Preparing Future Faculty Conference: Materials Now Online

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Materials from last week's 10th annual Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) conference are now going up on CTools and CRLT's PFF Conference webpage [2]. We're excited to be able to share videos of panels, session handouts, presentation notes, and supplementary materials from the wide range of sessions featured at this year's conference. As materials are added to the sites over the coming week, participants can review what they learned at the conference, and anyone can find out about sessions they weren't able to attend. (For copyright reasons, some resources will only be available on a CTools site [3] open to those who registered for the conference.) 

At the conference, co-sponsored by Rackham Graduate School, The Career Center, International Center, and CRLT, job seekers gained insight into faculty worklife and learned about what it takes to get an academic job at different types of institutions--and to be successful once there. Presenters included faculty and administrators from liberal arts colleges, community colleges, smaller regional universities, and major research institutions, including U-M.

Participants indicated that the conference met its goal of demystifying the job search and faculty career path. Four key points especially resonated with those in attendance:

1. ask questions about the specific requirements for tenure at institutions to which you are applying
2. recognize items in the job contract that may be open for negotiation (such as help finding employment for a spouse)
3. build and maintain professional relationships and research collaborations, both before and after the job offer
4. write daily and monitor time spent on different tasks to improve time management.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts on this blog from specific PFF sessions.  Next week:  Highlights from the session on "Strategies, Tools, and Resources for Productivity."

by Karishma Collette, CRLT Postdoctoral Research Associate and chief organizer of the PFF One-Day Conference