Foundations for Successful Scholarship in School Psychology

August 31, 2015

This year, the ECF invited Randy Floyd, professor at the University of Memphis and previous editor of SSSP’s Journal of School Psychology to share his advice for early career researchers. In this first installment, Randy offers general recommendations for successful scholarship in school psychology.  Foundations for Successful Scholarship in School PsychologyBy Randy G. Floyd, The University of MemphisAs a participant in the 2005 School Psychology Research Collaborative Conference, I am the beneficiary of the numerous, ongoing efforts of the Society for the Study of School Psychology (SSSP) to enhance the scholarship of the field through professional development activities and generous funding of several initiatives. Thus, I appreciate this opportunity to contribute to the SSSP Early Career Forum and focus on publishing and the peer-review process. I hope to offer, in a series of five blog posts, (a) practical insights from both my experience as a university professor and as a former editor of one of the major journals in the field and (b) information from reviews of the literature and research with close colleagues (including Craig Albers, Tom Fagan, Rebecca Martinez, and Sterett Mercer). Future posts will address employing specific strategies (and avoiding common mistakes) in submitting to peer-reviewed journals, finding the best resources to which to turn, and responding to reviewer and editor feedback. In this post, I want to offer 10 broad recommendations for scholarly success:1.      Be a student of the game. Devote time, money, and effort to securing resources and participate in trainings that will enhance your skill set and strategy use as a scholar. Although the strongest scholars continue to expand their competencies throughout their development, your early career is the time to establish a strong foundation on which the remainder of your career can rest. It is likely, too, that you will have more time early in your career to reach this goal than later in your career, when service responsibilities tend to increase. Find articles, book chapters, books, and blogs that address career success (see for example, Prinstein, 2013), and read voraciously. Seek out and attend presentations at professional conferences and use start-up monies and department funding to attend specialized workshops (e.g., focused on grant writing and advanced statistics and research designs). I will address some of these resources in my next blog post.2.      Finish what you started as a graduate student, intern, post-doc, or early career practitioner. If you have not already, work to publish your thesis and dissertation research. In the same vein, discuss with your major professor, supervisors, and research team members ways to present and publish research results or other projects from your graduate training, post-doctoral experience, or earlier career in practice. Find ways to channel what you have learned from those experiences into other published products (e.g., a narrative review of the literature, a test review, a newsletter article, or a guide for practitioners).3.      Collaborate selectively with others who have a scientific orientation, data analysis skills, or are generally good at writing. The best collaborations are synergistic—or at least mutually beneficial. There is no sense in collaborating for its own sake; some collaborations may produce more cost than gain. As you establish your competencies, know where you are weakest and seek out others who will complement you. Unless you anticipate more cost than gain, continue research and writing collaborations with major professors, supervisors, and research team members (as previously noted). Do not hesitate to contact more senior members in the field about collaborating in areas of their most intense interest. They may be overjoyed to team with energetic early career scholars and very willing to provide guidance. Their contributions will likely complement your own; they will be less likely to generate text for a manuscript but more likely to offer advice regarding study conceptualization, manuscript preparation, and viable publication outlets.4.      Identify when and where you work best and protect it. Focused, productive writing and thinking time is vital to the success of an early career scholar, so give generously of your time to service throughout the week, but do not hesitate to say (without elaboration) that you cannot meet during sacred periods. In selecting them, reflect on what time of the day you are at your cognitive best, and complete your most challenging work then. Save less demanding tasks (e.g., responding to emails) for when you are not at your cognitive peak. Although these periods may change throughout your career (and due to variable home and work schedules), strive foremost to protect your best time. In addition, work where there are few distractions—which often means not in your university office. Many of the most productive faculty work at home—often staying home at least a day a week or during long mornings or afternoons throughout the week. Others find hiding places on the university campus (including library study carrels or empty classrooms) or in coffee shops (when neither home nor work offices are quiet options). Consider employing time management strategies (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique), but whenever and wherever, turn off email, text, and phone message notifications during these thinking and writing sessions.5.      Spend at least 8 hours (1 work day) a week writing. As you consider your schedule each week, stay aware of the amount of time you engage in writing activities (see Silva, 2007). Writing in the broad sense includes everything supporting scholarship and manuscript development. For example, when you feel unable to produce some semblance of coherent text during a scheduled writing period, reading and taking notes from articles, adding and formatting references, and writing incomplete sentences in manuscripts will support your broad writing goals. Write what comes easiest to you, which rarely reflects the standard Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sequence of manuscripts. When writing, many productive scholars start with the most concrete elements—in Method and Results sections—and extend writing from there. For me, each section of the manuscript requires different thinking and text construction processes, so I tend to develop those sections somewhat independently. Reviewing the text structure and content of articles and other publications as models as well as journal article reporting standards (see Cooper, 2011) will assist you in developing manuscripts.6.      Use your breadth of experiences as a foundation for your research. For professors, use readings from your courses, student questions, and student projects to generate ideas and projects to enhance your research agenda. For practitioners, develop manuscripts focusing on research based on single-case studies and program evaluations to address practical questions in the field. Generate ideas for literature reviews from questions posed to you during workshops or from pressing issues facing practitioners and administrators in schools and clinics. You should strive to never be without data or an idea for your next manuscript.7.      Find your publishing niche (or niches). With a variety of publishing outlets—including journals, newsletters, and books—you should consider your interests and skills and how they might be best aligned with these outlets. Rather than always striving to publish in journals, some scholars with strong writing and editing skills publish more authored and edited books than research articles. Others with a strong leaning toward practice-based issues publish in professional newsletters. Still others publish commercially developed assessment instruments, test reviews, and book reviews. In the same vein, let your data analytic skills help fill a niche. Consider ways to develop skills in specific areas that will allow you to use them repeatedly to answer questions in a novel way across parallel projects. For example, some research teams focus on publishing meta-analyses or qualitative analyses and publish multiple studies using these methodologies. Others employ sophisticated quantitative analyses (e.g., structural equation modeling) and archival data sets from test publishers or longitudinal data bases to produce a series of related articles.8.      Consider multiple outlets for your publications. It is easy to gravitate toward submitting manuscripts first to the journals you know best and then giving up when these journals do not agree to publish your work. Do not be disheartened. There are a wide variety of school psychology generalist and specialty journals and professional newsletters that target and publish quantitative and qualitative research, systematic and narrative reviews, descriptions of best practices for the field, test reviews, book reviews, and “thought pieces.” Another blog post in this series will focus on this array of publishing outlets.9.      Use national presentations as motivation. Professional publications (even books and associated chapters) rarely have hard deadlines associated with them. As such, determining when to submit your manuscripts to journals is almost always completely up to you. Some of the strongest scholars in the field (and their students) appear to use (a) proposals for presentations (as posters or papers) at national conventions and (b) the presentations themselves to motivate them to complete their projects. Frequently, these presentations yield feedback that can be used to refine subsequent manuscript development. Plus, each presentation will add to your count on your curriculum vitae.10.     Be a strong mentor in guiding students toward publishing. Just like your collaborations with your major professor and supervisors, your efforts with your students can produce publications about which you can be proud. When well designed, theses and dissertations developed under your mentorship should be publishable. Additional scholarly projects with individual students or across your research team members not only assist the development of your students’ skills and careers but also increase your publishing productivity.ReferencesCooper, H. (2011). Reporting research in psychology: How to meet journal article reporting standards. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Prinstein, M. J. (Ed.). (2013). The portable mentor: Expert guide to a successful career in psychology (2nd ed.) New York, NY: Springer.Silva, P. (2007). How to write a lot. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.The author would like to thank Dr. Ryan Farmer, Dr. Xu (Lilya) Jiang, Dr. Beth Meisinger, and Dr. Colby Taylor for their feedback on earlier drafts of this post.

