Chapters

Advisory Boards

What is an advisory board, and why do you need one?

An advisory board is a group of humans who have important expertise to guide your research project. While all projects benefit from outside advice, not all projects have (or need) advisory boards. Let’s talk about what the advisory board is for.

Research with undergrads

How to manage a research program which primarily involves undergraduates as researchers.

There’s a lot of goldilocksing in building a successful research program with undergrads. On the one hand, you’ll be responsible for a lot of high-level thinking: what big questions to pursue, which methods and theories, how to string together different projects into a coherent program, how your research fits into the larger conversations in the field, etc.

On the other hand, you don’t want to relegate them to menial and boring tasks. Undergraduates thrive when they have enough structure to grow, and enough freedom to develop their own interests and ownership over their projects.

In this advice article, I’ll walk you through some ideas around how to manage a research group of predominately undergraduates.

Becoming a PI

Transitioning from someone who does research to someone who enables it.

As a grad student or postdoc, you were primarily responsible for doing research: knowing the literature, collecting data, analyzing data, and writing early drafts of papers. As a principal investigator (PI), your responsibilities shift. Now, you are primarily responsible for creating an environment in which other people can do research. You’re responsible for all the “big picture” stuff: how do these projects fit together? what’s the future direction of the lab? do we have enough data? what kinds of analyses are likely to be fruitful? does this paper work?

Authorship

How to decide who is an author, in what order, and why.

There are lots of models available for who should be an author on a paper and what order authors should be listed. Author ordering is important because it’s tied up in prestige and credit for work. This article explores some of the major models, their affordances and constraints, and what you should do about it.

IRB Regulations

What regulations govern research with human subjects in the US, and what should you do about them?

project elements

This is a brief overview of regulations and paperwork for regulations of research with human subjects in the US. It looks at the major questions that emerging education researchers have about the regulatory side of research with human subjects. It’s not a substitute for ethics training (e.g. via the CITI program), and it’s very US-centric.

Additional topics

Generation, iteration, reflection

Core elements of successful research. An article which addresses explicitly some of the underlying themes in this series.

philosophy

faculty

Reference letters

A practical guide for writing letters, aimed at the faculty who write them.

writing

faculty

mentoring

Academic job talks

An introduction to the genre of job talks, and how to make a great one.

writing

faculty

physics

jobs

Job interviews

The flow of a typical flyout visit in a physics department and issues to look for.

faculty

physics

jobs

Negotiating a faculty job

What to think about when you’ve got an offer.

faculty

jobs