Keep me posted!

Have you recently published a paper, a chapter, a book? Been interviewed for radio, television, print or electronic media? Received an award or a grant? Had a great field season? Please let me know so I can let BANDIT blog readers know about it!

Working moms on the tenure track - yeah, it's hard

Study from the AAUP corroborates what many women already know: trying to attain tenure and be a mother is really difficult, largely because institutional support is insufficient, but also because of internal pressure and guilt and interpersonal gender dynamics. The study reports that becoming a father does not have the same deleterious effect on male faculty.

Read the original study here.

Parenting Blog for Science Nerds

Big props to the ever-dashing Pablo Nepomnaschy for bringing to my attention one of the most awesome websites I've seen in a long time. Gwen Dewar, a fellow biological anthropologist with degrees from Berkeley and University of Michigan, is also a parent. She weds the two brilliantly on her site ParentingScience.com, the tagline of which is "Evidence-based information for the thinking parent." Nice.

From Dr. Dewar's homepage:
"No folk theories. No preachy advice. No authoritarian pronouncements or pseudoscientific political dogma. Instead, you’ll find something pretty rare among popular resources for parents: In-depth analysis with fully referenced citations from the scientific and medical literature.

I’ve got opinions. But who cares? What’s really important is critical thinking. Parents deserve to be treated like intelligent, rational beings. You may be a scientist, physician, or teacher. Maybe you’re an educated, skeptical layperson who loves science. Whatever the case, you don’t need dogma. You need evidence. You can draw your own conclusions."

In addition to being helpful to academic parents, I see this site being useful in anthropology courses on human sexuality, life history, parenting, evolutionary medicine,evolutionary psychology, etc. Please check it out!

Becoming a Successful Principal Investigator

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education has a great piece on developing yourself into a successful (i.e. funded) researcher. The author, David Stone, makes important distinctions between establishing yourself as a scholar (e.g. contributing to the literature), a researcher (e.g. having the appropriate skills and contacts to get the work done), and a grantwriter (e.g. compiling the literature review, recruiting the research team, understanding the granting body's regulations and culture).

"Grant writing is the end of a process, not the beginning. Long before you make the decision to write a grant proposal for your research, you should be taking concrete steps to raise your profile in the eyes of reviewers.

What does that mean? Most basically, it means preparing yourself as a scholar, a researcher, and a grant writer in ways that will strengthen the ideas behind your proposal, demonstrate that you have the wherewithal to carry out your project, and enhance your ability to communicate what reviewers are looking for."

Vintage job info from AAPA

Thanks to Katie Hinde for bringing to my attention the Fall 2000 AAPA newsletter which was devoted to the job search. One thing you might notice is the large number of job postings advertised that year. Try not to cry. The other thing is that the tips provided by Steve Leigh and Peter Ungar are really worth tucking away in your job search folder.

They're baaaack...

Just when you thought it was safe to enjoy the rest of your summer, the 2010-11 job search has begun. If you don't know about the job wiki already, your subclinical academic OCD is about to get kicked into agonizing and entertaining overdrive.

Guide to reviewing manuscripts

Crazy-thanks to Dr. Colleen Nyberg for passing along this very helpful guide to reviewing manuscripts. Although the authors of the article are radiologists, their guidelines are fairly universal. Especially helpful is their comparison of informative and non-informative reviews. Both authors and reviewers should learn something new from this piece.