Getting Started in an Academic Career

Authors

Barbara Wildemuth

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

100 Manning Hall, CB #3360, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3360

Email: wildem@ils.unc.edu

Howard Rosenbaum

Indiana University

SLIS, Indiana University, 1320 East 10th Street, LI 011, Bloomington, IN 47405-3907

Email: hrosenba@indiana.edu

A panel of senior academics will respond to questions from doctoral students and

junior/untenured faculty members. The discussion will focus on issues that arise while

developing an academic career.

Purpose

Those who choose an academic career face many challenges in managing that career,

particularly in the years prior to tenure. Getting hired into an academic position that fits your

intellectual and personal goals is the first hurdle (after completing the dissertation, of course).

Learning how to balance the multiple roles that faculty members play (research, teaching,

service) requires you to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as of those

of your colleagues and students. Selecting particular publication venues for your work,

identifying and working with collaborators, and developing a long-term research plan all affect

your research productivity. Seeking grants and managing those received require project

management skills, while developing and implementing a new course require knowledge of

pedagogy, as well as the topic area. These issues, and others raised by the participants, will

be the focus of this panel session.

The goal for this panel session is to provide guidance to those beginning their academic

careers, with the hope that they will develop as scholars and contribute to the long-term

health of the ASIST community. Specifically, the objectives of this session are that attendees

will: 1) be informed about the variety of approaches taken to development of junior faculty at

universities with LIS programs; 2) be able to identify academic contexts that are a good fit

with their intellectual and personal objectives; 3) have a better understanding of a variety of

factors that can affect their career development; and 4) be able to make better decisions

about their early career plans.

Overview

The entire session will consist of the panelists responding to questions from the moderators,

the audience, and those who have submitted questions in advance of the meeting.

"Question cards" will be distributed to the audience as they enter the room. They will be

asked, by the moderators, to write down their questions concerning early career issues. These

cards will be gathered by volunteers throughout the session; they will be summarized, and the

questions will be posed by the moderators for response by the panelists. (This type of question

asking format is often used at ACM SIG CHI sessions, with great success.)

In addition, questions will be solicited through messages posted on the ASIST and JESSE

listservs in advance of the meeting. These questions will augment those asked by those

attending this session.

The panelists will include: Harry Bruce, University of Washington; Ingrid Hsieh-Yee, Catholic

University of America; Barbara Kwasnik, Syracuse University; Edie Rasmussen, University of

British Columbia; Carol Tenopir, University of Tennessee; and Dietmar Wolfram, University of

Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Acknowledgements

This session is sponsored by SIG ED, Education for Information Science.