Academic Parenthood: A Post-Tenure Perspective

May 25, 2015

This is the second installment of a mini-series on academic parenthood, a follow up to the ECF session at the 2015 NASP Convention. In the first installment, Bryn Harris discussed her experiences as a mother and pre-tenure assistant professor. Below, Jessica Hoffman discusses her experiences as a parent and tenured associate professor.Academic Parenthood: A Post-tenure PerspectiveBy Jessica Hoffman, PhD, NCSP, Northeastern UniversityI found myself at my doctor’s office after a series of awful, no good, very bad days.  For the past four months my kids had been sick with all types of things that go around daycares and preschools—particularly when you have a baby in an infant room (fortunately not lice, though).  My doctor was listening to my chest and asked me to sit up straighter so she could hear me breathe.  I realized that it hurt to sit up straight.  I was so tired.  It was two days before the NASP convention and I was secretly hoping she’d declare me too sick to travel, and at the same time hoping I’d be fine to travel so I could get just two days away and maybe, just maybe, a full night’s sleep.This blog is about academic parenthood, something I’ve become quite familiar with.  I have three kids ages five, two and one.  My first was born a little over a year after I received tenure and promotion to associate professor.  Having children after receiving tenure in some ways would seem much easier than having children at other points in one’s academic career, say, in graduate school or when on the tenure track.  The pressures of tenure have been removed, there is job security, and academic jobs are very flexible.  As my husband (also an academic) says, we can choose the 60 hours of the week that we want to work.  So, when the kids get sick, or there’s a snow day (we had quite a few in Boston this past winter!), or there’s a school vacation, we have much more flexibility compared with parents employed outside the academy.Since becoming a mom the academic pressures that I’ve been struggling with mostly are the internal ones; the drive to work those long, uninterrupted hours that were a luxury before having kids.  The ability to read, to think, to write productively—these are more of a challenge than ever right now particularly because of the young ages of my kids. Although I mentioned earlier that one advantage of an academic job is the flexibility—we can work pretty much wherever, whenever, the major disadvantage to this flexibility is that work can be very difficult to turn off.  It can seep easily into family time and the boundaries between work and non-work time can become very blurry.  Another of my struggles is turning work off and learning to be OK with projects left hanging at less than ideal points, at unanswered emails that continue to mount, and saying no to interesting, career advancing opportunities because I “just can’t put anything more on my plate right now.” I tell myself that this is OK because my academic career is long and I know that this precious early childhood period will go by in the blink of an eye.Learning to say no without feeling badly or regretful is a skill I acquired some time ago that has been really important.  Other strategies that are getting me through this crazy, wonderful, exhausting time are:

• Having clear goals and being flexible to adjust my goals.  Being aware of and realistic about my personal and professional goals (both short term and long term) is really important.  Having personal and professional goals that don’t jive with the reality of what I can reasonably accomplish in the time available is a recipe for stress and distress.  Being in touch with my own values and those of my institution has been important in the goal setting process.  For me, promotion to full professor is important, but it will take longer to accomplish now that I have three young children.
• Being incredibly organized, careful planning, and excellent time management.  These are my three main survival skills these days.  I find myself continually prioritizing and reprioritizing daily, weekly and monthly tasks at work and at home.  Staying ahead of deadlines is incredibly important because I never know who is going to get sick next and how that will affect my work schedule.  I can’t rely on being able to get things done at the last minute.  Fortunately, many of our deadlines can get extended.  Those timelines that are less flexible are class meetings and grant application due dates.  Often, I feel as if time is a commodity that just evaporates into the ether—I find that most things take longer than expected, and leaving things to the last minute contributes to increased stress.
• Collaborating with exceptionally talented colleagues and students.  I am so fortunate to have wonderful colleagues and graduate students to collaborate with on research projects.  I strive to always take the lead on at least one study or grant proposal, and I am more productive when I collaborate with teams that produce consistently high quality work.
• Accepting help.  Accepting help from others is essential.  High quality, reliable child care is very expensive, but is worth every penny.  At this point, I also pay for services that take up time that otherwise can be spent with my family or working.
• Having a support system of other academic parents.  It’s been really important to me to connect with other parents of young children in the academy, both in school psychology and in other fields.  Surprisingly, a lot of this support has come from friends and colleagues who are at a distance via social networking.  These supportive relationships help me feel less isolated when life gets stressful.  It’s nice to have a group of people who understand the daily struggles of trying to survive and succeed in academia while nurturing a family.

Other things that make life somewhat easier:

• Cooking on days that I work from home, making double portions and freezing them so healthy meals are ready available—especially when I teach at night.
• Making lunches at night—getting three kids out of the house in the morning is exhausting enough without the lunches.
• Shopping in bulk so supplies are readily available
• Writing at home two days per week.  I tend to be more distracted in the office and I can also avoid time wasted in traffic.
• Turning off the email notification when I’m writing also helps to lessen distractions.
• Not even attempting to work in the house when my kids are at home.
• A steady intake of coffee.

Having an online discussion forum to share ideas about how to survive and succeed in the academy while raising children is important.  What strategies and supports have you found to be helpful?Jessica Hoffman is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University where she directs the MS/CAGS and PhD programs in school psychology.  She is a licensed psychologist and nationally certified school psychologist.  Her research is in the area of early childhood obesity prevention.  Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  She is a member of the Society for the Study of School Psychology.  

