Tenured During Pandemic!

Thank you @DDream!

I am happy to share my journey. It is not quite as straightforward as my husband's because you know...life happens (and by that I mean two cuties happened on the way).

The biggest lessons that I have learned in my career that I tell my trainees:

1. Follow your passion!
2. Do not follow the new, shiny thing...stick with what you know the best and improve your skills to be the leader in your field.
3. Don't put all the eggs in one basket (always have multiple projects going)!
4. Be a nice collaborator to others and find good collaborators who complement your expertise.
5. Listen to advice but follow your heart.
_________________________________________
With that said- I worked as a postdoc in the area of tropical infectious diseases (same as my PhD) for six years before getting my first TT faculty position. I spent two years at one university and 4 years at another. My second university was where I got my TT job (in a different department). I only stayed in that position for a year because my husband got a job elsewhere and we had decided not to live apart especially when we had a newborn.

Next two years I worked as a Research Scientist (non TT) position at the same place my husband was a postdoc. We stayed there for 2.5 years. In the meantime, we both had TT offers. We negotiated for another position. One f the universities that I had an offer made a TT position for my husband so we moved there. Having four job offers (3 for me and 1 for my husband) definitely gave us negotiation power.

Instead of starting in July 2015, we started in January 2016. My daughter was an infant during negotiations so we wanted to have some time with her before starting jobs. Even though we started in January, our tenure clock started in July of 2015. We were approved for an extension and another due to covid19 but we didn't take it.

My timeline is-2016 start (calculated from 2015 though), 2020 dossier submission, we unofficially heard the news in December 2020 and officially this month.

My mentors suggested not to take extensions because (the above pointers) I have been productive throughout. I have 4 active grants and 2 completed with a total of ~$6M (my husband's total grant money is lower but he also had several Federal grants), a steady publication record (with our big stories in Cell and Genome Research), and been served on NIH, NSF, USDA panels. In an R1 university, research money and pubs speak, everything else is nice to have once the main areas are covered.

I was told not to hire postdocs in my first year but I felt that a good postdoc can help a lot in moving our program. So, I hired two postdocs and then another a year after when I got my first grant. All three have been with me throughout this journey and have mentored a steady stream of undergrads. We took on a very ambitious project early on (while kept working on the areas I and my postdocs have expertise in) and that risk paid off. We have been constantly invited for seminars, book chapters, articles, etc. which is great for both me and my trainees.

Earlier in my career, I was told to switch to Cancer research (the argument was that there is more money in human health research esp Cancer) but I was too invested in Arthropod-borne diseases that I didn't feel comfortable switching. This was a good decision! With the arthropod-borne diseases on rise, I have had the opportunity to witness the new bill passing in the US Congress and was invited to address the Congressional Committee to describe how our research is making an impact and why this area needs more funding.

I know this is a whole lot more than you asked for but that's how we academics work, right? . I am happy to answer your specific questions.

 

Thank you! Don't know about free.....had a full day at work and just found time to reply to all you amazing people!

 

Thank you!

 

Thank you!

 

@SunPa thank you for the kind words! We all need to be each other's cheerleaders! Thank you for being mine!

 

Thank you Viji!