Career Research Advice from a Recent Ph.D. Grad

Career Research Advice from a Recent Ph.D. Grad Share Share via TwitterShare via FacebookShare via Google PlusShare via LinkedInShare via E-mail Dr. Kathryn Nowotny is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Miami and an Early Career Fellow in the NIDA-funded Lifespan/Brown University Criminal Justice Research Training (CJRT) Program on Substance Use, HIV, and Comorbidities. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2016 from the University of Colorado Boulder. zu sich research explores how mass incarceration contributes to health inequalities, the intersections of crime and health behaviors, and the contextual influences on health more broadly for vulnerable populations. These complementary streams of research center on understanding the health of disadvantaged and underserved populations using both quantitative and qualitative methods.Describe your experience leaving graduate school and searching for or landing your current job/lage.I had always planned on go ing on the academic job market for a tenure-track position. In my field, the academic job market takes place in early fall. I started preparing my job market materials the summer after my fourth year in preparation for being on the market and (hopefully) graduating my fifth year. I was also networking to position myself for a postdoc as an alternative. Ultimately, I accepted a position as an assistant professor. It felt like a fairly fast process. I did an initial interview at the sociology conference in August and submitted my application by the end of the month, got a call in September inviting me for a flyout, flew out for the interview in October, and received an offer and signed a contract in November.Was it easier or harder than you thought it would be? Please describe.It was definitely harder. You can prepare your job market materials in advance, and you can get critical feedback and advice, but I dont think there is anything that can fully prepare you for the emotional rolle rcoaster that is the academic job market. Some days I was full of excitement and confidence, and others I was a frightened anxious wreck. Sometimes, I experienced all of these emotions in the same day. It was helpful to have close friends going through it as well. When you look back at your graduate education, what aspect of it best prepared you for the career path you are now on?In graduate school, it is expected that you will learn a lot from your courses and on the job training through teaching and research assistantships, as well as from the process of completing the dissertation. But I think doing research and publishing with different people beyond my advisor (including at other universities) was really helpful in that it exposed me to different collaborating and mentoring styles. These are important aspects of academia and Im glad that I was able to figure out not only my style but how to negotiate with different approaches. As a new faculty member, I am expected to start rig ht away mentoring graduate students and building research collaborations on my new campus. I am thankful that I have experiences to draw on.Did you go above and beyond what was required from your program to get where you are today? If so, please describe.Knowing that I wanted to work at a research university, I put a lot of pressure on myself to obtain federal grant funding, which is not an expectation for graduate studentsper se. Early in my graduate career, I looked up CVs of assistant professors in the types of departments I wanted to be in. External predoctoral funding and at least one quality publication in a top-ranked journal, along with other publications, seemed to be the norm. So I set those goals for myself. I was fortunate that I had mentors who were supportive of these goals and who were able and willing to help me meet them.What academic accomplishments are you fruchtwein proud of?I am most proud of receiving a three-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and a National Science Foundation (NSF) dissertation grant.CategoriesGraduate StudentsTagsCareer Search - Graduate StudentsExpert Advice - Graduate Students