Academic Parenthood: Lessons Learned Along the Tenure Track

March 30, 2015

This is the first in a mini-series on Academic Parenthood, a follow up to the ECF session at the 2015 NASP Convention. The presentation is available here. Given the strong interest in the session, we are featuring two of the presenters' perspectives. In the first installment below, session lead Bryn Harris discusses her experiences as a parent and tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver.Academic Parenthood: Lessons Learned Along the Tenure TrackBy Bryn Harris, PhDI want to start this post by saying that raising a family as an academic has many advantages, but is also very challenging. Careers in academia provide flexibility which can allow for unique childcare arrangements; working hours that fit with your family’s schedule (rather than typical business hours); balancing teaching, research and service around family dynamics; and often an academic calendar that coincides with school breaks, among others. However, we also know that women are less likely to get tenure or advance to full professor than men (D’Amico, Vermigili, and Canetto, 2011) and that women with children on the tenure track are much more likely to drop off the tenure track than men (Ginther & Kahn, 2006). Furthermore, among tenured faculty, 70 percent of men are married with children compared with 44 percent of women (Ward & Wolf-Wendell, 2012). While I recognize this issue includes men and women, it is clear that women are impacted by academic parenthood in a unique way and thus my post will focus on my personal experiences as a mother on the tenure track.After reading the above paragraph, you might be surprised to learn that I willingly had two children while on the tenure track—I have a 2 year old and a 3 month old and I submit my tenure dossier this summer—and am so glad I did. I realize the decision to have children is a personal one, and for me I felt it was important to have children when my partner and I were ready, rather than waiting until after tenure. Below, I will provide some suggestions for people considering having children while on the tenure track. I realize that every university setting and personal situation will be different, but I hope these suggestions will be beneficial and promote your own success along the tenure track.Institutional Support. One of the main reasons that I feel I have been successful as an academic parent is the institutional support I received. When negotiating my leave length and responsibilities with my Dean, I prepared a proposal with my ideal scenario and shared this with her. Others might find it helpful to consider working more the semester prior to your leave to give you more time during your leave or other creative options. Could you teach a class during the summer to count toward your future load? Can you teach an online class after you return to allow you more flexibility in your schedule? Is a reduction in administrative responsibilities possible? Having conversations with your program faculty about your leave will also be beneficial. After you return, can you teach classes that you have taught before so as not to have new course preparation? Can another faculty member cover you advising responsibilities during your leave? Now is not the time to take on significantly more responsibilities – especially as you work toward tenure. Advocate for yourself! If you are unsure or uncomfortable with how to advocate for yourself, consider contacting university offices or committees that may be of help. For example, at my institution, the Women’s Issues Committee provides resources to faculty members and the Ombuds Office helps faculty negotiate leave or other responsibilities when there may be contentious relationships at play.Surround Yourself with Supportive Colleagues. I was surprised to find myself in a situation at my institution where there were no colleagues with young children when I had my son. Within the next couple of years, more of my colleagues were having children and somehow that felt less isolating. I found that I gravitated toward collaborating with other colleagues with young children at other universities as well. If I had to miss a conference call because my son was sick, they understood. This made the guilt I felt about missing work or a deadline more bearable. It was also nice to talk to these individuals about their own experiences in academic parenthood. One of my colleagues and I have a monthly phone call where we talk primarily about our success and challenges as parents. I feel this has made our working relationship stronger as well. It is not necessarily important that you surround yourself with colleagues that only have young children, but my point is to surround yourself with people who are supportive and understanding as much as possible.Know the HR Policies. It is important to know the requirements and processes within your own institution regarding leave, FMLA, and short-term disability (if applicable). I believe this should be done far before you think about having children. For example, at my institution we accrue sick leave each year to be used for events such as childbirth. If you do not have sufficient sick time accrued, people are eligible to purchase short-term disability insurance, which would cover additional weeks of leave at full pay. However, this has to be purchased during an open enrollment period prior to having your child. Be careful not to get all of your information from a colleague at your university that recently went on leave. You might fall under different leave policies if you are on a 9-month contract and they are on a 12-month contract, for example. Lastly, it is important to discuss whether you will stop your tenure clock. Some institutions allow faculty to pause or stop their tenure clocks so that the time does not count towards their probationary period when they have children, which can be beneficial when it is difficult to maintain productivity while caring for your new family member. This is a personal decision that should be discussed with your Dean, colleagues within your institution, and other mentors.Publication Pipeline. Hardly anyone I know has been able to time their pregnancy to the exact time they are hoping to have the baby. That being said, I do think this should be something you consider. I had one of my babies in September and enjoyed having the time during the summer to get some publications out the door and prepare for the baby’s arrival. I had my second baby in December (at the end of the semester) and was able to take off the spring semester from my teaching responsibilities, which meant 8 months off from teaching. In terms of research, pregnancy impacts