On past episodes of this podcast, we’ve discussed several stages of the career path for academics including the transition from grad school to faculty and decisions to move to administrative positions. In this episode, Alark Joshi and Victoria Hallinan join us to discuss the role that a postdoc may play in an academic’s career trajectory.
Alark is a professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. His work focuses on data visualization literacy and strategies for inclusive computer science education. Victoria is the Program Director for Professional Development in the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Yale University. Alark and Victoria are the co-authors of Postdoc: How to Navigate Your Career After Grad School, which has recently been released by Johns Hopkins Press.
Show Notes
- Hallinan, Victoria and Alark Joshi (2026). Postdoc: How to Navigate Your Career After Grad School. Johns Hopkins University Press. (A 30% discount on this book is available by using the code: HTWN)
- National Postdoc Association
- Pathways to STEM
- Pathways to Arts and Humanities
- Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning at Yale
- Postdoc Matter podcast
Transcript
John: On past episodes of this podcast, we’ve discussed several stages of the career path for academics including the transition from grad school to faculty and decisions to move to administrative positions. In this episode, we discuss the role that a postdoc may play in an academic’s career trajectory.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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John: Our guests today are Alark Joshi and Victoria Hallinan. Alark is a professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. His work focuses on data visualization literacy and strategies for inclusive computer science education. Victoria is the Program Director for Professional Development in the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Yale University. Alark and Victoria are the co-authors of Postdoc: How to Navigate Your Career After Grad School, which has recently been released by Johns Hopkins Press. Welcome, Alark and Victoria.
Alark: Thank you for having us. We’re excited to be on the podcast.
Victoria: Yeah, thank you so much. Really looking forward to chatting with you today.
Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Alark, are you drinking tea with us today?
Alark: Yes, Earl Gray, lifelong drinker. So thank you for asking.
Rebecca: Nice. How about you, Victoria?
Victoria: Yeah, I have a honey chai turmeric, which has all the warming spices of a chai, but none of the caffeine. So perfect for the afternoon for me, at least.
John: And along that theme, I have a Medley of Mint by Twinings, one of their pyramid type bags of tea, because I’ve already had four or five doses of caffeine earlier today, and I probably want to sleep at some point tonight.
Rebecca: On the opposing side, [LAUGHTER] I have a English afternoon tea, a little boost this afternoon.
Victoria: Lovely.
John: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss your new book on postdocs. Can you tell us a little bit about the origin of this book project?
Alark: Sure. So most of your listeners are probably familiar with the term “postdoc,” but for anyone who’s not, we thought we’d give a brief explanation. So the National Postdoc Association defines a postdoc as an individual holding a doctoral degree who is engaged in a temporary period of mentored research and/or scholarly training for the purpose of acquiring professional skills needed to pursue a career path of their choosing. Now that’s quite a mouthful, and I want to highlight “temporary period” and “acquiring skills” as keywords in that definition because we address them in the book, and we will definitely revisit them in this interview. Now let me tell you a little bit about the origin story of this book. In 2023, I spent the summer working at Yale University, where I connected with Victoria. As a former postdoc. I conducted a few workshops for postdocs about how to apply for faculty positions, how do you survive and maybe even thrive, dare I say, in your first year [LAUGHTER] as a new academic member of the faculty, and we also touched on navigating difficult situations in your research group or unit as a postdoc that they might face. And as both of us worked with postdocs, we found that there seemed to be a hidden curriculum about transitioning out of a postdoc into either a faculty position or getting that first industry job, or maybe even transitioning into an academic administration or a university administration job. And so we found that postdocs felt isolated at times. They sometimes struggled to navigate difficult situations. Many of them were international postdocs, and so they struggled with challenges with their visa, even trying to find their first housing or settling into a new lab or even a new country. And so both Victoria and I thought we really wanted to instill this sense of agency among the postdocs. We wanted to remind them of the importance of community, whether it’s inside or outside their research group at the university level within their communities, and also emphasize the value of building a mentoring team to support them as they apply for and transition into their next career step. And so, after all of that, we decided to address these issues and write this book.
Rebecca: A book to solve some hidden curriculum issues [LAUGHTER] is always a good start. You started hinting at some of the ideas and topics that are addressed in the book. Can you give us a quick overview of some of those key things?
