Category: Profession
October 7, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
How to Create Digital Letterhead for Your Department and Job Search
We at ProfHacker are quite aware of the onset of the academic job market. That's why you've seen recent posts from Erin about the five things that helped her survive the job market and one from Heather about keeping track of job postings. (Don't miss Heather's call yesterday for your tips on managing the job application process.) If you dig a bit deeper into the ProfHacker archives, you will be able to find posts from Nels offering ways to stand out on the job search; from Erin on using an NFL analogy to explain the academic job market; and from me last May advising you to get started new (then?) on preparing for the job market.
If I had to pick just one tool that helped me survive the three runs at the academic job market that I've had, it would be Interfolio. As Julie wrote previously, using Interfolio to manage your professional documents takes a lot of aches away from what will no...
Read MoreOctober 6, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Open Thread: Tips For Navigating Grad Student Limbo?
[Each week at
ProfHacker, George Williams hosts "Open Thread Wednesday." We
recently decided to devote each open thread to a specific issue or
question. The Commenting
and Community Guidelines still apply. And remember that you can
always suggest topics or ask us questions via email: ProfHackerCHE@gmail.com.
—Ed.]
This week, I'm passing along a question from someone else, a question that's very familiar to me based on what my experience of grad school felt like at times: “How does one navigate 'grad student limbo'? What are the best ways to get by when you're treated like a student (bumbling and inept) but expected to behave as a full fledged faculty member?”
Do you have any advice in response to this question? Please share in the comments!
[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by phonogalerie.com]
Read MoreOctober 5, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Sabbaticals and Productivity-Talk
The concept of
"productivity porn" is by now a familiar one. (In fact, last week's
"Weekend
Reading" linked to both a
video and a post about
it.) The basic idea is that you can get so caught up in fiddling
with your productivity system or gear that you forget to actually,
um, do things.
But there's another kind of productivity porn, as well: the type that insists on measuring everything in easily quantifiable, and thereby easily jukable [YouTube], stats. In higher ed, a standard form this takes is the LPU, or least publishable unit, or the practice of parceling out new knowledge into as many different articles as one can, or, alternatively, of publishing as soon as you have a certain amount of data, rather than working toward a bigger project. (You can see a qualified defense of the LPU here.)
In the current issue of Academe, Max Page argues that this latter notion of productivity porn ...
Read MoreOctober 5, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Success and Community-Building: DH Answers One Week In
A week ago in this space,
I announced Digital Humanities Questions & Answers
(@DHAnswers), a community-based Q&A board you can
participate in for free, sponsored by the Association for
Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and in collaboration with those of
us at ProfHacker.
Goals of DH Answers include:
- broadening the community by introducing people to topics related to digital humanities;
- serving the needs of multiple types of community members (not limited to or by academic discipline or rank);
- creating a friendly and inviting space where people can help each other with questions about languages, tools, standards, best practices, pedagogy, and all things related to scholarly activity in the digital humanities (broadly defined).
In just a week, nearly 200 people have registered with DH Answers, and there are close to 300 responses to questions across the topics of:
- Applications, Tools...
October 4, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Reader Input Wanted: Keeping Up with Job Applications
Awhile back on Profhacker, I posted suggestions for keeping up with job postings. But it was clear from the comments that keeping up with job applications is also on many people's minds.
We want to hear from you: how do you keep up with the status of your job applications? Do you use a spreadsheet, or some other type of software? Do you have follow-up reminders in place via a calendaring system? Let us know. We'll combine the suggestions into a later post.
[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user gabrielamadeus.]
Read MoreSeptember 30, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Writers' Boot Camp: Tip Roundup Edition
For about a year, we at ProfHacker have offered advice about
writing, as it’s such a large part of our work in higher education.
We’ve provided many tips, but you, dear readers, you have provided
many more. As we know, writing is hard work, but it’s harder from
some people and not so difficult for others. We are here to help,
though, and to offer encouragement...no matter where you in the
process or no matter the struggle you might have. Here’s a down and
dirty list of many useful writing tips. Hopefully some of them will
be useful to you.
- Have an objective for your writing task.
- Plan your time – setting aside time specifically for writing.
- Join a writing group.
- Share your deadline with others (peer accountability).
- Break a large project down into manageable pieces.
- Just Do It!
- Find inspiration that will help you create text.
- Give yourself rewards for effective /...
September 30, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Reporting From the Digital Humanities Start-up Grant Project Directors Meeting
On
Tuesday I had the privilege of attending the 2010 “Digital
Humanities Start-up Grant Project Directors Meeting” hosted by
the Office of
Digital Humanities (ODH) at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The meeting, which was open to the public, featured two rounds of
presentations by those who received
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants for projects starting in the
2010-2011 academic year.
The NEH-ODH awards start-up grants to digital humanities projects that are still in the relatively early stages of planning and development. And there are several other grant opportunities offered by the NEH that have been used to support such projects in their later stages.
“It isn’t a matter of getting things done more quickly; rather it is about getting things done that couldn’t be done before. That’s the game-changing aspect of technology.”
Brett
Bobley
Director, Office of...
September 29, 2010, 03:00 PM ET
An Open Letter to Part-Time Graduate Students
Last month Brian Croxall wrote
an open letter to new graduate students, full of excellent
advice—advice that Brian and his contributors often had to learn
the hard way during their own time in grad school. Reflecting the
experience of many faculty in academia, Brian's letter was geared
toward full-time PhD students. But as many people pointed out in
the comments, whether they're working on an MS, an MA, an MFA, or
even a PhD, part-time grad students have their own set of concerns,
their own challenges to navigate. So ProfHacker has consulted a few
knowledgeable parties, and we are pleased to present their
suggestions below, in an open letter to part-time graduate
students.
Before moving on to the advice, I want to say a word about one of the most difficult challenges part-time graduate students face: invisibility. Because part-time grad students are so diverse and so diffuse, performing...
Read MoreSeptember 29, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Open Thread: Advice For Personal Versus Professional Web Sites?
[Each week
at ProfHacker, George Williams hosts "Open Thread Wednesday," a
discussion forum in which readers are invited to share their
answers to a particular question. The Commenting
and Community Guidelines still apply. —Ed.]
Do you separate your professional web presence from your personal one? If so, how? Why? And what methods do you use for keeping them both updated? Let us hear from you in the comments!
Have a question? Want to suggest a future “Open Thread” topic? Contact us at ProfHackerCHE@gmail.com. —Ed.
[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by phonogalerie.com]
Read MoreSeptember 29, 2010, 08:00 AM ET
Announcing Digital Humanities Questions & Answers (@DHAnswers)
Several months ago, we were lucky enough to have been
approached by the Association for Computers and the Humanities
(ACH) with an idea for
collaboration that would help broaden (and serve) the digital
humanities community—many of whom we know read the ProfHacker blog
and interact in the commenting community we have here. The result
of that idea, put forth by ACH Vice President Bethany Nowviskie, is Digital
Humanities Questions & Answers, a community-based
Q&A board you can participate in for free at:
http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/
(We also suggest you follow @DHAnswers on Twitter.)
The goal of DH Answers is to create a friendly and inviting space where people can help each other with questions about languages, tools, standards, best practices, pedagogy, and all things related to scholarly activity in the digital humanities (broadly defined). No question is too small, or too...
Read More
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