your productivity more than you can imagine and most people find the second trimester to be the most productive time for them. I spent some time during the first trimester planning out all of the projects I would like to finish before I had the baby. I also tried to make my life easier after the baby came by having data collected by the end of my pregnancy so that I could write during my maternity leave. However, I truly believe that spending time with my baby is what maternity leave is for, they are only this young once! Once I returned to work full-time, I had several writing projects that I could delve into right away. This made returning to research tasks much easier. I also broke down my days so that certain days of the week were research-focused days and others were focused on teaching and service. I found that teaching responsibilities easily crept into research days and thus I gave myself a time limit of how much time I would spend preparing for classes each week. Amazingly, I feel just as prepared now than when I spent much more time preparing for my classes. I think that giving myself a time limit to prepare for teaching allows me to be more focused and efficient. There are always more research tasks I would like to be working on, but that was the same scenario prior to having my son. I do feel like I could be more productive with my research if I sacrificed more time with my family—which I am not willing to do right now. I allow myself to work during their naps on the weekend if necessary, but I also value the time I have with my husband and time I can focus on my own self-care.Be Kind to Yourself. When I came back from maternity leave with my son, I felt like I had been gone for years! It seemed like everything had changed at work and I needed some time to catch up. Furthermore, when it came to teaching I found that my confidence was lower and that I had a hard time getting into a “groove.” I think more than anything I was dealing with the fact that I was now a parent and an academic, and trying to balance these roles was tough. Give yourself some credit. You just had a baby. Returning to work can be challenging. But I also enjoyed having an identity other than being a mom when I went to work.Returning to work. Think about when are you the most productive. Do you normally work from home? It will be helpful to think about how the baby might impact your productivity and try to modify your surroundings. I thought I would be able to work from home when I went back to work. We hired a nanny who came to our house to care for my son. I quickly realized that I was incredibly distracted whenever I heard my son cry. I even bought noise-cancelling headphones to help! But I realized that I needed to physically separate myself from my son in order to be more productive. You will need to be patient with yourself as you re-learn how to be the most productive upon your return to work.Set Priorities. When you have children on the tenure track, you need to be especially focused on your productivity. Intimately knowing the requirements for tenure at your institution is the first step. I also recommend having regular meetings with the Dean or Department Chair regarding your productivity, establishing mentorship relationships with people who are also aware of the tenure requirements at your institution, and holding yourself accountable for your own successes. I encourage you to map out your projects and responsibilities as you work towards tenure. These goals can be broken down into 1 month, 6 month, or yearly increments. I also spend 30 minutes every Sunday mapping out my priorities for the week. My research priorities come first since research is incredibly valuable to achieving tenure at my university. It may help to share your priorities with others so you are held accountable.Flexibility. I used to be a person that always got things done on time, usually before I needed to. Those days may have passed! But I have embraced that. I focus on getting my priorities done on time, this allows me to feel productive. But I also know that my son will likely get sick at the worst time possible and that my daughter will refuse to take naps at all some days. I had to let some of that control go. Remember that your career will likely last for many, many more years. You will have other opportunities to do work.Practice Self Care. I find that it is increasingly difficult to find time for myself after my second child, but it is crucial. Maintaining your individual identity is important and makes you a better parent. If you currently have hobbies, think about how you might incorporate your baby or family into them – or how you can continue to do these things by yourself. Spending time with friends is also a critical part of my life and reduces feelings of isolation that you may have. You may consider joining a parent group in your neighborhood to meet other families with young children. This may be incredibly important for people without family members nearby as you can receive support from other parents (and maybe even a babysitting trade!). In addition, eating well and exercising are also important. I find that when I am not eating well I am more likely to get sick. We teach our graduate students about the importance of self-care, now is the time to practice what we preach!Supportive Partners are Instrumental. This may seem like common knowledge but it might be the most important factor of all. Have conversations with your partner ahead of time regarding your pregnancy and leave. What types of supports may you need during your pregnancy? How will you divide responsibilities during your leave? When you go back to work, how will you equitably provide care when a child is sick? When I had my son, I somehow thought I would have time to do the cooking, cleaning and care for my son during my leave. Reality check: if I took a shower that felt like an accomplishment. We are productive people or we would not be in academia. But you will need the support of others, and you will need to ask for help.One of the best things about being a parent is that it adds a new perspective to my research and teaching. It has allowed me to set greater limits with my work hours. I am more focused when I work since I know I have less time to work on something later and I want to spend time with my kids! Finally, careers in academia allow us flexibility that other careers may not and this lends itself well to parenthood. I hope we will all support other faculty members who have children, especially those working towards tenure.What other ideas can you share with us? What scares you the most about academic parenthood? What do you think will be the best parts of academic parenthood?

