YPOV
Young Professionals Point of View
Lessons for the New Professor
A new academic year is just around the corner, which
means new beginnings. If you are starting your first
faculty position, congratulations! This new role will demand
your time, as well as skills and responsibilities you may not
have tapped into before. I found the transition to be exciting
and somewhat overwhelming. Any feelings of unease can be
managed with careful planning and realistic expectations.
The internet offers a plethora of advice for new profes-
sors, which can be overwhelming in and of itself. Search for
the phrase “advice for new engineering faculty” and you
will get over 40 million hits. To help focus this advice, here
are some of my experiences and takeaways from the past
four years.
Create and cultivate new connections. It can take years
to establish good working relationships, so it is best to start
as soon as possible. The earlier you start reaching out and
asking for help, the easier it gets, the better equipped you
will be, and the more you will interact with your colleagues.
Although teaching a core course may be new to you, it has
been taught year after year, so ask the previous year’s instruc-
tor for their course materials. I spent the summer before my
first semester of teaching reviewing the textbook and creating
lecture notes from scratch — work I could have minimized.
Once on campus, make connections with faculty outside
of your department. At my new faculty orientation, I met a
computer science colleague, which sparked a new research
collaboration. You can meet other faculty through pro-
posal writing and teaching workshops, other departments’
seminars, and committee meetings. Contact with potential
collaborators and sponsors outside of your university is
also important. In addition to attending workshops and
conferences, consider being active in a division or forum of
AIChE. Through service to AIChE’s Sustainable Engineer-
ing Forum (SEF), I made new contacts and gained insights
into the practices of established faculty. Building relation-
ships takes time, and it is up to you to moderate how much
time you choose to spend on making connections.
Manage your time wisely. Organization and account-
ability are key to striking a balance between teaching and
research. This may seem obvious, but it is something I found
challenging in practice. Students will hold you accountable
for the time you allocate to class and office hours. Think
twice before choosing an open door policy, because students
will come and the interruptions will be frequent.
Structure your research projects through objectives and a
schedule that includes deadlines for completing experiments,
manuscripts, and proposals. It took me a while to realize
that a good idea and feasible approach are not enough — a
structured business plan is also critical to making a proposal
46  www.aiche.org/cep  July 2018  CEP
Nastassja Lewinski
Virginia Commonwealth Univ.
competitive. Even when you have a plan, you are often the
only person holding yourself and your group accountable to
sticking to that plan. I established some external accountabil-
ity by finding a writing buddy, attending campus write-on-
site meetings, and joining an online writing group.
Focus on your goals. For most new faculty, a goal is
to earn tenure. Depending on the institution, emphasis may
be more on funded research or effective teaching. Advice
on proposal writing and teaching is readily available, and
reviewers and students will also provide critiques. Deter-
mining how to selectively act upon this feedback is critical
to ensuring any changes you make will help you progress
toward your goals.
One of my goals is to have an externally funded research
program. In my first year, I submitted around one pro-
posal per month and each one was denied funding. It was
demoralizing, and instead of writing it off to inexperience
in grantsmanship, doing a little polishing, and resubmitting
my proposals, I took the critiques too seriously and began to
question the merit of my research. If you find yourself doing
this, stop. Just because your proposal was rejected does not
mean your research is meaningless.
Be proactive in your communications. As a new
professor, I thought it was best to keep my head down and
my mouth shut and get my work done. In fact, it is quite the
opposite — communicate, communicate, communicate! It is
important that people know what you are doing. My depart-
ment chair and I meet every two weeks so I can let him
know what I am working on, what my objectives are, and
what help I need. I wish from the start that I had followed
up each meeting with an email reiterating the points we
discussed, and when meetings got cancelled, sent an email
update instead. Your colleagues should also know what you
and the students in your group are doing. Department culture
will determine how much time you need to dedicate to com-
munication within the department.
Proactive communication also improves your odds of
recruiting talented students to your lab through referrals by
students and colleagues and your personal recruiting efforts.
As a junior faculty member, your budding research program
depends on the quality and continuity of your research group.
Balancing the various responsibilities of a professor is
challenging and I am still learning the ropes. Seek advice
from successful, tenured faculty. But, also remember to
enjoy the journey. It is truly an honor and privilege to be
entrusted every year to educate our future chemical engi-
neers. Everyday, I am thankful for the opportunity to pursue
my lifelong research goals and introduce my passion to
future generations. CEP
Copyright © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)