which you can find here.

That being said, in nursing, my experience has been that faculty members invest a tremendous amount of time and energy supporting the learning needs of students because we tend to be a passionate and caring bunch. Knowing many faculty members in other disciplines, I’m sure we’re not the only ones. However, as much as we care about our students, academic coaching adds another thing to our already very full plates and there is a power imbalance between students and professors that can make it difficult for students to share all of their needs and challenges. Dedicated academic coaches provide better support for students and free up professors’ valuable time and energy to focus on what they do best.

What does the evidence say about the effectiveness of academic coaching?

Overall, there is a need for more research but evidence to date suggests that academic coaching can be an effective approach to supporting university students. For example, in a 2021 study, Howlett et al. (3) found that students who participated in academic coaching experienced an increase in meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) and that online coaching was just as effective as in-person coaching (good news for our distance students!). In another recent study, Alzen et al. (2) found that an academic coaching intervention had positive impacts on GPA, credits earned, and student retention for first-year students in Arts and Sciences at risk of not continuing (GPA < 2.0). Not surprisingly, in this study students who completed the academic coaching program had better outcomes than those who did not. While there remains a need for more research, the preliminary evidence does support the use of academic coaching for student success.

The tricky part, as with any intervention, is to figure out what works best, for who, and in what conditions. It’s possible (and perhaps likely) that while struggling students stand to benefit the most from academic coaching, they may also be the least likely to seek it out or take advantage of it.

References

Graduate Student Supervision: Fostering an empowering work environment in your lab/research group

Today we’re going to discuss how to foster an empowering work environment in your lab/research group. Over the last year, the “great resignation” has highlighted the importance of work environments on employee satisfaction, commitment, and turnover. People are done tolerating jobs (and people) that make them unhappy – and that includes higher education. We (the university/academy) can and need to do better.

As a graduate student supervisor, you play a major role in creating the work environment and culture for your graduate students and research personnel/team. How intentional have you been in creating that work environment? What supports and structures have you put in place to empower your team? Where do you even start?

Well, let’s start with Kanter’s (1993) theory of structural empowerment. Structural empowerment is all about providing people (usually employees but in this case graduate students) with access to the support, resources, information, and opportunities to learn and grow that they need to have in order to be able to actually do their work. There is a ton of research evidence showing that structural empowerment has positive impacts on employee and organizational outcomes. In addition, support has been identified as a key determinant of graduate student satisfaction.

It is also the case that when people don’t have access to these key empowerment structures it can make it really challenging – and frustrating – to accomplish their work. It’s pretty obvious that not having the information, resources, support, and opportunities you need to get the job done makes life difficult!

So when it comes to empowering your graduate students, how exactly do you do that?

Support

This might be both the easiest and most challenging source of empowerment to provide to your students because it doesn’t cost you money but it can cost you time, which is one of your most precious and scarce resources. However, you do not need to be/should not be the only source of support for your graduate students. Support can come from peers, committee members, and the university as well.

Resources

Providing graduate students with resources is all about making sure that they have what they need to successfully complete their degree. This could be financial support, time, access to equipment and/or software or access to space, among other things. This is one reason why getting research grants is so important – it gives you resources to share with your students.

Information

This is such an important aspect of empowerment for graduate students. It obviously includes access to the university library and research articles or databases, but there is also a whole heck of a lot of information (intellectual capital) in that brain of yours that you can share with your students ranging from content expertise, research methods, who’s who, and how to get things done as a researcher.

Opportunities to learn and grow

Each one of your students is going to be unique in terms of their strengths and learning needs. Discussing learning goals each semester can help you identify opportunities of value and interest to each of your students. For example, you may have a fresh master’s student who has never written a conference abstract and a more experienced grad student with lots of experience doing this – why not pair them together? The less experienced student will benefit from the mentorship and experience of the more experienced student and the more experienced student will have an opportunity to mentor and teach. (Of course, you should still provide some guidance and feedback to both students).

