Managing Research and Publication: Tips from Senior Faculty

Shaun K. Malarney (Professor, Anthropology)
*This article was written in 2017

Starting out as a new professor brings with it numerous challenges, chief among them is the need to remain active in research and publication while also fulfilling one's responsibilities in teaching and administration. Many new professors feel that there are not enough hours in the day to meet all of these demands and often become frustrated by a perceived lack of time for research and writing. It is undeniable that a professorship can create such difficulties, but there are also ways to manage these multiple demands and remain an active scholar. As part of its commitment to peer learning at ICU, the FD Office circulated a survey in December of 2008 that asked full professors to describe some of the approaches to this problem that they have used in their careers. In the discussion that follows, a total of fifteen different tips are described to help new faculty. These tips will focus on such as topics as how to successfully manage one's time, how to effectively create a space for research and publication, and how to manage some of the demands of teaching in order to lessen its impact on a professor's time.

Tips for Managing Teaching

1) Effectively Employ Your Teaching Assistant and/or Classroom Support Person: TAs and CSs can be of tremendous assistance, particularly in handling many of the logistical dimensions of a course, such as setting up your classroom, taking attendance, collecting comment sheets, scanning and uploading documents, and collecting relevant texts or compiling bibliographies that will be used in a course. They can also help with simple forms of grading, grade recording, and grade calculations, all of which can save a significant amount of time over a term.

2) Initial Efforts Pay Long-Term Dividends: Teaching a course for the first time can be very time consuming. Sometimes it seems easier to not dedicate time to a time-consuming activity, such as setting up a Moodle page or creating such visual presentations as PowerPoint slides. While such a decision will save time in the short term, the initial commitment early on will be greatly appreciated later because the amount of time needed to teach the course the second time will be greatly reduced.

3) Don't Over-Prepare: Teaching a new course is an inherently stressful activity as one is always concerned about being thorough and addressing all of the relevant material. One potential related danger is over-preparing for each session in order to lessen this anxiety. Although fixing this problem is more art than science, it is important to monitor this question throughout the term by assessing whether one is regularly preparing materials that are not addressed in class, whether one is having difficulties completing one's syllabus, or whether student participation drops because one is devoting extra lecture time to introduce the material. If any of these problems occur, it is useful to re-examine one's course material and determine what can be reduced while still meeting the course goals.

4) Let Your Students Clearly Know Your Expectations: Communicating one's expectations to students is good practice in general, but it can have a secondary benefit in terms of reducing grading time. This is particularly true with written work. To give one example related to essay writing, providing students with a clear explanation of one's ideas regarding the strengths and weaknesses of an essay will help them write better papers and thereby reduce the amount of time needed in correcting papers. It also has the added benefit of enhancing student learning.

5) Keep Your Materials Organized: Busy people often have a tendency to incompletely organize documents and papers. During term and at the conclusion of every term, be sure to keep your lecture notes, handouts, assignments, readings, and other materials well organized. This will eliminate the need to spend time searching for them and will also help avoid the stress and frustration such moments can produce.

Tips for Managing Research and Publication

1) Have Clear Goals: It is important to at all times have clear goals regarding the research one intends to conduct during a year as well as the publications one plans to complete. One can, for example, commit oneself to completing a specific number of journal articles or book chapters every year. Clear goals help to focus one's thinking while also providing a clear measure to assess one's progress. A lack of clear goals can lead to drift and delays in completing research and writing.

2) Set Deadlines and Stick to Them: Following on the previous point, when one sets goals, it is also crucial to set deadlines for the completion of the work and to abide by them. For example, if one plans to submit an article for publication, set a clear completion date and make every effort to finish by that date. If this and the previous point are followed, over the course of a few years one can start to build a strong publishing record.

3) Reserve a Time for Research and Writing: One approach employed by many successful scholars is to reserve a time during every workday that is exclusively devoted to research and writing. Thus, during that time, no phone calls are taken, no emails read and answered, and no interruptions tolerated. One's focus is exclusively on this dimension of one's work. The period need not be long, one very productive scholar devotes two hours in the morning to this, but the cumulative effects over time are significant.

4) Be Disciplined and Consistent: One useful goal for writing is to establish a set number of words or pages that one will write every day. Having set such a goal, or others related to research and writing, be sure to meet them every day. As with the previous tip, sticking to this will have positive effects over time.

5) Know When to Stop: One important dimension of successful writing is maintaining one's momentum from one day to the next. Everyone understands the difficulties of restarting work on a piece after not looking at it for awhile, but an opposite danger is to write so much one day that one encounters difficulties getting started the next day. To avoid this problem, it is wise to stop when one still has a few ideas left to write out. These should be sketched out a bit before stopping, but if this is followed, one can get started more easily the next day and thereby keep one's momentum from day to day.

6) Carefully Plan Your Course Schedule: The times of day in which people are at their best for writing vary, but it is wise to determine when one writes most effectively and then try to arrange one's courses accordingly. One faculty member commented that he has difficulty focusing on writing in the hours before class, thus the most effective schedule is to teach in the morning in order to have time for writing in the afternoon. Others work better at night, thus afternoon courses are best. Whatever the case, try to find the best balance in order to stay active as a writer.

Some General Concluding Tips

1) Don't Over-Commit Yourself: One danger in the early years of an academic career is committing oneself to too many projects. Invitations arrive to give lectures, attend conferences, or submit articles or book chapters, and all are very appealing and difficult to decline. While there are definite benefits to all of these activities, one can commit to too many, and this can limit one's ability to complete projects, notably articles and book manuscripts. When agreeing to such invitations, make sure that they do not prevent one from meeting the goals set for the year.

2) Take a Break: The importance of this tip cannot be over-exaggerated. The idea of scheduling work time is commonsensical to us all, but it is equally important to schedule time away from one's work in order to stay mentally fresh. It is sometimes unavoidable that one must work on the weekends or at night, but consistently doing so heightens the possibility of burn out, thus care should be taken to make sure that one has time for rest and relaxation. Not only will it make one happier, it will also help one remain productive over the long run.

3) Remember, It's All about Time: As is clear from the tips mentioned above, one of the most important dimensions of managing research and publication is time management. Different responsibilities compete for every faculty member's time, but unlike teaching and administration, which have their own set schedules and deadlines, research and publication require faculty members to create their own time management practices. Experience shows though that consistently doing so can bring success in research and publication. While that statement is at one level obvious, there is another less obvious dimension in that the consistent commitment of a relatively small amount of time every workday can over time produce very large benefits. The results might not be immediately visible, but they definitely become so after just a few years of consistent application.