Victoria: Yeah, I’m happy to supply some spoilers for the book [LAUGHTER] as you go to pick up your copy. So we first of all really frame the book not just around themes or topics, but also thinking chronologically about your stages as a postdoc. So for the first chapters, we were thinking about someone who’s considering a postdoc or is about to settle in and start their postdoc. So these two chapters focus on how can you be productive in your new environment? Get your feet under you and start thinking not only about how am I going to fulfill the responsibilities and expectations of the role I was hired for, but also really reflecting on what do you personally want to achieve here, so some self-assessment, self-reflection, and goal setting. And then in the second chapter, what we want to highlight is the strong complements to focusing on your professional development, which is to find your community and your sense of belonging. You may be in a new institution, a new country, and a new person who is now possibly in charge of much of your success here and beyond, in the form of this faculty mentor you have as a postdoc. So we wanted to make sure that this was front and center in this first part of the book. So then we segue into okay, now you’re here and settled in. And when we were looking at different postdoc roles, many of them address areas around research, which may include grant seeking or maintaining grants and writing and publications, and that many postdoc positions may or may not have teaching incorporated into them, but certainly, you can seek out teaching opportunities. So we focus on how do you address these many myriad of opportunities that you may have, and aim to move forward and make progress in your own personal and professional development therein. So equally important here, however, is what you may encounter as a postdoc along the way, and which Awas starting to allude to talking about the book broadly, that many postdocs may feel isolated or may encounter challenges in their roles for a variety of reasons, either personal or also depending on who they’re working with, how the research goes, how the funding goes, as another potential challenge. So we dedicate an entire chapter to navigating difficult situations as a postdoc, where we offer some potential case scenarios in the hope that someone reading this will then be thinking about: “okay what if I encounter this,” so that they can work on addressing the challenge or remediating the situation as soon as possible before it escalates further or builds further. So then the second half of the book really focuses on that next career step because, as Alark mentioned, a postdoc role should be honing your skills, but also really thinking about not only what you want to do next, but how to cultivate the kinds of experiences and skills you need to successfully pursue that next job wherever it might be. So many PhDs start a postdoc interested in pursuing a tenure-track faculty role afterwards, so we have a chapter all about how to understand what faculty roles look like, their variety, and what that means in terms of teaching, service, research expectations, so to help a postdoc really understand what those options are and which ones might be the best ones for them to pursue based on their interests. And we furthermore and became increasingly relevant as we were writing the book that we really want to encourage postdocs to consider a wide variety of potential career steps. So, as part of that, we have a chapter dedicated to thinking about non-faculty roles, which might be in industry or government and policy, it might be in academia, like Alark mentioned, and maybe pursuing something that is more administrative or that may have a lot of the same responsibilities as a faculty role, but just outside of that tenure context. So, for instance, at my institution, I see an increasing number of research scientist roles, which are faculty roles, but not that same tenure-track approach, and have both the benefits and drawbacks of some of those differences. And then finally, the big takeaway I think throughout this book is that both the postdoc and that next step should not be this solo endeavor.
And throughout, we really want to emphasize engaging with resources and seeking out help, and that this is not something you should be trying to do alone. That, as a PhD, you are frequently trying to define yourself through difference, that you have this niche area of research, or you are the best at this, or most knowledgeable about that, and we think that that can sometimes give PhDs a false sense of I should be able to succeed on my own or with very little help, and that just because you are this amazing scholar and teacher, we want to note that throughout your career, during your postdoc role, and afterwards as you move on to that next role, it is about who you go to for help building things like a mentoring team, but also using the resources at your disposal. So the final two chapters really emphasize that. The penultimate chapter talks about how to survive and thrive in your first year as a faculty member, which we were realizing similarly had a big hidden curriculum behind it as well, and finally thinking about navigating the system of academia as an international postdoc with a deluge of information about once more how to connect with resources, but also how to think about everything from the American tax system, health insurance, and also h ow acclimating to a new culture and expectations, especially in professional and academic contexts, takes time and does mean you do need to seek others’ perspectives, engage with others who can help you, and ask questions.