Other examples of providing opportunities include sharing information about key conferences and encouraging/requiring students to submit abstracts, providing opportunities to contribute to research projects, presentations, and projects that you are working on, providing hands-on training that advance your students’ skills and knowledge relevant to your field, and introducing your students to people within your professional network, to name a few.

Conclusion

So there you have it – you now know what structural empowerment is and have some ideas about how you can provide it for your graduate students 🙂

Until next week!

Simple Stress Busters to Cope with Mid-Semester Overwhelm

It’s that time of the semester again! The end is in sight but the work is piling up! You have a lot to do before the holiday break including finishing everything for your current classes and preparing for next term so that you can actually relax for a bit.

Research suggests that a wide range of stress coping strategies can be effective. These include social support, emotion-focused coping strategies (aimed at making you feel better), problem-focused coping strategies (aimed at improving or solving the problems/situations that are the source of your stress), and cognitive reappraisal (reframing the stressor and your interpretation of it).

Here are some Simple Stress Busters to Cope with Mid-Semester Overwhelm:

Do a short guided relaxation or meditation. Apps like Calm and Headspace are particularly helpful for this. Schedule 10 min in your day to do this so that it becoms a habit. I like to do it in the car at the end of the work day before I go pick up my son and dog from daycare. It puts me in a much calmer, more mindful state of mind and provides a transition from work to non-work that I find helpful.
Have a mini dance party! Listen to 2-3 of your favourite songs and rock out. This is such an awesome way to release pent up stress energy and add a bit of fun/play to your day 🙂 Often the songs we love also remind us of fun times with friends.
Speaking of which… Connecting with a good friend can also be a great mood booster. Taking 10 min to message a friend or family member and let them know you’re thinking of them is never a bad idea. Making use of commute time to have a longer conversation is also an excellent way to build in meaningful connections during your busy life.
Do something physical. There is a lot of research showing that physical activity and exercise have positive effects on your mental and physical health. You probably already know this! If you’re finding it challenging to get motivated, just commit to doing 10 min/day to start. You will probably feel better once you get going and even a 10 min walk/workout can help break up your grading marathons and give you some fresh air.
Go the F to sleep! I mean that as nicely as possible. If you are not getting enough sleep you are living life on hard mode. Getting a good night sleep when you are stressed out can be challenging, I totally get it! However, there are many things you can do to set yourself up for the best opportunity to have a good night sleep. These include creating a dark, quiet, cool sleeping space, turning off electronics an hour before bedtime (also you should absolutely have a consistent bedtime), having a caffeine cutoff time in the early afternoon, and doing a brain dump so that you can put your mind to rest.
Stop checking your email first thing in the morning. You have more important things to do most of the time. I like to plan my most important work for early in the work day because it ensures that it actually gets done. Your inbox is a black hole of other people’s priorities. It is a bit different for me now in my current role as an Associate Dean because I do need to be available for my team and there can be urgent things that need to be responded to. Our students are in clinical so serious things can happen (knock on wood they don’t). But if you are in a regular faculty position, you may want to consider scheduling certain times each day for email management and communication.
Book a massage or spa treatment. Find a local day spa or massage therapist that specializes in relaxation. Book an appointment. Go. Enjoy. Forget all the things. It’s that easy.
Stop comparing yourself to others. You might feel like you are “behind” or that you don’t measure up to the amazing superstar researcher that you look up to. Stop wasting your energy on that! Instead, focus on the unique value and expertise that you have to share. You are awesome and one of a kind! Take 5 min to write down what makes your teaching and/or research unique. Pin that on your bulletin board so you can look at it and remind yourself.

You certainly don’t need to do all of these but consider trying one out today and see how you feel afterward – maybe you will want to keep doing it 🙂

Have a great week and hang in there!

Emily

Need some more time for self-care? Download this awesome freebie I made just for you. Click here to subscribe to my weekly newsletter and get your free PDF of “How to Find Time for Self-Care”.

On Writing a Pandemic Impact Statement

Writing a pandemic impact statement can also be a valuable opportunity for you to reflect on how the pandemic has affected you and may be used as a tool to manage your expectations and priorities.