Developing a Research Agenda

November 12, 2014

By Milena A. Keller-Margulis, University of HoustonDespite how much and how often the term “research agenda” is used, there seems to be no agreed-upon, or formalized definition to be found. Many different entities may have a research agenda including entire fields of study, funding agencies, and of course individuals. We propose the following definition of a research agenda; a roadmap or framework that guides inquiry. A research agenda may be both global and specific. Ideally it is used to specify gaps in knowledge in a specific area and serves to guide the direction and development of new projects and research questions. A clear research agenda serves two important purposes. First, it can help you communicate to others what you study and the area in which you have developed (or are developing) expertise.  Second, it serves to guide your decision-making about what projects or specific research questions to pursue. Ultimately, you must be interested in and excited about the topic(s) at the heart of your research agenda.Strategies for Defining Your AgendaIt is never too early or too late to begin to develop your research agenda. It should not be considered static, as the process of developing an agenda is inherently reflective and ongoing. The best way to determine the general topic of your research agenda is to pay attention to the topics that interest you the most. You might discover this through reading the literature but these ideas may also surface through your practical or field-based experiences. These opportunities help to refine what might be a more global topic area into more specific or narrow research questions that have practical significance. Lastly, do not be afraid to test drive some areas of interest by getting involved in research, seeking out opportunities to explore new areas, and talking to other people with similar interests. These activities will help you narrow your focus to the topics and questions that are the most interesting to you.How to Put Your Agenda into ActionOnce you determine your general topic(s) of interest, the actions you take are what solidify your agenda. The two key ways to accomplish this are to (1) conduct research in the areasthat are the focus of your research agenda, and (2) disseminate the products of your research agenda. Generating new research and then disseminating it through writing for publication is the most critical way to further your developing agenda, and of course, contribute to the scientific literature. This can take many forms including writing proposals for conference presentations, writing grant proposals (small or large), and writing for publication. Dissemination can also be informal and involve reaching out to others who are doing similar work in order to identify potential collaborative relationships. All of these actions serve to communicate your agenda to others while at the same time developing and further refining your ideas.  Ultimately, having a research agenda means that you not only have specific topics that you are interested in studying but that you actively engage in research to advance that literature base.Here are some general tips to consider:

• Use your Research Agenda as your Roadmap: One of the most exciting aspects of working in academia and engaging in research is the limitless topics and projects you can pursue. This is also a challenge because you have to make choices as to where you will invest your time. Evaluate each potential research opportunity for the degree to which it is consistent with your agenda.
• Develop an Infrastructure: There are some logistic or infrastructure elements that you might consider in the early stages of developing your agenda. You should consider what you need to facilitate your work. Do you need space or support in the form of research assistants? Materials? Access to certain settings or populations of interest? Build a team of students to help you advance your agenda.
• Get Connected: Another strategy to further develop your research agenda is to collaborate with other scholars who are interested in the same topics. This can be accomplished in an informal way by meeting at conferences (e.g. attend social hours or networking events) or sending a friendly email but there are also structured mentoring/networking opportunities you can utilize. For example, the Society for the Study of School Psychology (SSSP) hosts the School Psychology Research Collaboration Conference every other year. This opportunity brings together junior and senior scholars to support the development of collaborative relationships. Reaching out to other professionals who work in settings that serve populations you want to study is also a great way to develop field-based research partnerships that are mutually beneficial.

Developing and furthering a research agenda takes time and commitment but having a clear area of interest that you find exciting, ensures that it will be a very rewarding endeavor.

