Taking Charge Of Your Career

1. Taking Charge Of Your Career Joan Francioni, Winona State University Dee Parks, Appalachian State University

2. Career Paths • Teaching • Administration

3. Teaching • Use all your experience, but push the boundaries. • Find ways to change your approach (service learning, tablet PCs, polling systems) • Work on larger curricular changes at your school (new general education programs, interdisciplinary programs, honors programs)

4. Administration • Chair, Assistant Dean, Dean, … • Try out in form of committee chair (University or outside committee) • Takes at least a year to catch on to the job • Exposes you to other thinking and approaches, and to the broader picture at your University • May hurt your chances for promotion to Full

5. Types of Opportunities • Changing schools or changing focus: teaching-to-research or research-to-teaching • Large projects or grant proposals • Invitations to participate in workshops, grant proposal reviews

6. Types of Opportunities • Industry job offers • Invitations to serve on outside committees • Sabbaticals or off-campus scholarly assignments

7. Analyze Your Opportunities • How do you recognize a forward-moving opportunity? • Can you take a leadership role in it? • Does it address an important problem for your discipline, department, or university? • Does it have some inherent visibility?

8. Be Ready for Opportunities • Pursue your particular interests so that you are perceived as an expert in that area. • Keep a hot vita AND an up-to-date web page. • Get to know people in other departments, in industry, and at other schools.

9. Be Ready for Opportunities • Serve on University or College committees. • Volunteer. • Meet with or set up industrial advisory boards.

10. Be Ready for Opportunities • Keep in touch with alumni. • Attend workshops and national meetings. • Publish your work. • Promote your successes and accomplishments.

11. Be Realistic • You can’t do everything. • Focus on a subset.

12. Planning An Opportunity • Target a specific opportunity, e.g., chairing a program committee or conference. • Create a time-line of what needs to be done to get there.

13. You’ve Been Here Before? • You’ve been promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor. • Is getting ready for the next promotion the same as the last?

14. Similar, BUT • The planning process is similar, but • you don’t have to do it, • you can do what you think is important while you’re preparing, • and you can wait until all your ducks are in a row.

15. Spontaneous Opportunities • Is the opportunity something you will be able to do well, given your other responsibilities? • What can you or should you drop to fit this in?

16. Life Is Short • Does the opportunity excite you? • Will it make you happy?

17. Other Considerations • Will the opportunity cause problems for your family? • Will it limit your future opportunities? • Is it necessary to do it now, or could you postpone it?

18. Other Barriers • The opportunity may put you out of your comfort zone. • There may be extra work at first; you don’t know how to do the “new” job. • You want a safety net. • You lack support.

19. Be Careful • Some opportunities may hurt your chance of promotion. • There may not be enough time to do the new job and keep up with everything else that promotion requires.