A major (and perhaps low fun) part of the tenure process is documenting all the wonderful, impactful things that you are doing.

Whether you are a new faculty member or have some experience under your belts, the pandemic has had an impact on both your career and your personal life – and you should document it, even if it’s just for your own personal records.

The purpose of a pandemic impact statement is to document, in a professional manner, the challenges and barriers caused by COVID-19 that have affected your work and productivity. In addition, it is an opportunity to document your resiliency and resourcefulness by highlighting what you were able to accomplish during this difficult time.

Writing a pandemic impact statement can also be a valuable opportunity for you to reflect on how the pandemic has affected you and may be used as a tool to manage your expectations and priorities. Lastly, you may be asked to submit a pandemic impact statement when you apply for grants or for tenure so having something ready to go will give you one less thing to do later!

Best Practices

I scoured the internet so you didn’t have to, searching for university resources and guidelines to help faculty write a pandemic impact statement. Most of these documents are very similar (reference list is provided at the end). They start out with a paragraph about the pandemic and that it happened (yes, we know), explains why you need to document the impact of it, recommends keeping it between 1-2 pages long, and provides lists of probing questions by category (teaching, research, etc.) that can help you remember and document all the ways in which the pandemic has impacted you as a faculty member. Since I am a nursing professor, I also noticed that most resources did not include anything about the impact on clinical teaching which has been a major challenge for faculty teaching in health professional programs.

Two resources stood out as being particularly helpful. They were from the ADVANCE program at UMass Amherst (1) which provides a template to get you started and the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue University (2) which includes a wide range of short exemplars that may or may not be relevant to you. Of note, it is not at all surprising to me that the most useful information came from academic leaders (who both happen to be women) working to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion for women and minority groups in academe.

(What) Should I share in my statement?

After reading all of these documents I still had a lot of questions about how to write my statement and I found myself carefully considering how much is actually necessary and safe to share with people who are evaluating me and my work.

This isn’t the first time I have wrestled with deciding how much is okay to share in formal assessment documents. My life hasn’t been easy. I worked multiple part-time jobs throughout university to pay for school and worked my butt off to earn scholarships. I started my PhD nine months pregnant with my son and have been a single parent throughout my doctoral and tenure track journey. My PhD supervisor died right after my graduation. I said goodbye to her in palliative care the night before I walked across the stage. How’s that for a way to start your tenure-track job? I cried a lot my first year as an Assistant Professor. Sometimes life is just hard.

I have been very open about all this but I have never felt that my personal life and the extra challenges I’ve faced were particularly relevant to my assessment documents or my ability to get tenure and be promoted. I guess I always thought that if I met the criteria anyway what does it matter if it was harder?

It seemed more risky to overshare, especially as a millenial (even though I have been working since I was 13 and am almost 40 now). I was afraid that my colleagues (who are mostly older than me) would think that I think I am a “special snowflake” that deserves or is asking for special treatment. Or worse, that I wouldn’t actually earn tenure on merit, but out of pity. In the end, I didn’t mention any of the things above when I submitted my file for probationary assessment. I got tenure early as an exceptional case and I know with my whole heart that I earned it. Perhaps if that hadn’t been the case I would regret not providing context about some of the extra challenges I’ve had to deal with. I will never know.

The pandemic has changed my view on this issue of sharing somewhat because it has forced some of the inequities in society and in academe to become more visible. The fact that many universities are requesting or inviting faculty to include a pandemic impact statement in the first place is an important signal that there is at least some awareness that the pandemic has affected people differently and should be taken in account when assessing employee job performance. However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the tenure and promotion committee is still focused on assessing your performance, in your job, that they pay you to do.

I think the following statement from Harvard is particularly telling (bold emphasis mine):

In summary, this supplemental statement should describe any significant effects the pandemic had on your regular activities and plans, indicating ways that your focus or priorities may have necessarily shifted and articulating any deliberate choices you made to concentrate on specifically accessible opportunities and goals, given the constraints. It will not be necessary to explain why your work has been impacted (by describing specific childcare or health issues, e.g.), only to explain how (e.g., critical reduction in available working hours, inaccessible field site, loss of funding or unexpected new research expenses, etc.).