Alark: One of the things I wanted to add was that actually, while we both have a lot of experience with this, we interviewed many different individuals for each of the chapters, and so we actually have 20 interviews that have been transcribed, edited, and added to each chapter. So not 20 per chapter, but 20 total in the book. [LAUGHTER] So I feel like that really was one of the most fun activities that we did, and we really enjoyed interviewing people who are in academia, industry, as well as academic administration, and we added those interviews in each of these chapters.
John: When I was in grad school back in the last century, postdocs were relatively rare in economics, but my son was working on his PhD about 20 years or so ago in economics, and he talked about the growth of postdocs. And in fact, his wife, who’s also an economist, took a postdoc position right after grad school. Have we seen growth in postdocs in many disciplines?
Alark: Yeah, definitely. Actually, according to the National Postdoctoral Association’s 2023 poll, there are more than 72,000 postdocs now in the United States, and so while there has been an overall upward trend in the number of postdocs being hired at research labs and university labs in the United States, especially after World War II, we are currently seeing a downturn in the number of postdocs that are being hired due to the lack of funding at the federal and state levels, as well as due to the visa challenges that international postdocs are facing. So that’s just what the current situation is. Additionally, while these positions were initially supposed to be only two- to three-year temporary positions, like I said earlier, they have now become longer in duration, with some postdocs taking up to five or even six years. And so these trends may be making some PhDs reluctant to pursue a postdoc or even an academic role, since the journey to a full-time, well-paying position is just getting longer.
Rebecca: What fields are postdocs most common in?
Victoria: Yeah, so it’s difficult to give precise good numbers, but it’s definitely historically been more STEM, and especially biomedical, dominated, though I have been seeing some more kind of normalization of postdocs in social sciences and humanities. So, for instance, John, thinking about your son and your daughter-in-law, see an increasing number of PhDs looking at at least and potentially pursuing a postdoc, even if they are outside of biomedical fields or STEM fields. But there are some groups within the United States that do regularly survey the populations related to their disciplines to understand what are PhDs in their fields doing next, and that includes understanding how many postdocs there are. So the National Institutes for Health, for instance, puts out a regular report, and in 2024 they said there are 45,000 postdocs in biomedical research that they were kind of keeping track of, and in 2024, the National Science Foundation similarly did a survey of graduate students and postdocs in science and engineering, and they were able to find almost 70,000 postdocs, the majority of which were in STEM, broadly speaking, but 14% in engineering. But these numbers obviously miss out on postdocs in social sciences like economics, humanities, arts, and related fields like law and management. So, to give you a sense, at Yale University we have about 1,500 postdocs, and about 900 of those 1,500 are in our School of Medicine or Public Health or Nursing. So, likely doing biomedical research specifically. Another 200 or so are in STEM outside of biomed, and then we’ve got 96 in engineering, 68 in social sciences, and the final 90 or so are in humanities, law, we have two in architecture, management, or in interdisciplinary centers. So postdoc position really varies in terms of not just discipline, but what you may be doing as that postdoc role. Likely you’re doing some kind of research, but there are also postdoc positions focused on pedagogy, education, teaching, and I’m not just talking about classroom teaching in higher education, but we, for instance, have an art gallery that has postdocs who do curatorial and educational roles around public history, art, and thinking about more K through 12, as well as other populations.
John: What are some of the benefits to pursuing a postdoc as part of your career path?
