Table Of ContentThe Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology
the chicago guide to
landing a job in
academic biology
C. Ray Chandler, Lorne M. Wolfe, & Daniel E. L. Promislow
The University of Chicago Press chicago and london
c. ray chandler is a professor of biology at Georgia Southern University.
lorne m. wolfe is a professor of biology at Georgia Southern University.
daniel e. l. promislow is a professor of genetics at the University of Georgia.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2007 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978-0-226-10129-3 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978-0-226-10130-9 (paper)
isbn- 10: 0-226-10129-0 (cloth)
isbn- 10: 0-226-10130-4 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chandler, C. Ray.
The Chicago guide to landing a job in academic biology / C. Ray Chandler,
Lorne M. Wolfe, and Daniel E. L. Promislow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-10129-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10 0-226-10129-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-10130-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-10130-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Biologists—Employment.
I. Wolfe, Lorne M. II. Promislow, Daniel E. L. III. Title.
qh314.c43 2007
570.71(cid:2)1—dc22
2006029907
o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
contents
Preface vii Acknowledgments ix
1: The Academic Job Market 1
2: Choosing a Graduate Program 13
3: Prepare Early for Your Job Search 25
4: Target Your Job Search 35
5: The Application 41
6: Preparing for the Interview 71
7: The Interview 79
8: The Seminar 91
9: Social Time 109
10: The Negotiations 117
11: All in the Family 131
Afterword 147 References Cited 149
preface
After years of watching otherwise excellent job candidates fail to get job
offers because of avoidable errors and wanting to make sure that his own
students avoided these mistakes, Ray Chandler decided to write a paper for
a widely read biology journal about the dos and don’ts of the job search. He
enlisted Lorne Wolfe, and together they wrote a fi rst draft. Lorne felt pretty
good about the manuscript and gave it to Daniel Promislow for comments
when he was visiting Lorne in Statesboro. After reading the paper, Daniel
said to Lorne, “Nice idea, but it shouldn’t be a paper. It should be a book.”
And so was born The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology.
There are many books out there on the academic path. You may have
already seen, for example, The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career (Gold-
smith, Komlos, and Gold, 2001). This is a fi ne book that provides you with a
reference not only for the job search, but also with much advice on how to
write a thesis and what to do once you become an assistant professor.
We have decided to take just one aspect of this process, the job search,
viii preface
and distill it down to the essentials. We have deliberately written a book that
is short, easy to read, and that we hope might even bring some levity to an
inherently stressful process.
We have written this book for a broad audience, from undergraduate
students thinking about going to graduate school, to those of you who have
been offered one or more jobs and are about to start negotiating start-up
packages and salary. If you are a professor who already has an academic job
in biology, we hope that this book might serve as a useful resource for ways
to help your own students and postdocs.
For those of you just starting out, you may be feeling just a little bit ner-
vous, with lots of unanswered questions. Is academia right for me? Should
I teach a course during grad school just for the experience? Should I accept
that job offer from a school whose start-up package consists of a manual
typewriter, two pairs of scissors, and a $10 gift certifi cate for the local hard-
ware store?
There are so many decisions to make as you wend your way along this
path. We hope that this book helps you fi gure out the answers that are right
for you. The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology does not pro-
vide a magic formula to guarantee that you land the job of your dreams, but
it does offer a lot of common sense. In some cases, you may fi nd yourself
thinking, “Oh, so that’s how it works.” In others, the book may simply con-
fi rm what you already thought. And occasionally, you may disagree with
our advice. That’s okay too. The most important thing is that the path you
pursue feels like the right one for you. If you go forward confi dent in your
knowledge of how all this works, you will be more relaxed. And once you
relax, you can start to have fun with this entire process.
Whether you are now at a conference and reading through this book in
your hotel room, or sitting in your offi ce taking a break from writing a man-
uscript, or on vacation (Hey! Don’t think about work all the time!), we hope
this brief book helps you fi gure out where you would like to end up as you
pursue an academic career, and how to get there. We look forward to hear-
ing your own stories.
acknowledgments
From so simple a beginning . . . charles darwin
This book would never have come to fruition if it were not for the enormous
help that we received throughout the entire process.
The quality of this fi nal product was improved immensely by comments
from Sheri Church, Lynda Delph, Steve Hudman, Leslie Rissler, Deborah
Roach, and several other anonymous individuals. We were pleased to see
that our colleagues put as much rigor into reviewing a book manuscript as
they do our research publications! Kris Boudreau provided invaluable ad-
vice on the general outline of the book and the encouragement of a true
veteran. We thank Matt Hahn for his willingness to share his research state-
ment with us. Carol Froehlinger contributed comments and some of her
own insightful words to the last chapter.
As scientists, we are used to having to generate new data every time we
carry out an experiment. When we sat down to write this book, we discov-
Description:The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology is an indispensable guide for graduate students and post-docs as they enter that domain red in tooth and claw: the job market. An academic career in the biological sciences typically demands well over a decade of technical training. So it’s ir