You’ll also be invited to highlight examples of innovation, training, additional mentoring or other service activities (e.g., clinical or first-responder service), new directions in research, or other unplanned but concrete accomplishments that came out of this period. A list of related resources is provided to assist you in reflecting on potential categories of impact and assessing extent (Harvard Office of Faculty Affairs, 2021).

While it may not be possible to completely separate the why and the how of the impact of COVID-19 on your work, I think it is best to keep things short and simple and focus on the how. I also really like the second point about highighting the good/new things that happened in response to the pandemic.

As an example, here is what I included in my pandemic impact statement about how my personal circumstances affected my work during the pandemic:

I am a long-time single parent of an elementary school-aged child with no caregiving support from family. School and daycare closures in March/April 2020 and Fall 2021 due to COVID-19 required me to work from home while parenting and supporting at-home learning for my son.

Out of two pages, this is the only part that mentions my personal circumstances and it is still focused on the how. The main point I am trying to get across here is that when it comes to caregiving for my son, I am it; I don’t have backup like so many of my colleagues. Point made. Aside from the infrequent times we’ve been trapped in the house, it hasn’t been all that different from pre-pandemic times. I still have to do all the housework, shopping, and caregiving. I am still the sole breadwinner. It’s impossible to find babysitters. Online conferences are more accessible but I miss in-person conferences which were often my only break from being a parent. Does the univeristy really care about that stuff? I’m not sure.

The rest of my pandemic impact statement is focused on how the pandemic has impacted each of my key roles: Research, Research Supervision, Teaching, Service, and Administration. That’s it.

So now what?

Go write your statement! Easy right?

If you want some help with this I made a workbook for you that can make it less painful and get it done in a single afternoon. As I mentioned earlier, I read pretty much every guide and resource I could find for faculty on how to write a pandemic/Covid-19 impact statement. None of them were quite what I needed so I made my own tool and I think you may find it helpful too.

Inside this workbook, I show you how to organize your statement, provide comprehensive checklists of possible impacts for teaching both classroom and experiential learning courses (like clinical, labs, practicums, etc.), research, and service so that you don’t forget anything (it’s been a long pandemic!), and provide examples of what to write in each part of your statement. I used this workbook myself so I know that it works and the checklists alone will save you loads of time!

If this sounds like something you’d find helpful, click here to check it out.

And that’s it for this week!

See you next Sunday (hopefully with your pandemic impact statement crossed off your to-do list!)

Emily

References:

(not formatted properly but here are the links; #sorrynotsorry)

Harvard Office of Faculty Affairs (2021). COVID-related resources for faculty. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty-affairs/faculty/covid-related-resources-for-faculty/

California State University (Long Beach): https://www.csulb.edu/academic-affairs/faculty-affairs/covid-19-professional-impact-statement

Clemson University: https://www.clemson.edu/provost/faculty-affairs/Documents/tpr_documents/facultycovidimpactstatement_document.pdf

Cleveland State University: https://www.csuohio.edu/sites/default/files/CSU%20Faculty%20COVID%20Impact%20Statement%20Guidelines%202021_0.pdf

Georgia State: https://faculty.gsu.edu/files/2021/02/COVID-Impact-StatementsV2.pdf

Michigan State University: https://hr.msu.edu/ua/promotion/faculty-academic-staff/documents/Memo-Guidelines-COVID-19-Impact-Statement-12-2-20.pdf

Michigan Tech: https://www.mtu.edu/advance/resources/covidimpact/

NC State University: https://provost.ncsu.edu/faculty-resources/faculty-evaluation-and-covid-19/

Purdue University: Best Practices Tools – Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence – Purdue University

University of California (Santa Barbara): https://ap.ucsb.edu/news.and.announcements/covid-19/2021-01-25_Guidance_for_COVID_Impact_Statement.pdf

University of Central Florida: https://facultyexcellence.ucf.edu/document/optional-covid-19-impact-statement/

