An Institute's CulturePosted on January 20, 2009 Know what the expectations are for service, research, and teaching in your institution, suggests Dr. Keith A. Trujillo. |
I think as a first-time investigator, as a first-time faculty member, you really want to learn as quickly as possible the culture of your own institution because every institution is individual. There's a lot of overlap between different institutions, but they all have their independent cultures. And some will, for example, want to emphasize teaching over research. Others will want to emphasize research over teaching. Others will say service isn't that important to us, where some will say service is very important to us.
And so knowing what the culture of the institution is and what the expectations are of the first time faculty members is very, very important. Being able to gauge that and respond to it is critical to early success because people are going to be judging you all along, and the quicker that you can determine what they're going to be judging you on, the better you're going to meet the needs.
And of course, I think that backing up and knowing a lot about that before you select your institution is very critical. Because if you select an institution that doesn't offer the culture that you're, that you feel that you need as a first-time faculty member, then you're going to struggle along the way.
Perhaps you want to do more research, perhaps you're more interested in service and want to contribute in that way, but if that institution doesn't offer the balance that you feel comfortable with, then you can get yourself into a lot of trouble and probably be looking for another faculty position very soon.