Alark: Having actually done a postdoc myself, I think pursuing a postdoc is a fantastic idea. I think, like I said earlier, traditionally a postdoc has been a time for an individual to really get more research experience, get some more teaching experience, and maybe even get some experience mentoring undergraduate or graduate students after they finish their PhD, and so it is supposed to be a training-oriented position to help individuals determine your career path going forward and make some strides along that direction to successfully pursue that path. I think it can really be an opportunity to develop the skills and experiences you need to identify that kind of career and maybe even think about the kind of workplace you hope to join when you are done with your postdoc. Many of us, I definitely, was obsessed with my doctoral dissertation. So when I finished, I was able to broaden my research agenda, work on different skills that I wanted to acquire during my postdoc, and you can acquire those skills either in your research lab or even through maybe leadership at the postdoc association or other volunteering opportunities on campus or in your community. And given how the postdoc position is supposed to be a mentored experience to support your next career step, it’s definitely an opportunity to explore alternative career paths as well as expand your professional network. Like we’ve said earlier, many postdocs think that a tenure-track position at a research 1 university is the only path forward after your postdoc, but we talk about this in the book that that’s one option, but there are many different options, even just in academia and obviously industry and administration. In this book, we specifically advise postdocs to develop a mentoring team for support instead of depending on only one or two mentors. Your mentoring team may include a mentor from, let’s say, the Center for Teaching and L earning, who can offer you advice on improving your teaching skills, especially if you have had no experience teaching during your PhD. As someone who served on a hiring committee, we definitely look at someone who has had some teaching experience more favorably than someone who just has TA experience as a teaching assistant. Similarly, you might have a faculty mentor, maybe who’s not your postdoc advisor, but someone either from your department or maybe even from another university who can serve as a sounding board for research discussions. Maybe you have a mentor from the writing center at your university who can provide feedback on even things like your research and teaching statements as you apply for faculty positions, and they may even be able to give you feedback on your research proposals that you might use for fellowship applications. The goal is to kind of add additional mentors as your career develops and get that feedback that you need as you continue to evolve and grow your career.
Rebecca: As a student considering a postdoc, what are some of the things they should think about or take into account as they make a decision about what to pursue?
Victoria: I’d say certainly not to pursue a postdoc purely out of inertia. And what I don’t mean to say by that is that you can and should pursue a postdoc if you want to better figure out what you want your next career step to be in terms of a full-time position after your doctorate, but that going in with really thinking about what could this postdoc position do for me, because they are frequently listed as more traditional job advertisements, they may appear as something where okay, this is basically me having a job that will hold me over for a few years. But while that mentality can certainly help you grow certain kinds of skills, what we really advocate for in terms of pursuing a postdoc role is to see what it can do for you, not just in terms of fulfilling the responsibilities and expectations outlined in a job advertisement for a postdoc role. And there are of course postdoc roles that you really make your own and are defined that way. But many of them, especially in biomedical research, for instance, you are coming in to help with a larger project that may already be defined, for example. So you really need to go in thinking, yes, I will be able to grow these certain research skills and content knowledge. But what else? What else could I do if I pursue this kind of role? So first and foremost, just picking up on what Alark was already saying around having a mentoring team you consult with as you think about that next career step as a graduate student, that they should be able to give you some perspective around what a postdoc could and could not do for you from their experiences, wherever they may be in their careers and ways that they work within your discipline or beyond. And aside from considering, do I want to pursue a postdoc generally? As you start zooming in on which ones and where, that really understanding what are the resources available at that institution in terms of not just research skills but also mentorship. What kinds of faculty are there, and what kinds of not just research do they do, but do they have awards in teaching or mentorship? Is there mentorship workshops available for postdocs, for faculty members, and to also think about what resources there are for you to develop skills you might want to explore further or gain more mastery over, like teaching and professional development skills more broadly speaking, everything from communication to negotiating your first job offer or what have you. And of course, very important when you are considering a postdoc role is who your faculty mentor will be. So when you reach that interview stage, remembering that of course this interview is not just about them understanding if you are a good fit for what they’re looking for in a postdoc, but are they a good fit for you in terms of, once more, not just the research and knowledge that you would gain, but also in terms of helping you grow and pursue that next career step, and to do so in a way that you feel supported and that your postdoc role includes professional development, includes career exploration, and it’s not just something you’re trying to fit in on the side or excluding your faculty mentor in that process, but rather ideally as a joint endeavor that you’re all on board with. So, understanding are your expectations for the role and support you need aligned, and that beyond that, really even at the interview stage, asking concrete questions about resources. So this is everything from you can ask about moving expenses. Is that something that can be