University of Connecticut: https://provost.uconn.edu/covid-19/covid-impact-statements-guidance/

University of Florida: http://aa.ufl.edu/media/aaufledu/tenure-and-promotion/Guidance-for-faculty-impact-statement-final.pdf

University of Massachusetts: https://www.umass.edu/advance/documenting-pandemic-impacts-best-practices

University of Nebraska: https://journalism.unl.edu/pdf/COVID%20Impact%20Statements.pdf University of Nevada, Las Vegas: https://www.unlv.edu/hr/employee-info/covid-statement

University of Texas: https://cns.utexas.edu/faculty-affairs/faculty-evaluations/covid-impacts/covid-impact-statement

Creating a weekly research writing practice

Creating a consistent writing practice is an essential habit that will help you be more productive and impactful as a researcher. If you don’t prioritize your research writing in your calendar other activities (often meetings and teaching-related work) will take over that time, leaving you feeling like you just don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. (Pro tip: you don’t and never will have enough time to do ALL the things so you must prioritize and choose what matters most).

Why weekly instead of daily?

A lot of people recommend daily writing but I find that a week is a better unit of time for planning and time management, especially as a professor. There are just so many different roles and activities that we must do as part of our job that to try to do all of them in a single day would make you crazy! Not to mention the cognitive costs of frequent task switching between diverse activities. Personally, I find that a 2-4 hour block of writing time allows me to really focus on what I am writing and make progress. Academic writing often involves searching the literature, reading articles, and interpreting/synthesizing results as you write too, so it can be a slow process! If you only have one hour/week or find that works for you, fill your boots but I do recommend a larger block of time if you can.

How to create a weekly research writing practice:

Step 1: Decide what day and time each week works best for you to write. This may be based on your schedule or on when you feel like you write best. Unfortunately, these don’t always match up, so if that is the case, I recommend being practical and going by what works for your schedule. I recommend picking a time on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday if possible so that you don’t skip weeks due to holidays.

Step 2: Create a recurring event in your calendar for the same day and time each week. This is your dedicated research writing time. Do not use it for anything else!

Step 3: Turn off emails and other distractions during your research writing time. Note that it may take some time for other people to get used to the fact that you are not available to them during this time. Reinforce that writing is an essential part of being a productive researcher and remind them of when you are available.

Step 4: Write! Work on high-impact research outputs such as grant proposals, research papers (and revisions), and conference abstracts.

And that’s it! It is actually very simple to set this up. The challenging part is showing up and writing every single week consistently. There are about 46 work weeks/year once you account for holidays and vacation time. So, if you were to write for 4 hours every single work week, that’s 184 hours of dedicated research writing time each year! Obviously (or maybe not?) you will probably need additional writing time at certain times (like before a grant proposal is due). However, during semesters when you have a heavy teaching load, you may find that this dedicated time is particularly helpful and important to keep your research productivity on track.

Have a great week and see you next Sunday!

Emily

How to help struggling graduate students finish their thesis

While it would be great if all of our grad students could finish within the “regular” timeframe, it is completely normal to have some students who take longer. The pandemic has had a huge impact on many students’ personal and professional lives and I think we need to approach this with compassion while also helping these students move forward.

Students who are struggling may need to take a leave from the program to deal with other things that are happening in their life. In my experience, students rarely want to do this, even if you have a heart to heart with them and reassure them that you and their thesis will still be there when they get back, Ultimately, taking a leave (or not) is their decision so your role is to make sure it is an informed one and that they know it is an option.

Setting and maintaining appropriate boundaries with students is also very important. As a professor who is also a nurse, I am perhaps hyper aware of these boundaries and making sure that students have access to the supports they need. I am not their nurse or mental health counselor, but I do care about them and have direct conversations to make sure that they know about the academic and mental health services they have access to on campus and in the community. If they are also working (many of mine are) they often also have access to an Employee Assistance Program. As their thesis supervisor you can provide them with information about resources available to them and keep your role focused on the task at hand: finishing their thesis as soon as possible.

So how do you actually help them finish their thesis?

