A curated list of resources for new faculty members in software engineering based on the New Faculty Symposium (NFS) at the International Confernece on Software Engineering
This section contains resources about publication strategies and related FAQs.
- Is it worth my time to publish in workshops?
- How to balance conference and journal submissions
- All my ICSE/FSE/ASE papers got rejected. Should I send the work to lesser venues so I don't have a big hole in my CV?
- Should I target the top 2 conferences or is building a reputation in less high-profile but tight-knit communities acceptable?
- How much wood does a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would get tenure? (where wood is papers, and chucking is publishing, and the woodchuck is a junior faculty)
This section contains resources for developing own research and related FAQs.
- Does posting your research and publications in Facebook LinkedIn etc. help visibility?
- I'm told to put "buzz" words, "AI", "ML", "IOT", etc., in my research topic. Is that really necessary?
- What to do with papers I am proud of (TSE) but low citation?
- Should I collaborate with people I know and work well with, or seek out new collaborations to learn new skills? How are those two alternatives perceived?
- How many co-authors? Trade-offs between starting new collaborations vs working out your own research agenda?
- Research balance between exploring a research topic deeply vs exploring more topics with collaborators?
- How to succeed at a mediocre university? What if my country is not an ideal place for doing research? Do I still have a chance without relocation?
- How do I go about building a new research community?
- How do you convince people outside your area the importance of your work (mainly for job interviews)?
This section contains resources regarding specific for tenure promotion and related FAQs.
- What are the criteria and what is the weight for each criterion?
- How do you know you're spending time on the "right stuff", i.e., the stuff that leads to tenure?
- How to get tenure with having a life? (R1. More relaxed university).
- How am I going to be compared with people in the same department working on other field?
- How should 'successes' be balanced before/after reappointment? For example, if I get 3 grants before 3rd year review, but 0 after, is this a bad sign for my tenure case?
- What are the requirements for early tenure vs. tenure on the standard clock? Are they different?
- Does department chair play a more important role in tenure promotion?
- What are 'red flags' in letters from the community, and how do I avoid them?
- What if I have a silent enemy in the research world, or someone who thinks I'm an imposter, and they end up writing a tenure letter?
- What are the strategies of finding people to write tenure promotion letters?
- How do I deal with a malicious interviewers in a hiring board?
This section contains resources regarding recruiting, advising, and mentoring graduate students and related FAQs.
- How to maintain boundaries but also be accessible ?
- How to navigate a lack of age gap?
- How to mentor a student who is extremely introverted? (Does good work on paper but very difficult to communicate with. How do I get him out of his head?)
- What are the most effective ways to identify good graduate students when recruiting? What questions are the most effective questions during a student interview?
- How early should you start recruiting?
- It is often advised to ask potential students to do a "mini project". How "mini" should the mini project be?
- Should I supervise Postdocs as junior faculty?
- About mentoring style, different styles for different students, or a consistent style?
- How to maintain the continuance of research topics after the students' graduation?
- How do you know when to call it on a student?
- What are characteristics of productive students?
- How do you check if a student is a good fit for your group without having the luxury of knowing the student for a year, a semester, or even a week?
- I've been at the job for 5 years and still my most mature PhD student is 2 years from defending. Can I still get tenure?
- Can I get tenured with only supervising master students?
This section contains resources regarding reserch funding applications, grant proposal writing and related FAQs.
- SSHRC vs NSERC for human subjects type research?
- How many grant proposals should you aim to write a year?
- Best advice you ever received for grant writing?
- What are the strategies to identify the most fitting funding opportunities?
- How important is it to come into my new position with a grant already obtained?
- How do I invite people to collaborate with me on a grant?
- How do I make the most of my startup package?
- How to develop ideas quickly and write "good" grant proposals quickly?
- I'd like to know how to get funded without selling my soul to the devil!
- In terms of necessary and sufficient conditions for getting tenure, where does the CAREER award sit?
- How much money do you think is enough for tenure (I realize this varies by university, but it would be nice to know what the average SE person is trying to pull in a year)?
This section contains resources regarding teaching and relared FAQs.
- How much planning?
- How to make sure I'm not spending ALL my time teaching?
- How to engage students in large lecture-based class?
- How do I negotiate my teaching load to be every other semester?
- Are there any resources for how to put together a course?
- How to effectively communicate with TA?
- How to make sure that the feedbacks of the assignments are actually received by them?
- How to travel for conference during school year?
- Does my department actually care about my student evals of teaching being great, or just that they're not terrible?
- How are peer teaching evaluations weighted against student evaluations?
- Is it really true that teaching and research are equally important? This is what I have been told by my colleagues. I feel myself less passionate about teaching than doing research, although my teaching evaluations are fine. I don’t spend quite much time on course preparation.
- How to setup the tone in classroom when your students are young professionals in the tech industry, and they are about the same age as you?
- How to achieve a teaching focused career?
- How to turn teaching work into research?
- How to watch good students with interesting topics?
- How do you prioritise teaching in a university that values research more?
This section contains resources regarding collaboration and outreach activities, and related resourceThis section contains resources regarding collaboration and outreach activities, and related FAQs.
- Should I spend some time visiting Universities/Companies and giving talks before the tenure year? I know some people do this, but I’m not sure if it worth the money and effort.
- What are characteristics of productive collaborations?
- What are red flags for collaborators?
- How to tell early on that certain collaboration is not working?
- How to establish industrial connection?
- How do I invite people to collaborate with me on a grant?
This section contains resources regarding community service and related FAQs.
- What does "too little" vs. "too much" service look like? -If I'm on the organizing committee for a conference, does that help/hurt my tenure case? According to Lori Clarke, when asked the same, she said something to the tune of "I cannot think of any valid reason for why a junior faculty should ever serve on an organizing committee."
This section contains resources regarding faculty life and related FAQs.
- How to change/add research fields/communities as junior faculty?
- Do you have any books that helped you when you started faculty life? Or ones you wish you had a read earlier on?
- How many hours of work per week is needed?
- How many cups of coffee per day do people usually need?
- How do I maintain boundaries for my colleagues to protect my personal and professional life?
- How to managing having a disability / health problems + being new faculty?
- How to achieve work-family balance in a dual academia family?
- Integrating into departments, especially ones where you're the only one doing human-subjects research
- Besides research and teaching, how important is socializing with colleagues in the department? I know I must not piss people off, but do I need to attend the social events I don’t enjoy or be with people I don’t like?
- Is it okay to argue for something during the faulty meeting?
- When requesting resources from or expressing my opinions to the department chair, is there anything I should pay special attention to? Does department chair play a more important role in tenure promotion?
- How to handle departmental micro-managing/tedious tasks?
This section contains resources not falling under any of the previous sections.
- How to go on the job search again if your first faculty job isn't working out?
- How important are the unofficial aspects of the situation, such as inter-personal management?
- Two faculties in the family plus two kids, how to balance work and life?
- How to follow a research career when you are not that mobile due to family restrictions (lids, partner's career)?
- How to increase your visibility if you come from a small not too well known university? People usually first ask where you come from and who your supervisor is.
- Why do you choose a career in academic over industry? Any regrets?
- How to fight with the temptation to go to industry?
Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.
To the extent possible under law, the contributors to this list have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.
Individual licenses apply to the presentations linked on this site.