afforded as part of hiring you? But also, will you have support for teaching if you want to engage with it, if it’s not part of that postdoc role? Will you be able to attend conferences, have opportunities to manage your own project. Really asking specific questions about what you can do and what you would have support for, to get a sense of what will this faculty member be like as a mentor. And finally, as part of that, we really emphasize that it’s important before you start this role, and once more, ideally at the interview stage, to identify the culture of this unit you’re joining, whether it’s a lab or a department, a research group. Are there any red flags? And one of the ways that we think you can help understand this is to talk to postdocs who are alumni from that unit and/or current postdocs. Sometimes research groups might have graduate students or postdocs or other folks who are engaged in the research together that you could also similarly reach out to. And I would even in an interview ask the faculty mentor, “Hey, what kinds of roles have your postdocs moved on to? Can I talk to some of them?” Though certainly searching on LinkedIn or elsewhere can also yield some results too. But seeing how your faculty mentor responds to that kind of question might give you a good clue of what kind of mentor they’ll be. If they’re excited and say, “Oh yes, so and so went on and did this, and this person went over here,” that also gives you some good information and also gives you a sense of the kinds of support you might receive as a postdoc. And finally, of course, thinking before pursuing a postdoc about: Do you have other factors and priorities to keep in mind? Do you need to be in a specific geographic location or cost of living? Do you have particular family needs, either in terms of caring for family you currently have, or many postdocs, depending on when they started their PhD, might be at a stage where they may be considering starting a family, for instance. So, understanding will this postdoc role be supportive of that? A nd once more, what resources are available for having a family, for leave, and for other things at your institution can really help you zoom in on which options are best, but also set yourself up for success in that postdoc role.
John: So far, the discussion has mostly been about the benefits and the factors that individuals considering going for a postdoc should take into account, but from the other side of the transaction, what are the benefits of a postdoc to the host institution considering providing postdoc positions.
Victoria: Honestly, some institutions may see postdocs simply as good, cheap labor. That they are experts. They have highly refined skills. They can do a lot to advance a research agenda. So it is important for someone thinking about a postdoc as a role for themselves to consider how they would get the most out of this opportunity. Ideally, an institution is seeing what I see when I think about postdocs – that they are able to advance research in such a wonderful way that they are making us better every day. That they also promote excellent teaching, as well as mentoring young scholars, and I think about mentoring and teaching as a two-way endeavor. So even if this postdoc position does not entail teaching, in your interaction as a postdoc with those you mentor and helping them think about themselves as future mentors and teachers, as well as your own faculty member, that they, in working with you and seeing your approach to mentorship, teaching, training others, are no doubt hopefully consciously, but also subconsciously learning from you about different approaches, perspectives, and styles there. And finally, overall, just what postdocs contribute to an institution’s community. We have an incredibly vibrant postdoc population at Yale University, and they are able to not just diversify our perspectives on what it means to do research, teaching, and learning, but really make our community so much more thoughtful, strategic, and to really be thinking about okay, who is included here? How are we moving things forward? but doing so in a supportive way and thinking about how to move everyone forward.
Rebecca: This conversation is leading me to wonder a little bit about what the interview process for a postdoc looks like in comparison to a faculty position for those that might be working with postdocs or might be considering postdocs but have no idea what that looks like.
Victoria: Yeah, I think we both probably have a little perspective on this. I can share from my side that the interview process can diverge wildly depending on the nature of the funding for the postdoc role, the faculty member, and the discipline. So, for instance, you might be able to apply to a postdoc role that, as I mentioned earlier, looks like a traditional job advertisement, asks for some basics around curriculum vitae, maybe a cover letter, but then has maybe an interview before hiring. There are also postdoc roles that, depending on their funding and how they function have more of a larger amount of materials required along the lines of a faculty role, and especially if it involves teaching, for instance, maybe there will be a component of the interview that entails a teaching demo, or certainly talking about your teaching and everything in between, really. And the final thing I’ll say before, very curious to hear Alark’s perspective on this, is finding a postdoc role is not always looking up and finding a job advertisement at an institution or that someone’s posted on LinkedIn or in other venues. But a lot of times we encourage graduate students, particularly if they are in certain disciplines, to actually go to an institution’s website, look up their discipline, and find faculty who are doing research they are interested in, and cold emailing them or asking your mentoring team to help connect you if they know this person, introducing yourself and saying, “I would love to join your research group. Here’s what I’m doing. Would you be able to hire me in a postdoc role?” And that is very different than a tenure-track faculty role application process in the U.S. for instance, or maybe any kind of application process someone who’s a PhD has done before. So something that having that mentoring team to talk to, saying that I’m interested in a postdoc role? What does that look like in our discipline? And sometimes it is you find the job ad, but sometimes it is you cold email someone and hope that they are willing to respond to that email. But Alark, I’m curious what you think here or what you’ve experienced.
