Month: October 2015

The Completion Agenda, Part 3: Revising Your Dissertation You’ve successfully defended — but you’re not done yet Dean Terry / Creative Commons By David D. Perlmutter July 06, 2015 If you had to pick a cliché that best describes completing a dissertation, "it ain’t over till it’s over" would work well. So far in this series we have discussed finishing a submittable draft and successfully defending the dissertation. But as every doctoral candidate knows, no matter how well the defense goes you are very likely not quite free and clear yet. In my case, while I waited outside the meeting room, my committee discussed my dissertation for either 10 minutes or two hours; I honestly can’t recall through the fog of tension and time. I do remember encountering a friend in the hallway to whom I described my situation. She asked, "What’s the best possible outcome?" I had no doubt: "Ideally, they pass me without asking for any revisions."...

The Completion Agenda, Part 4: Finishing and the Job Hunt How are you using your dissertation to move your career forward? Jeremy Wilburn / Creative Commons By David D. Perlmutter August 12, 2015 One of the sadder conversations I have had in my 15 years of writing about academic careers is, unfortunately, a common one. It usually happens when I’m at a workshop or a conference and people approach me who are enduring a rocky patch in graduate school, on the job hunt, or on the tenure track. At some point I will ask them, "How are you using your dissertation to move your career forward?" And the answer is usually either, "I’m so burned out I don’t want to think about it anymore" or "What do you mean?" Here’s what I mean: A dissertation should be a thoughtful intellectual contribution to knowledge in your discipline. But it must also be a tool for you to succeed in your career,...

Welcome, Outsider: Here’s How You Can Foster Faculty Confidence By David D. Perlmutter September 15, 2015 At a leadership conference almost a decade ago, I met an incoming dean who had no previous academic experience except being a student. He was, in fact, a longtime business professional with a list of impressive "real world" accom plishments. He had been hired, he said, to radically transform a business college at a major research university. I cautioned him that to accomplish anything in higher education, especially a revolution, he would have to work long, hard, sincerely, and creatively to win over most of the faculty (not to mention staff, students, and alumni). Fast forward: After two tumultuous years and several faculty revolts, he was "resigned" by his provost. The recent major upset at the installment of J. Bruce Harreld, a business leader and consultant, as the new president of the University of Iowa, thus, did not surprise me. I spent four years...

Academic Job Hunts From Hell: The Fake Search How do you recognize when the favored candidate has been predetermined? iStock By David D. Perlmutter October 04, 2015 In an ideal world, every academic job search would be efficiently, faithfully, and sensitively planned and executed and every candidate treated with respect. In reality, the quality of a search depends entirely on the competence, attention span, ethics, and intentions of those who run it and thus varies considerably. The sad fact is that, starting when you are a graduate student fresh on the market, you are going to suffer searches that are badly run, disingenuously staged, or even spiked with hostility. So, in a series of essays, I will look at different kinds of "search fails" and detail not only how to survive them but also how to gain insights that might help you be a better candidate for the searches that could actually bear fruit. (more…)...