How to master the EMC teacher-researcher balancing act

One of the difficulties I most often hear EMCRs express is how to balance teaching and research responsibilities. As much as I empathise, it has been many years since I was employed in a combined teaching-research role, so this month I’ve drawn on the expertise of a colleague, Dr Megan Teychenne, who does a fabulous balancing job every day, to share how she does it. Here is Megan’s post, including her top 6 sure-fire teacher-researcher balancing tips.  ~ Kylie

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Dear EMCR Self

What advice would world-leading academics give their EMCR selves?

One of the best things about a career in academia is that you get to work with some of the smartest people in the world. As serendipity would have it, I’ve found that most of those people are also incredibly generous with their time, energy, ideas and mentorship. This month’s post is proof. I recently gave a shout out to around 20 of my favourite colleagues, all highly successful academic leaders doing amazing things in their careers. I asked them to consider, if they could go back in time, with the benefit of hindsight, what advice they would give to their early-mid career selves. Collating the responses, I was not only enormously inspired, but also touched by the genuine thoughtfulness and kindness with which they were prepared. To my contributors, heartfelt thanks for your wise words, and for the outstanding examples that you set. To my early-mid career colleagues, I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did.

Network for success: 5 non-scary networking strategies

As researchers, we live in an era where collaboration – with other scientists, practitioners, policymakers, across disciplines, institutions, sectors and countries – is increasingly common and necessary. Addressing complex global problems requires a range of skills and resources that are typically not possessed by a single researcher or their immediate research team, but rather necessitate the input of a number of collaborators. This can be seen, for example, in changes in the nature of co-authorship of research papers. Across a range of disciplines, the number of papers with more than 100 authors has risen from virtually nil in the early 1980s, to over 500 by 1990; the first paper with 1,000 authors was published in 2004; in 2011 44 papers in physics alone had more than 3,000 authors; and in 2015 a paper with a record- breaking 5,154 authors was published. Admittedly co-authorship is only one indicator of research collaboration, and most of us will never publish papers with anything like these co-author numbers, but they do speak to significant changes over time in collaborative approaches underlying the production and reporting of scientific knowledge.

In order to form collaborations – as well as to help our day-to-day work run more smoothly, contribute to our institution and discipline, facilitate our career progression, and for a range of other reasons – we need to network. Most of us accept this, and some EMCRs enjoy it. But for others, the idea of networking can be daunting or downright frightening. “The thought of reaching out cold or pushing myself onto a stranger because I want something makes me incredibly uncomfortable”, is a refrain I’ve heard in a number of similar forms. But networking need not involve this at all. This post is dedicated particularly to those EMCRs who struggle with networking, although hopefully also provides some inspiration for seasoned networkers too.

How to ace your service

Typically researchers, particularly in a University or Research Institute, are expected not only to conduct and disseminate research, but also to engage in professional ‘service’. This is important to do, not just for an extra line on your CV (although that’s important too, especially for promotion or funding applications), but also for contributing professionally to the broader circles in which you work, and critically, for your own leaning and development. Service presents invaluable opportunities to learn, grow, connect to the scientific community, and become a more well-rounded researcher.

So what is service, and how do you go about it?

The #1 key to academic success

In speaking with lots of academics over the years about how they’ve achieved success in their fields, I’ve heard a remarkably similar theme repeated many times.

And it seems this recommendation for success is not unique to the academic world; apparently most business owners who do this one thing will survive in business twice as long as those who don’t. In fact, highly successful business people including Sheryl Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey and Richard Branson all credit this one thing as being essential for “making it” in business, and in life generally. People who do it report greater job satisfaction, higher salaries and more likelihood of promotion.

What is the number one thing to which many successful academics and business people attribute their success?

5 steps to a Career Plan (Step 1: write your eulogy)

Last month we talked about why you shouldn’t have a career plan (you should have two).

This month I’ll cover my 5-step actions to developing a career plan, and why it needs to be a ‘life’ plan.

Why you should NOT have a career plan

Do you have a career plan?

One established wisdom often provided to Early and Mid-Career Researchers (EMCRs) is the importance of having a career plan. However, many EMCRs have told me they don’t have one. In fact, 48% of respondents to a UK Research Career Survey admitted to not having a career plan.

Why not? Here are some reasons I’ve heard for not having a career plan, and my responses:

Why the Happy Academic?

Early and mid-career researchers (EMCRs) have lots of problems, like these and these. And for a range of reasons, many are not getting the support they need to help them.

People with the power to help address this must do so, or we risk losing the talent of the next generation of researchers.

Recently I took on a new role in my Institute as Head of EMCR Development. As part of that role, I am creating a career development package of resources to help EMCRs navigate early academic life. And that inspired me to start this blog.