Alark: Yeah, I mean my experience was very similar in some ways, where I had to submit a cover letter and a CV just by email to the professor who had the postdoc position. But then once we had a phone conversation, then I traveled up to New Haven, and then I had my research presentation. So they had me give a research presentation to a bigger research group, which had four professors, all of their PhD students and postdocs, and so there was about an hour’s presentation with some Q&A. That was followed by meeting with individual members of the specific research group that I was joining. So there were about three to four meetings with like students and postdocs, and then one meeting with the actual advisor who was going to hire me. This was done by lunchtime, and then we all went out to lunch as a group. We hung out, talked about other things other than just research topics. And by the end of lunch, I think that was the end of it. So it was like a, I guess, a half faculty interview kind of a thing where we didn’t really go all the way in terms of submitting teaching statements and research statements, but there was still an opportunity to get to know other people in the lab other than just the primary investigator.
John: So postdocs are in a somewhat unique position in the university where they’re somewhere between being a student and a full-time member of the community. What are some of the challenges that this might cause for people who are working as a postdoc?
Alark: Postdocs face a variety of different challenges, and one of those is lacking a sense of belonging due to the fact that even if you are a local student, you might just be focused on doing research in your lab, maybe even by yourself for many hours a day, and that can be very draining and frustrating sometimes, because as we all know, research doesn’t always work out the way we want. There are things like lack of institutional support. You mentioned this, John, that you are neither a student, you are neither a faculty member or a permanent staff member, so you are kind of in between. And different units at the university level don’t really know how to handle postdocs, and so sometimes they can fall through the gaps. There’s also a bit of a lack of understanding of their particular professional needs because of this in-between status. Additionally, the pay and benefits can be a lot lower. That can be frustrating for postdocs. We’ve talked a little bit about how majority of the postdocs are international and they face challenges around adjusting to a new lab institution, maybe even a new country, navigating the variety of different visa challenges, and even just identifying different cultural norms that you might not be familiar with when you go to a completely new country. On top of that, a lot of postdocs success and satisfaction depends on their faculty mentors. Like that one-on-one meeting that might happen once a week or once every two weeks, and you start thinking like, “oh, this is going really badly” if that relationship isn’t going well, and so you kind of have all your eggs in one basket. Another major challenge is actually related to transitioning into a role where you really need to advocate for yourself and promote yourself for the very first time. You haven’t done this before, so if you compare that with grad school, postdocs often have to be much more intentional about finding peers, about building networks, and even just seeking out professional development opportunities. You might think that “okay, I really need to get better at data analysis, and I need to find resources on campus that offer these lessons or workshops,” and so kind of seek out these opportunities yourself. These things don’t just come to you as they may have when you are an undergrad or a grad student.
Rebecca: One of the things that you both mentioned is the potential for a postdoc to include teaching as part of that work. Can you talk a little bit about what factors one might consider and whether or not to add teaching as part of that experience.
