What if 40/40/20 is really 40/40/40? (Or, why do more service than you’re asked to, even if it gets you in trouble?)

Guest Bandit Blogger Dr. Christopher Dana Lynn shares his experiences with the slipperiest part of your professional portfolio, service:

I first experienced this one summer during grad school when my department paid me a modest sum to overhaul their website. In doing so, I had to introduce myself to every member of the faculty to update their bios & get new photos. This interaction was integral to my success in the department, as everyone came to know me & support me. I learned about shared research interests I had with faculty doing widely disparate things that weren’t otherwise apparent. This taught me firsthand the value of networking thru service.

Me & my clan circa grad school 

(yes, I'm including this for the gratuitous "cute" factor).

The first significant service outside my department for which I wasn’t also being paid was as a program officer for the first NorthEastern Evolution Psychology Society (NEEPS) conference. This offshoot of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society had started up at SUNY New Paltz, 15 minutes from my house. How could I not get involved? That led, in part, to meeting other faculty at New Paltz, though I was a grad student at the University at Albany, & offers of lecturer positions at two institutions & a position on the executive committee of the newly formed Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program at New Paltz. These gigs helped me make $, refine my abilities, & learn admin skills.

However, one of the reasons I got hired at the University of Alabama in 2009 was because I had developed breadth into evolutionary psychology thru the NEEPS & EvoS service. When I arrived at UA, I jumped into involvement with a group of like-minded faculty called the Evolution Working Group, which hosts an evolution-oriented lecture series. In conjunction with this group, we started our own EvoS program at the University of Alabama.  The program involves a minor, which I co-direct, & a student-run club, for which I am faculty mentor.  For the minor to work, I developed & teach several classes over my expected teaching load of 2/2 (two courses per semester) & help the students organize & host an annual Darwin Day event.

TMSE kids doing a forensics activity as 

part of our anthro outreach course

In addition to the EvoS program, I run a research group every week that I modeled on the evolutionary psychology lab I was part of as a grad student.  At this point, it is mostly undergrads & my few grad students, but we meet for 3 hours every week to collaborate on research, which amounts essentially to teaching another course. Finally, when my kids were in 3^rd grade, their PTA asked me to teach a semester-long anthropology course as part of the partnership their school has with the University of Alabama. By this point, my dean had echoed my grad school adviser several times, stating in my annual recommendation for retention that my service load is too extensive & varied for someone at my career stage & that I should scale back. However, as a chairperson of another department & parent of one of my children’s classmates pointed out, our children grow up fast & won’t give us this opportunity with them again. Although I swore I would only teach the class the first year, it was very successful—who learns anthropology in elementary school?! How could I not continue to teach that?

Last year, I figured out how truly important all this extra work has been for me. I began the process of applying for a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, which requires integration of teaching innovation. I realized that all the service I have been doing was exactly what I needed for developing a “career trajectory.” Thru it, I had developed substantial collaborations throughout my university, indicating my willingness & ability to work across disciplines & with teams. I have met scholars throughout the world by organizing their lectures here who have expressed willingness to vouch for me at tenure time. When I go to conferences, I know far more people than I otherwise would & feel a sense of mission in promoting these programs we’ve developed.

So, what’s the take-home message? Do service willy nilly? Not hardly. But don’t shy away from it either. Everyone is busy, but your willingness to take on just a little more will be greatly appreciated &, to invoke some of my favorite evo theory, it is a costly honest signal of your willingness to cooperate that will reward you with unforeseen dividends!

Christopher D. Lynn, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Co-director of Evolutionary Studies program

University of Alabama

Tuscaloosa, AL 35487

cdlynn@ua.edu

Websites: www.anthropology.ua.edu/hberg, www.as.ua.edu/evolutionarystudies

Follow me on Twitter: @Chris_Ly

Blogs: Cheap Thrills thru Evolution, Anthropology Blog Network

Funding opportunity: NSF's INSPIRE program

Thanks to NSF Biological Anthropology Program Director Carolyn Erhardt for the following announcement: 

NSF will be providing an informational webcast on INSPIRE (Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education) to be held on Tuesday, January 29, 2013 from 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. EST.  During the webcast, the FY 2013 INSPIRE solicitation (NSF 13-518) will be discussed, and INSPIRE program officers will interactively answer questions submitted by the online audience. (Check out the current list of INSPIRE Frequently Asked Questions.)

Information on accessing and registering for the free webcast will be available through the INSPIRE program website. Participants must be registered to view the webcast.

Summary of the INSPIRE funding opportunity: The INSPIRE awards program was established to address some of the most complicated and pressing scientific problems that lie at the intersection of traditional disciplines. It is intended to encourage investigators to submit bold, exceptional proposals that some may consider to be at a disadvantage in a standard NSF review process; it is not intended for proposals that are more appropriate for existing award mechanisms. INSPIRE is open to interdisciplinary proposals on any NSF-supported topic, submitted by invitation only after a preliminary inquiry process initiated by submission of a required Letter of Intent (LOI). In fiscal year 2013, INSPIRE provides support through the following three pilot grant mechanisms:

• INSPIRE Track 1. This is essentially a continuation of the pilot CREATIV mechanism from FY 2012, which was detailed for 2012 in Dear Colleague Letter NSF 12-011.
• INSPIRE Track 2. These are "mid-scale" research awards at a larger scale than Track 1, allowing for requests of up to $3,000,000 over a duration of up to five years. Expectations for cross-cutting advances and for broader impacts are greater than in Track 1, and the review process includes external review.
• Director's INSPIRE Awards. These are prestigious individual awards to single-investigator proposals that present ideas for interdisciplinary advances with unusually strong, exciting transformative potential.

All NSF directorates and programmatic offices participated in INSPIRE in FY 2012 and are continuing their participation in FY 2013.

LETTER OF INTENT (LOI) DUE DATES:

INSPIRE Track 2 Inquiries: Letter of Intent Due Date February 20, 2013

INSPIRE Track 1 Inquiries (also for Director’s INSPIRE Awards): Letter of Intent Due Date March 29, 2013

Full proposal submission is by invitation only, based on evaluation by NSF staff of the required Letter of Intent. 

NIH Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD)

NIH has announced an initiative to foster training for underrepresented students in the biomedical and behavioral sciences:

"Several reports from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as from the National Academies reveal the national need for a well-trained workforce in biomedical and behavioral sciences and the continuing importance of developing and maintaining a strong, vital scientific workforce whose diversity reflects that of our nation. It was also reported that as a nation, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, and Natives of US Pacific Islands have been found to be underrepresented (UR) in the biomedical and behavioral sciences...The goals of the IMSD program are to (a) increase the number of UR students that graduate from Ph.D. programs in the biomedical and behavioral sciences at institutions with research intensive environments; and (b) reduce the gap in the completion of Ph.D. degrees between UR and non-UR students in the biomedical and behavioral science departments of those institutions."

These awards are made to the institution to develop a training program. Only one award per institution will be made - check with your office of reseach to see if your institution is eligible.