Being Efficient in Course Preparation

October 14, 2013

By Bryn HarrisAs an early career scholar or as a seasoned instructor, course preparation can be a challenging task. Much of this challenge comes from the fact that course preparation never feels “done.” There are always more articles to read, grading rubrics to expand, or modifications to make based on continuous feedback. In the absence of a clear plan, time spent in course prep can overcrowd other important activities. Below are some recommendations for making course preparation manageable, and protecting time for other tasks that important to your success:·      Schedule it! Time management may be my answer to a lot of things, and this is one of them. Allocating specific time from our schedule to course preparation makes us more purposeful in our preparation and thus, more efficient. Some people use kitchen timers or an alarm on a cell phone for a physical and auditory reminder. You might also consider limiting course preparation to certain blocks of time or days of the week.·      Make revisions right away! Take notes during or immediately after class on the things that went well and things that need to be improved. In addition, I like to make notes of all the activities I do, how long certain activities took, and feedback from students within these notes. Make course revisions as quickly as possible, immediately after class being the best time.·      Use technology! While it can take some time to learn new technologies, judicious use of them can improve efficiency. For example, you may consider creating a short video on a tablet about a question that is asked a lot so students can refer to it on their own time. Or you may consider using Google Drive or Dropbox to save course material so it can be accessed anywhere at any time. Lastly, you may want to check out such resources such as Evernote (www.evernote.com), Explain Everything, (www.explaineverything.com) or Google Apps (http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/education/) to find a plethora of ways to facilitate simple technology integration and other solutions to your course needs. If you plan on using a novel application as part of an in-class activity, make sure you test it out in the classroom before class. It working on your home computer does not guarantee it will work with the projector and wireless in your classroom.·      Take advantage of university resources! Most colleges and universities have faculty development centers or teaching resources. While there are days it can seem difficult to take an hour to attend a presentation, these trainings can be highly valuable. In addition, faculty members should learn about the other campus resources that may be beneficial such as the Writing Center, Office of Disability Services, and the Academic Advising services. There are other professionals on campus that can assist students, so use them! Lastly, faculty members should consider collaborating with the campus library. Librarians can inform you of new books and articles related to your course and resources for students.·      Ask for help! New faculty members often report feeling overwhelmed by course preparation tasks their first, second, and sometimes 5th semester of teaching. It is very common to feel this way. I have found that once I have taught the same course 4-5 times I start to feel more confident in my teaching, course activities, and assignments. Preparing for a course for the first time is incredibly draining and can easily take precedence over other required tasks because you have to be ready to teach each week. Course preparation does get better over time! Experienced faculty members can provide support and mentorship to new faculty members by sharing or reviewing syllabi, observing classes, and meeting with the faculty member to review lesson plans and course feedback.Other tips:·      Teach early in the week if you can- it forces you to be efficient, and leaves the rest of the week for other tasks.·      Take notes- use Adobe to highlight and make notes on the important features in your reading. This improves your efficiency in reading them on subsequent occasions. The same can be done with texts if you use the kindle/iBook version.·      Use the notes feature in PowerPoint to remind you what you were thinking when you made the slide a year ago. Be kind to your future self! Charts are a good place to use this strategy. Bullet the important points you want to make. You can make notes on anecdotes or examples so you don't have to reinvent them each year. You can come up with new ones of course, but having the old ones helps you improve them each time.How are you efficient in course preparation? Please share your tips with us!

How do You Prepare for the New Academic Year?

August 22, 2013

By Bryn Harris

With the new academic year upon us, we share our strategies for preparing for the fall semester.RobBeing a university professor has to be one of the greatest jobs in the world. It is hard to imagine a career that would match it in terms of flexibility with regard to topics of study and scheduling. With the exception of service obligations and teaching, you really do make your own hours. Indeed, to a large extent you can choose how much time you allocate to the big three areas of effort: research, teaching and service. For many of us, this is a tremendous asset, but it can also lead to stress and undermine our success when we do not set clear priorities and devise mechanisms to structure our time. The parameters of this blog will not allow me to go into any significant detail initially on this topic, but let me hit on some important themes here and we can follow-up with discussion or perhaps another thread. Two notions guide my advice for beginning of the semester planning:1.     Because we have so much control over how we allocate our time an important skill to develop as a university professor is regulating our motivation. This involves forethought and planning.2.     Often, the frequency and proximity of the feedback we receive about our work is high and closer respectively for teaching and service than it is for research. For many of us it is important to supplement feedback on our progress in research by goal setting and keeping track of our progress.I believe it is important to take a significant amount of time off in the summer. For me personally, I need the time to think about other things, to reenergize and to pursue other interests. For me, getting geared up for the new academic year is all about planning and preparing to get started on the right foot and to keep my motivation high for those things that are most important to me. The key things I do to keep motivation high are to positively frame my work, to set short and long-term goals, to plan how much time I will allocate to achieving these goals (protecting time), and to pick two or three things that will take priority over all other tasks. Planning is so important at this time of the year, because when the semester gets rolling, it is easy to become overwhelmed and to get into what I call “survival mode.” Survival mode is when you are reacting instead of acting- like riding in a rollercoaster as opposed to driving a car. It is not fun. Planning ahead and setting clear priorities will help you make the most of your time when you get into those situations. Right now I am planning studies and writing projects I will complete over the fall semester (detailed plans) and spring semester (less detailed plans). Though in past years, I have instead allocated time for reading about a new area of interest to get to that point where I can design and write-up those studies.A key motivation killer is getting overwhelmed. For me, writing down the things I need to do helps me keep from getting to that point. Well, that is one part of it. Sometimes that list can be intimidating itself, but when you plan when you will do each task in your calendar or whiteboard, it has the magical effect of making it much less so. We have so many little tasks to do to get ready for the new semester (updating syllabi, setting up blackboard/WebCT sites, finishing up tasks that were supposed to be done over the summer…) that we can easily fill up our days and feel like we have not accomplished much at all. Also, a lot of valuable time can be spent spinning our wheels because we don’t know what to do next. This is especially true when we finish a big task. When you have a well thought out calendar, it is possible to reward productivity on difficult tasks with something else that we might think of as more fun. I like to schedule more fun kinds of tasks later in the day. Like writing this post for example. I worked on a grant budget this morning (not that much fun for me), and I am now doing something much more fun (the good old Premack Principle works for us all). It is quite possible that I will go for a sail when I am done writing this because I finished my tasks for the day—it is still summer after all.