1. Provide them with a thesis completion roadmap.

Sometimes the steps required to finish are not entirely clear to students (or faculty!). Create a 1-pager that shows all the steps involved in completing a thesis in your faculty/department. Then you can print it out for the student and show them where they are now and what they have left to do to get to the finish line. This map can be a helpful tool for planning and for breaking up the steps left to complete

2. Help them establish a daily writing habit.

Some students love doing research but hate writing. They need to get over this aversion real fast if they want to finish their thesis and have an academic career.

Mindset is a huge part of this! Ask your student to brainstorm ways that they can reward themselves for writing and make it something that they look forward to. For me, writing is one of the only times that I get to be alone and think. As an introvert, I love that! Rewards could be things like having a good coffee during writing time, freedom from doing anything else (like answering emails, etc.), or even putting a sticker on a tracking chart, with a bigger reward after so many stickers. Of course, the biggest reward is finishing their thesis which is a huge freaking deal and graduating with their degree!

In addition to working on liking writing (or at least appreciating it as a means to an end), a daily writing habit needs to be scheduled in their calendar. Your student needs to schedule blocks of time every single day to work on writing their thesis. These need to be treated like appointments that they cannot miss! Then they need to show up and do the work.

3. Encourage them to let go of “perfection”.

This can be a doozy! Some students are reluctant to send you what they have done because they are worried it isn’t good enough yet. They want it to be absolutely “perfect” before you see it. Honest to goodness, perfection is a lie! I have yet to see a thesis submitted where the committee did not have suggestions or minor revisions for the student before they were completely done. Getting feedback is a key part of the process and the sooner you can get a draft from your student, the sooner they can get your input. Your expertise and guidance will help make sure they are on the right track.

One of the reasons I was able to finish my PhD under 4 years is that I knew my committee would have feedback no matter what I sent to them! There was no point in me spending an extra week or two on a part of my proposal or thesis to make it “perfect” when it could be in my committee’s hands instead and I could move on to working on the next chapter while I waited. This being said, I am a strong writer and did not send them unorganized garbage to fix. I’m definitely not encouraging that! If their writing skills are absolutely horrible that is another issue entirely.

4. Put the ball in their court.

While you may feel personally responsible for them finishing their thesis (on time or otherwise), ultimately, it is up to them to do the work to finish it and earn their degree. You can and should support them to do this but you cannot do it for them. Grad school isn’t for everyone and achieving this degree is a big deal!

I know the pandemic has been a tough go for a lot of us and some of our students. I hope that the strategies and ideas I shared in this post are useful to you in helping your graduate students move forward with compassion and an actionable plan to get their darn thesis done!

See you next Sunday! Emily

Non-cash ways to support your grad students

Before we get into this post, I want to highlight the importance of funding your graduate students if you can and as best you can! However, there are times when you may not have a lot of funding or enough to go around OR you just can’t pay your students enough to work for you. The latter happens in nursing most of the time – nursing grad students simply make more working as an RN than I could possibly afford to pay them as a research assistant.

Regardless of your cash flow situation, there are important benefits that you can (and should) provide to your graduate students aside from/over and above direct financial support.

Social capital.

Social capital refers to the resources embedded within and available from our relationships with other people (see my PhD dissertation for more info + references if you would like). Your grad students benefit tremendously from your professional network so make sure that you include them in projects, introduce them to your colleagues, and provide them with exposure to your network at conferences and other events.

Research training & mentorship.

The time and energy you invest in teaching and mentoring your grad students is incredibly valuable. Make sure that you have regular, dedicated time for each of your graduate students and that you provide them with the training they need to develop/enhance their knowledge and skills and be successful.

Experience.

A major part of the grad student journey is gaining experience – both in doing research and sharing it with others. Supporting students to submit abstracts, prepare presentations, and attend conferences can be a major benefit of working with you. Be strategic and pick national/international conferences that are happening close to you (or virtually) to limit the costs of attending – and cover registration if you can. Bonus points if you have a group of students attending together! Pre-covid I was able to support a group of students to go to a conference in Montreal and then to Halifax the following year. They really enjoyed having some social support at the event and it was something that we all looked forward to as a group. Highly recommended!