Victoria: Yeah. So if if teaching is not included in your postdoc itself, and you are at all interested in teaching as part of your next career step, whether you maybe are set on a faculty role or if you’re at a stage where you’re just trying to figure out is teaching maybe for me, and once more, thinking diversely there, faculty role in higher ed versus also considering other roles in academia that may entail teaching, thinking about the K through 12 space, or once more really understanding, do I want this as part of my job, seeking out teaching opportunities while you’re a postdoc can be really helpful. And if you do realize as part of exploring teaching that this is something you want as part of or the foundation of your next role, it can obviously give you the edge when you’re applying for a job if you have some teaching experience. But the challenge here is how do you fit this in if it’s not part of your postdoc role. So there’s a few different ways that we talk about this in the book. You could, for instance, teach at the institution your postdoc role is hosted at. And first of all, I should add the caveat, as a postdoc office administrator that always double check that you can teach if you have a visa or if you are funded a particular way that may restrict whether or not you can teach, or there may be a process to help you teach at the institution that is also hosting your postdoc. But if you are trying to find something at your institution, similarly thinking creatively here, talk to the chair of the department of your discipline, or find out if there’s something like an undergraduate director to talk to about teaching and opportunities. But you may also need to explore outside of the department that your discipline is housed in. So you might need to look at interdisciplinary centers, for instance, or an institution may have a first-year seminar program for incoming first-year students, where they’re looking for people from all kinds of different disciplines. But that might not pop up if you just look to see are there teaching opportunities in biology at my institution. And some institutions may even have teaching opportunities in the summer, or may have opportunities within the town or city that the institution’s in. I’m thinking about programs like Pathways to STEM or Pathways to Humanities, which are again opportunities that might entail teaching an entire course. But also, the final thing we talk about in terms of teaching opportunities is if you don’t have the time or don’t have the ability to teach a full-fledged course, let’s say, that there’s different scales of teaching opportunities, so that you can find opportunities to teach once more at other institutions or as an adjunct doing a full course, but you can also find opportunities to guest lecture at your institution or elsewhere. Now that we all, for better or for worse, are fully functional on Zoom, it’s easier to seek out guest lecturing opportunities as well and get experience there. You could lead seminars for your department, either based on your research or based on professional development skills, and that many institutions will also have a group called a postdoc association, which I should have mentioned much much sooner. But this is usually a group that is run for and by postdocs. It’s a wonderful place to again find that sense of community and belonging Alark was mentioning to stem senses of isolation, have some place to vent potential frustrations, but also opportunities for professional development, either taking on a leadership role or running something like professional development sessions, or even opportunities for postdocs to talk about their research or practice teaching in such a way that they now have the experience, and also something to talk about when they apply for a teaching role and are asked to provide a teaching statement or to talk about their approach, their pedagogy, and what have you. And finally, wanting to very much highlight, we recommend all postdocs, whether or not you are seriously thinking about teaching as part of your career, to engage with your center for teaching and learning. This can be an opportunity to grow your pedagogical approach, but also to recognize where you’re using teaching and may not even be realizing it.
So you may have the opportunity to mentor undergraduate students in your postdoc role, and this you can use when you put together your teaching statement if you’re applying to a faculty role, for instance, talking about how you approached this, how you were able to, like in a classroom, bring your expectations, your values, and then engage with this student or students to understand where they were coming from, their lived and learned experiences, and by the end of your mentoring relationship, that they’ve moved forward in their learning, their skills development, and their understanding of your discipline and their desire to potentially pursue it in their undergraduate or graduate studies and beyond.
John: We always end with the question, “What’s next? So, what’s next for you?
Alark: So, inspired by our podcast and others, we are actually starting a limited series podcast called Postdoc Matters. The goal of the podcast is to offer advice by interviewing individuals from industry, academia, as well as academic administration who have worked as postdocs and navigated some of the issues that we have discussed in the book. We have already interviewed a few individuals from the humanities who highlight how a postdoc can help you expand your skills and help you get your next full-time position. We’ve interviewed a couple of industry professionals who have transitioned from academia into industry and who offer advice on how postdocs can showcase their skills to land a job in industry, and many more. Each interview is aligned with one or more chapters in the book, and we address that in each episode as we chat with our guests. So we are very excited. We’ll slowly release some of these episodes and see where it goes.
John: Excellent.
Alark: Hopefully, it’ll be out soon. We are just banking a few episodes because we know once the semester starts, it’s going to be nuts. And so we just wanted to have about five to seven episodes, and then we’ll release them one at a time.
John: And Victoria, what’s next for you?
Victoria: Mostly just getting through the next few weeks, and the book coming out is my what’s next.
John: Well, thank you. It’s been great talking to you. And this is an area that we haven’t really talked about on the podcast before, and it is an area that people should consider as they’re moving through their educational path.
Alark: Thank you very much, John and Rebecca. This feels surreal to me because I listen to your podcast every week, and so to be on one of these episodes is a dream come true. Thank you. [LAUGHTER]
Victoria: Yeah, I was telling all my CTL colleagues… I used to work at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning at Yale, and they’re incredibly jealous. [LAUGHTER]
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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