BrynThe beginning of the academic year is exciting yet also anxiety provoking. The summer always seems too short, and my ideas for preparing for the academic year far in advance are never realized. However, in the past five years, I have learned a few strategies that help start the academic year positively and efficiently.1)   Time Management – This is the concept that seems to be the most important to my productivity. Of course, it is also critical to consider when preparing for the new year. Now that I have an 11-month-old son, I find it even more important to create work time and family time. My husband and I discuss childcare, family obligations, and other issues far in advance to eliminate the dreaded “I thought you were picking him up?” scenario. I also spend some time at the beginning of the year creating yearlong goals for each of my responsibilities (research, teaching, and service). Lastly, on Sunday evening, I go over my weekly, monthly, and longitudinal to-do lists and make sure I am focusing on the most important tasks during the week. As an early career scholar it is easy to spend a lot of your time working. However, if you are more purposeful with your time, I think you will find you feel more productive.2)   Calendar Creation - I allocate some time in mid-August to prepare my semester-long calendar. I teach two days a week, and I try to use those days to work on course preparation, grade, advise/mentor students, and attend meetings at my university. I then allocate other days of the week to research and service tasks. By blocking off time in my calendar for specific tasks, I find I am more productive in those areas. In terms of my courses, I make sure that assignments are not due at the same time so that I am not struggling to provide feedback in a timely manner. I also upload all materials to our online course management system one week prior to class and request that students print materials themselves if they wish.3)   Grant Submissions – Grant RFPs always seem to have such short deadlines! At the beginning of the year, I email the director of grant services at my university to inform her of the grants I intend to apply for the year. She sends valuable reminders to me prior to the RFP, during the grant writing process, and also informs me of other grants I may be interested in. This assistance is invaluable! While I understand that not all readers will be writing grants, my advice would be to find people at your university who can support you in your endeavors – you do not need to do this alone!

AmandaAs Rob notes, one of the greatest advantages of this career is the flexibility, but capitalizing on this freedom and avoiding its potential pitfalls requires intentionality in one’s professional activities. Thus, for me, August is a time for reflection and strategizing. The beginning of a new academic year provides a natural point at which to reflect on the activities of the previous year, but more importantly, to think back on my own practices to consider what worked and what didn’t, what I did well and what I can do better.I am a list-maker, so this is a great time to consolidate my various project lists for research, teaching, service, and professional development (which can get disorganized when I kick into survival mode at the end of the semester) to re-prioritize and strategize for how to accomplish my goals given what I’ve learned over the past year and how each project aligns with my annual goals and long-term targets. This year, I attend primarily to my research projects, thinking carefully about where each project is, how it fits (or doesn’t—file-drawering is a topic for another day) with my research agenda and long-term goals, and on what timeline it should move forward. Once I’ve developed a plan for the term, I work out from there to account for my other responsibilities. Building my annual plan around research works for me because my position is more heavily loaded on research and I am not teaching this fall, but for others, having teaching activities at the core might make more sense.Like Bryn, I set aside time to revisit my calendar, entering all obligatory activities (e.g., faculty meetings, committee meetings, research group, spring classes) for the academic year and preferred activities (e.g., spin class) so I can build in office hours and writing time. The two days of the week in which I have standing meetings are the ones I reserve for teaching/advising and service activities. I’ve learned that compartmentalizing each domain in this way can help minimize the overflow that often crowds out writing time.I am also not one of those people who can progress on papers when writing in small chunks of time, so I like to block out larger segments of time for research activities and writing time. My intent is to align my actual apportionment of time with my workload. By scheduling out the obligatory events for the year, I can then fill in research and writing time and develop targets for each project that account for the real constraints on my schedule. Color-blocking (i.e., red for teaching, orange for advising, green for meetings, blue for research activities, purple for writing, etc.) provides an easy visual  that I use to determine whether my actual time allotment corresponds with my workload and goals. I then make the adjustments necessary either in specific activities or in my commitments to bring the two into alignment.Having done these two main activities, I feel invigorated for the new academic year. There are certainly smaller tasks that must be done, but the project lists and calendaring provide a road map for the coming term. I have a plan and I know what I want and need to accomplish over the months to come. I’ll revisit my project list every few weeks and tweak my calendar as necessary, but for now, I’ve got a clear (color-coded) vision of what the fall semester holds.What do you do to gear up for the new academic year?