CV points.

Not to be overlooked, being able to add things to your CV is also important, particularly if you are pursuing an academic career. Your grad students should be given credit for their contributions to research publications and presentations. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. One time I wrote an entire article and was gifted 4th author… another time I was a co-author on a paper with another grad student and her supervisor took all the credit! I could write a whole article just about this topic but the bottom line in my opinion is that credit should be given as earned, and only as earned. Having direct up-front conversations with grad students (and everyone involved) about authorship expectations and opportunities is super important.

So there you have it! There are lots of ways that you can support your grad students without giving them cold hard cash (though, if you can do that too, high five!).

Until next time!

Emily

Dealing with RA/Grad student turnover

Research on job turnover typically focuses on how to prevent it. However, turnover of graduate students and research assistants (RAs) is a feature (not a bug) and is somewhat predictable (especially with graduate students). In fact, turnover might not even be the right term to use; perhaps it should be the RA/grad student cycle instead. There are (or will be), of course, subgroups within your research team which have different cycles and timelines: master’s students (2 years), PhD students (4 years), post-docs (1-2 years), research staff (contract/grant-based time frames), and out of sequence/taking longer than expected graduate students.

As a research supervisor, recruiting and training research trainees is an important part of your role but it is also one that can be onerous and time-consuming if you don’t have a plan. In this post I am going to share three key decisions that will help you attract the right people to your research team and make it easier to provide them with a rich and meaningful training experience.

Key Decision #1: Focus your Research

First, you need to decide what your program of research is going to be about. As a naturally curious person interested in learning and discovering new things, this may be difficult for you! I know personally that I had a really hard time with this after I started my tenure-track position. I was invited to work on a lot of different research projects that were super interesting but not necessarily in alignment with my own main area of research. At first I said yes to everything until I realized that saying yes to these opportunities meant saying no to other projects that were more in line with my research priorities/expertise. It also takes way more time and effort to supervise a student working on a project that is not within your direct area of expertise.

The fact is that clearly stating what your program of research IS about also defines what it is NOT about. That means that you will say no to grants, collaborations, and even students who do not align with your research program. Sounds harsh but it will ultimately help you produce high-quality, impactful research in your field and a mentorship experience that truly serves your research trainees.

Key Decision #2: Build your Research Team

Building a research team is a lot like building a varsity sports team – it takes time and as your reputation and research success grows you will find it easier to attract the best students and get research funding.

Before you start building your roster, decide who your ideal graduate student and research staff member is. You need to know this so you can assess the fit of potential students and research team members. This will be partially determined by the type of research you do, the types of programs offered by your faculty/department, your research training model (see below), and your research grants. Some people are not going to be a good fit for you and, lovely as they may be, you should encourage them to work with someone who is going to be.

You also need to be prepared to commit the time and energy each person you bring onto your team requires. Working with grad students is different from hiring an employee who already knows how to do everything you want them to do. Grad students are there to learn from you! Yes, they contribute and add value but you are also investing in them and helping them develop skills and expertise. A research coordinator on the other hand might be hired full time to take the lead on a specific project for a defined period and you might want to have them continue on for your next one.

Key Decision #3: Your research training model

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. One approach I have seen/experienced to maximizing research productivity is to create a sort of research pyramid whereby post docs or senior PhD students are responsible for training those behind them. If done intentionally this can be a valuable opportunity for developing leadership and teaching skills, but often it is done on the fly and can leave students feeling unsupported, undervalued, or resentful of being asked to do work they think their supervisor should be doing. Would you rather create a research training experience where all of your trainees and research staff get to learn from and work with you directly? What is your research training model? What would you like it to be? You may find it helpful to reflect on your experiences as a student and think about what you loved and what could have been better. How can you make the experience awesome for the people working with you?

So there you have it – 3 key decisions that will help you attract the right people to your research program and provide them with an awesome research training experience. Remember, you will need to be patient but if you focus on building a quality program you will attract quality people and success will follow.