Survival Strategies in the Face of Shutdowns

[dr_codex]

Jumping off a post of Spork's:

This is getting off topic and maybe should be a separate thread (I'm not complaining though), but the strategy I have adopted is to try to get a toehold in non-faculty work within the university -- i.e., assessment, retention, strategic planning, LMS management, etc. While I am still full-time faculty and have not converted to a staff or administrative position, my goal is to be front and center in administrators' minds when the possibility of doing so arises. There are multiple disadvantages to this strategy though -- namely that it takes time to cultivate relationships and to sufficiently demonstrate that one possesses the non-faculty skill sets that the university deems important. Also it's not going to be a possibility for everybody, if the university is shutting down multiple academic programs.

This could be a verbatim report of conversations around the table in my house. We aren't facing a shutdown, but it's pretty clear that exit strategies should be prepared.

So: What are your exit strategies? What else can I be doing to stay on when radical restructuring comes?

[spork]

Can you bring in grant money? Grants will put a faculty member at the top of the "retain" list.

[dr_codex]

Can you bring in grant money? Grants will put a faculty member at the top of the "retain" list.

Only in pitiful amounts. Maybe enough for an RA or a TA, in salary. But perhaps I'm thinking too small. When the development office comes around looking for "asks", mine are too modest for them to pitch to donors.

Just to say, my spouse & are are doing almost everything you list in your original post, quoted above. I don't know if any of them would save us, but you never know. One of my parents' coworkers had a soft landing running a testing center, back in the 1990s, because he had a certain amount of charm, a certain amount of tact, some skills as a manager, and no obvious fear of computers. Nobody saw the need for such a job until he identified it, basically creating his own gig.

Keep those ideas coming....

[polly_mer]

What skillsets and networking can you do now that is valued in your field or in the academic setting while preparing you for non-academic jobs?

For example, I learned R, polished up my Python, and became proficient in SQL as part of my administrator duties that were easily categorized as data science on a CV.  I took a bunch of workshops that also went on my CV as evidence that this old dog is actively seeking out new tricks.  I also spend a lot of time as an officer of various professional societies to keep up my network and to polish some other soft skills.

People made fun of me on the old fora because that institutional researcher job didn't require a PhD in engineering.  However, when the time came to get a job outside of Super Dinky, having recent experience in those areas that weren't common when I was in college lo those many years ago as well as having a solid background in an area of my field that has become hot again (much less easy to predict and time) made getting another job straightforward.  I wouldn't have gotten the job I have if I had just been relying on my all-but-outdated PhD without the new skills and solid evidence that I'm in continuous learning mode.

[Volhiker78]

Grant money would be my highest priority.  Size of grant is less important than getting something.  A small grant shows you have ability to get something and the ability to get a larger grant in the future.  Second highest priority would be hitting up contacts outside of academia in lucrative business world - for me,  that would be pharma.  Lots of large pharma companies have the ability to pay for outside research.  If not that, at least get some feel for consulting possibilities.  Third priority would be what you mention,  more visibility within university.  Fourth priority would be more visibility in your professional societies.  Good luck.   

[mamselle]

A good area in pharma is the regular monthly seminars that are semi-required/mandated at some places (I used to schedule these and pay the honoraria).

Consultants visited on a 6-times-a-year basis--usually the same person for a few years, and for quite awhile, it was the lab director/PI of our R&D VPs Ph. D./post doc program (I never knew which). They spent the day, met with the 4 labs en masse, each, then did 1-on1's with the directors--with lunch, dinner, and a night's hotel stay thrown in when they were further away. This also put them in the area of several other labs and school facilities, so networking of other kinds would have been possible, too...

So if you have a student somewhere who's doing well...

On alternate months, a presentation on a topic or problem a particular lab was dealing with--or a general "best pratices" update of some sort--was offered. Similar set up with the meetings, food, and hotel stay; these were also, often, either profs in the area with some tie to one of the lab directors or recently-published folks whose research areas were germane to the labs' needs. A couple were co-publishing patents, etc., with those labs, as well.

It's  a bit of a tight-knit community, but we'd get proposals and off-prints with suggested availability (I'll be in town for this conference, could discuss xxx in more detail, if that's of interest," etc.)

So just piggybacking some how-to details in one particular area.

