New Faculty

Tips

In 1996 the UBC Faculty Mentoring Program held a Tips For New Faculty contest. Members of the Mentoring Program were asked to send in their top 10 tips for new faculty. Submissions came from faculty members at different stages in their academic careers, from new faculty to senior administrators, and from every Faculty at UBC. Nonetheless, several themes recurred: the importance of setting goals, achieving balance between work and personal life, documenting everything, taking a teaching workshop, talking to colleagues and finding a mentor. What follows is a compilation of the main “tips for new faculty” written by UBC faculty members and reviewed by participants at the April 1996 One-Day Retreat.

First things first

• Make yourself known to and develop a good relationship with the departmental secretary and administrative assistant.
• Similarly, introduce yourself to the services staff in your department.
• This is especially important for Science faculty who will need to “build” their labs and will need frequent liaison with departmental workshops.
• Organize your time effectively: use productive active hours for research and writing. Take a Time Management course if you feel you could use some pointers.
• Create a “tenure and promotion” file immediately. Keep duplicate copies of all relevant materials at home (your CV, annual reports, publications, teaching evaluations).
• Stay focused.
• Be courteous to everyone around you.
• Attend all the social functions in your Department. Isolation is often cited as a common problem for new faculty.

On Setting Goals

• Set explicit priorities early in your career. Tenure assessment comes sooner than most people expect. Don’t lose focus on your goals. Prioritize.

On Teaching

• Enroll in a teaching enhancement course, any one’s teaching skills can stand improvement.
• Provide full course descriptions for your students that outline course objectives, content, texts or readings, methods and evaluation. Provide sufficient detail on the nature of assignments, value or worth, and due dates so that students aren’t left guessing what you expect of them.
• Use a text processor for producing all course descriptions, reading lists, assignments, and handouts. It will save you an immense amount of time in the long run that can better be spent on other teaching and research activities. It will also facilitate future high-tech adaptations.
• Write course and lesson objectives in the form of behavioral outcomes. In other words, clearly conceptualize what you expect students to be able to do at the end of a course or lesson in concrete, well defined terms rather than in hazy, abstract terms (“list”, “describe”, etc. rather than “learn” or “understand”, etc.) If you establish clear behavioral objectives for courses or lessons then the rest of course or lesson planning will follow easily.
• Involve your students actively in the teaching/learning process; that is, encourage active rather than passive learning. Think of ways to involve your students in each of your lessons. It is better for students to assimilate and digest fifty ideas or concepts over a term rather than just passively record several hundred.
• Take the time to work out a marking scheme or approach that works well for you. An initial investment in time in this area can pay off a hundred fold over the years.
• Find out who the “effective” teachers are in the dept. and attend some of their lectures.
• Take a deep breath and relax before you start class (always try to keep the 10 minutes — or more — before class free from other commitments, to avoid arriving in class harried, irritable, out of breath, or whatever).
• Teach from your own experience instead of someone else’s (if you’re comfortable and having fun, students will feel it).
• There’s only time to address between 2 and 5 learning objectives in a single class — start each class by stating these 2 to 5 key points as the topic for the day. State them as learning outcomes — what your students will be ‘taking away’ with them from your class . These objectives will also prove invaluable when evaluating your students.
• In each course spell out the expectations you have of the students in the first class, reiterate them consistently at regular intervals and stick with them. Students do not deal well with surprises, particularly when related to their attainment of marks.
• Think of positive learning experiences that you’ve had, and copy them.
• If you want feedback from students, ask specific questions; instead of “Do you have any feedback?” ask “Are we meeting the objectives?” or, “List three things that are going well in this class, and three things you’d change if you could.” (I often ask this last question and have students jot down the answers on the + and – side of small index cards, so it’s anonymous, but I get a sense of how the course is going after about 6 weeks or so when there is still time to make things better.)
• Get your teaching organized. Discuss your teaching load with your Department Head and request not to have multiple new preparations during your first year's teaching.
• It takes three tries to “get it right” so don’t expect too much of yourself in the first year — address the major course objectives and it will be a little easier next year, and a piece of cake in the third year — almost boring, in fact; you’ll want to start experimenting a bit more just for fun!
• Don’t sweat the little stuff, and that includes hearing isolated complaints from individual students….you can’t please everyone all of the time, so listen to the majority, not the minority opinion. That means when someone says your question is ambiguous, you should ask for a show of hands and clarify to the whole class only if it proves to be a major issue. Ask the minority to stay after class or come in during office hours so you can address their issues without taking up everyone’s time in class, or skewing the discussion.
• If you can, avoid excessive class size (without teaching assistants), hectic teaching schedules, and over-preparation of lecture and teaching materials.
• Have someone from outside the department do peer evaluation of your teaching and get feedback from them. Remember the Teaching Support Group.

On Administrative Duties

• Avoid excessive committee & administrative work early in your career.
• DO serve on university committees; it is probably the best way, aside from CTLT and Mentoring activities, to meet colleagues from a wide variety of disciplines from across campus. Do try, however, to avoid being talked into becoming the chair of any committee!

