My Perspective on a CAREER

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My Perspective on a CAREER

• Jim Smay
• Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering
• Oklahoma State University

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Where to begin?

• What do I have to offer the world?
• B.S. in Mech. Eng., Ph.D. in Materials Science
• Good at processing and direct writing of
  colloidal gels
• What do I want to do?
• Get funded to keep working on direct writing of
  colloidal gels there are still lots of things
  to do, applications to pick, and its too much fun
  to stop!
• Is there an NSF program that fits?
• Manufacturing Machines Equipment in DMII
• What nextwrite down some rough ideas and call
  the program manager.

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My Conversation with George

• In a word vexing
• I wanted clear answers to direct questions
• Step back from your specific idea
• Plan your career, not your CAREER
• Suggested a 5 year, 10 year, and career map
• Several days and drafts later I appreciated this
  advice
• First person on the first page of project
  description
• Reviewers like to see passion for a career.

You must have long term goals to keep you from
being frustrated by short term failures.
Charles C. Noble
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Set Goals

• Establishing goals is all right if you dont let
  them deprive you of interesting detours. Doug
  Larson
• My goals (i) 5, 10, career plan, (ii) specific
  research goals in this first 5 years, (iii)
  education goals in this first 5 years -
  integration
• 1st submission 6 lines, 3rd person failure
• 2nd submission 22 lines, 1st person success

Map out your life, but do it in pencil. Jon Bon
Jovi
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Technical Merit
One does a whole painting for one peach and
people think just the opposite --that that
particular peach is but a detail. Pablo Picasso

• Be direct about your goals bullets, lists, etc.
• Clearly state hypotheses, methods, and expected
  results
• Tangible example applications a plus
• Level of detail too much, too little, just
  right?
• Reviewers have 10 proposals to review at a time

When the horse is dead, get off. author unknown
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Things I did wrong and right on TM
Failed Proposal
Successful Proposal

• Used develop throughout
• Vague list of research and educational goals
• Rambling background section
• Focused on incremental improvements of process
  rather than on how improvements will yield new
  applications and/or solutions to new problems
• Bad strategy to try and focus on colloidal
  assembly routes in general
• Poor picture of how research will support career
  long goals

• Replaced develop with discover,
  investigate, explore,
• Detailed, numbered list of goals and expected
  outcomes
• Targeted background to highlight need for
  research
• Better focus on applications enabled by
  investigating this manufacturing process
• Centered on SFF process with target examples
• Clear support of career goals

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A picture is worth a thousand words

• When reviewing proposals, I find images and
  schematics to be extremely useful
• Mental image and actual process/experiment/device
  are not usually the same
• I took a lot of care to draw high quality
  schematics
• When possible (and relevant) I used images from
  my own work

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Education

• Qualifications as an educator research
  assistant?
• Develop a new course and train grad students is
  par for the course
• I spent some time reviewing education literature
• I explored existing programs at OSU
• OK-LSAMP sponsored by NSF
• HBL4u - http//waves.okstate.edu/
• I learned a lot from observing others and reading
  successful CAREER proposals
• I wanted a minority outreach program to be part
  of my CAREER development plan

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Education - strategy

• Demonstrate that youve thought about how to be a
  better teacher and that you have a plan of action
• Be specific about education objectives and
  quantify where possible
• I focused on the dual role of a university
  educator as an instructor and mentor
• Obligatory new course development
• State examples of how your research may find its
  way into or, at least, inspire your lectures in
  other classes
• Focus on development of human resources
• Minority participation theme was focused on one
  of Oklahomas great assets a large Native
  America population
• Found a Native America high school to work with
  to implement a program to introduce students to
  OSU research
• Got letters of collaboration from high school
  principle and OKLSAMP director

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Other tidbits

• Get letters of collaboration from academics and
  industry
• Get someone else to read your proposal and take
  their criticism to heart
• Know when to ignore advice/criticism
• Follow the format period
• Get your CV in order reviewers usually look
  first at your resume to see your qualifications
  for doing the work
• Make your proposal readable avoid too much
  technical detail (equations) unless it is
  absolutely necessary
• Mother test if my mom can read my project
  summary and then be able to tell me what I am
  proposing, I count it a successful summary
• Propose an appropriate amount of work for the
  budget, but be a little ambitious

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