M.

[polly_mer]

Grant money would be my highest priority.  Size of grant is less important than getting something.  A small grant shows you have ability to get something and the ability to get a larger grant in the future. 

That assertion depends on where one is, what type of grant, and what's normal.

If the expectation and norm already was reasonable grant activity and the professor was meeting those norms, then getting one more small grant does nothing.  Getting a big grant and being able to move as a competitive job candidate is a different story, but I don't know too many people who go from zero to huge.  I do know a fair number of people who went from pretty good to excellent in a few years as their record grew so that more grant applications were finally paying off.

However, I've seen people shoot themselves in the foot by getting a small amount of grant money for their personal research when research was not at all valued at the institution.  However, the pitifully small amount was then not a boost to the CV, either, because it wasn't enough to be competitive for a position at a research-expected institution and also indicated a research interest that wasn't at all appealing to other teaching-only institutions.

At smaller places with no expectation of grant funding, I've seen people make getting external grants for the good of the institution work for them.  There, small grants that build to bigger grants for trying new academic programs, trying new student engagement programs, providing extra scholarships for students, or other effects that aren't mostly one's own personal benefit did give confidence that more grants would be coming.  However, that's also less a faculty role and more an administrative role when the time comes to value someone internally over someone else on the job chopping block.

I've also seen people shoot themselves in the foot by choosing a small enough grant in a place with so little institutional infrastructure for grant administration that the institution declined the grant because the new administrative effort would cost more than the grant was worth.  Creating a new negative revenue stream for the institution is not a good idea.

[spork]

I work at a place that is in-between the two types of institutions that polly mentions in her last two paragraphs. Our advancement office is geared toward cultivating private donors who want their names on remodeled auditoriums or buildings. And our grants officer really only pushes the button to upload application documents required by federal agencies or foundations -- after the faculty member has done all the work to identify the funding source and write the application. Despite this, a faculty member who gets a grant -- especially one from a foundation that finances programming or infrastructure -- receives gold stars and smiley faces from the top leadership because of "enhancing" the university's reputation.

[fourhats]

Grant funding in substantial amounts is very field-dependent. The OP says that they can only get them in small amounts. In the humanities, most notably, substantial grants are few and far between. Being marketable in academia is tied to publication, often of books. It's entirely different from STEM fields.

[mamselle]

Shifting to a more practical strategy, [gleaned from reading this forum for awhile now] always cultivate people outside your own department as friends who can speak to your good reputation as a good campus citizen, respected contributor to the school's larger needs, etc....just in case you end up finding it hard to get an LoR out of anyone within your department, or if you decide to start looking much earlier and don't want anyone to know.

Also [from personal experience] keep an up-to-date list of contacts and campus office numbers/emails, etc., at home, in case you need references or paperwork of some kind while in transition, and you don't want to go on-campus to get them. And--this is not always possible, or is questioned as valid in some cases--have copies of your most important contributions in a file at home for easy reference, whether on paper or electronically or both. You may want them for an interview or to refresh your memory about some aspect of your past work.

In cases where lay-offs happen (not TT settings, where you have a terminal year, but office settings and corporate sites, where Security might show up with the proverbial two bankers' boxes and ask for your keys some morning....) I was asked by astute lab directors to compile a table of the contact info for all willing personnel when we knew lay-offs were pending, in order to make it possible for everyone to reach out to each other for support, LoR's, etc.

So--have an exit strategy at the more granular level, too.

M.

[Hibush]

Since the development office comes around, that could be a good avenue for higher attention within the system. You want to be the faculty member who is the main cultivator of a prospective big donor.
Find out from developments what kind of things their biggest fish are generally interested in. Then develop a target that has the right characteristics. A big ask might be an endowed faculty position. If so, come up with a new position that increases capacity in some wonderful way. Offer to tell the prospect about what the potential is in that area, and what efforts you are making now. (They will do the ask, and even begin the conversation about how the donor can help you reach that big goal.)
If the head of development thinks you are essential, you have a good advocate.

[spork]

So this isn't really a strategy in terms of keeping one's job, more like preparing for a worst case scenario:  I would go into survival savings mode. Cut out all extraneous household expenses. A few thousand dollars in savings each year isn't going to compensate for job loss, but it can give you a buffer.