On Research

• Concentrate on writing grants and writing manuscripts for publication, not necessarily in that order.
• Keep your academic work focused; avoid too many uncorrelated research pursuits; become thematic.
• Keep your nose to the keyboard and write, write, write.
• Keep your manuscripts in the mail, not the desk.
• Use whatever resources are available to advance your research, within the bounds of law, ethics and courtesy.
• Research and learn all you can about grant applications immediately.
• Specialize when it comes to formal research pursuits. Recognition for the generalist is currently absent, though we may hope that it will someday revive. Find an area that interest you and then develop sufficient experience and expertise that you gradually become recognized as a national and then an international expert in your field. Research funds go to those who have a proven track record in a particular area of knowledge.

On Documenting

• As stated above, create a “tenure and promotion” file immediately. Keep duplicate copies of all relevant materials at home (your CV, annual reports, publications, teaching evaluations).
• Document any sexual (and/or other forms) of harassment if you experience them. You may have to educate your colleagues on this one. Be prepared to take legal action if necessary. Make contact with the Equity office ASAP if problems develop.
• Save letters of thanks, supportive memos, etc., for your dossier or dossiers (to cover teaching, research, and service). You may not have to use this material, but at least you’ll have it should the need arise. Copy particularly noteworthy items to the Head, as they are received, for inclusion in your departmental file.
• Document your contributions as you go, highlighting efforts made to improve your teaching (e.g., indicate course changes you’ve made and why, what you expected to happen, what did happen, etc.).

On Mentoring

• If you are having a difficult time figuring out what’s happening in your department or in the wider system, find help – the mentoring program is there for you.
• Choose a good, interested mentor and begin to build a good working relationship with him/her. Reach out to your mentors; we all were new at one time and would have loved some guidance and a sounding board.
• You may want to choose several different mentors for guidance in research activities or grant writing, for teaching advice and for advice on juggling your personal life and career. Try to find a mentor within your department.
• Seek the advice of your mentors before volunteering for every committee you think interesting.
• Interact with your colleagues; get familiar with their work and inform them of yours (these may be valuable liaisons and support).
• Don’t rely on your department to give you important information (e.g. writing examinations, examination policy, tenure procedure), find out for yourself from outside sources and clarify if you can with department head.

On Balance

• You will be a more balanced person, and a better scholar, if you remember the importance of your family and a life outside academe.
• Don’t forget to take the time to enjoy yourself, — BC is a spectacular environment to explore.
• Maintain perspective on your life as a university teacher and researcher. Take regular breaks from your work, share time with your family or friends, take up some form of physical exercise, go for a walk, listen to music, etc. Above all else maintain your sense of humour.

On Promotion and Tenure

• Establish a good working relationship with the Head of your Department and put in place yearly reviews (even if they are not required by your dept.).
• Talk to other faculty members and establish whether there is any potential for collaborative research. Volunteering to give a seminar is one way to introduce other people to your areas of expertise.
• Get international recognition by attending conferences and publishing in international journals.
• Start to put together your UBC CV and Teaching Dossier. This is essential for tenure and promotion and it is a huge task if it is left until year 5 or 7 to begin the process.
• Read the general guidelines, but recognize that there are differences between academic units. Your unit may also have some more specific guidelines available.
• Identify what you do and do not understand from the available guidelines, then discuss and clarify these items with your department Head and other faculty.
• Know procedures (the application process, what happens, making an appeal, etc.) from the beginning. Be optimistic but prepare for the worst just in case (i.e., document everything as you go). Know what materials are admissible and build them.
• Carefully consider your suggestions for external referees (there is a lot of emphasis on their letters).
• Review other people’s dossiers (i.e. successful ones!).
• Ask the Head and others to review your CV well in advance. Don’t sell yourself short but construct the CV properly and don’t pad it.
• Read the University Act. Know the authority and responsibilities of the Head and Dean.
• Read the UBC Human Rights Policy. As a UBC employee you are expected to uphold it.

In General

• Seek out information on UBC computing services, CTLT professional development workshops, internal and external grant deadlines and all UBC resources in general, ASAP.
• Avoid taking on more than you can handle.
• Avoid trying to change the world (dept.) in one day.
• Avoid getting too depressed if things do not work out - just look around you, then seek out your colleagues and talk to them.
• Avoid criticizing publicly or privately.
• Practise diplomacy when conflicts arise.
• Attend a workshop on interviewing skills before you hire your first technician, assistant, postdoc, secretary or even graduate student. This is a complicated business and it’s better to go into the interviews as prepared as possible.
• Take the time to read the Guide for UBC Faculty and become thoroughly familiar with your rights as well as responsibilities as a faculty member.
• Attend CTLT seminars and join in the activities of the Mentoring Network; it’s a great way to meet and observe other teachers on campus, and both are unbeatable ways to pick up new ideas for your teaching.
• Don’t get overwhelmed – others have been new faculty before and survived. You don’t have to be a perfect teacher the first year. Nor do you have to publish 10 times (though it can’t hurt); just show up, try to remember why you are there, listen to the students and your colleagues, and follow your feelings.
• Keep on smiling because others have made it and you probably will, too.