Thursday, September 11, 2014

Am I suppose to please?

I am fairly collaborative and in general am in the favor of collaboration when it is in mutual interest of both parties.

I had a grant submission that was based on my previous work of 4 years. I wanted to submit a grant based on the preliminary results that I had. Note that the sub-field is different from my graduate adviser and also from my post-doctoral adviser.

Therefore, I gathered all the energy and spent 3 to 4 months of polishing my grant (which was not funded by the way because of one bad review).

Before the submission, I had a senior colleague pointed to me that if I want to submit she is willing to collaborate.  I didn't see a point in collaboration since I had all the expertise and results that were needed. Therefore I went alone.

Ah, just to point out this is the same person who stole one of my idea (that was all mine; was not a result of a discussion) and made a PhD student started working on it (with another collaborator). She is very senior and well funded and has a lot of political power in the department. This is at least what I think.

Now I am getting a cold shoulder on various aspects from her. What I am suppose to do. Do I need to please my senior colleagues so that they don't vote against me in my tenure case? or am I suppose to do what I think is good for me and keep on doing what I do best.

14 comments:

  1. Ouch, this is nasty.

    Do you know of any similar incidences in the recent past involving the same person?

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    1. Yes, I think another assistant professor also had a similar experience with her. But I am not sure.

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  2. Sorry to hear that you are in this position. Its a delicate situation that needs careful handling. It sucks when someone who is supposed to support and mentor you instead acts like this. I haven't been through this (yet, thankfully) so I don't have any advice to give, but if I do face this situation I'll be sure to contact you to learn how you dealt with it!

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  3. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. There are senior assholes who prey on assistant professors. There is one in my department that I was specifically warned about when I started. I recently had the task of warning a new hire of the same peril. An older person attaching themselves to you, supposedly to collaborate but really to leech, then if you don't act as they want you to act (read: as their puppet) they get nasty and vindictive.

    What is done is done. It's good that it's very early on your TT so it will probably blow over. But yes, it sounds like she could be very dangerous. So just keep away and don't antagonize her. But obviously be careful who you share ideas with in the future.

    I am sorry this happened. Someone should have warned you about her. Don't get too deeply entangled in intra-departmental collaborations until you get to know people. Collaborations can be awesome, unless they are awful soul-sucking disasters.

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    1. A lot of people have started to feel dangerous to me. Another associate professor approached me today; and want to hire my student (who is working on something) and get him to do something he has a grant on. I dont know what to make of this.

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    2. Whut? Why can't he hire a new student?

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    3. It seems that he wants this student who is in a certain department (A) and the associate professor wants to hire from this department (A) because of some weak reasons. But the associate professor is in department B. Since this student is in department A and I am in both departments he wants to hire this student to get the work done.

      Get it? I am sure you did lol

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    4. WTF? So he's asking you to just hand over a student? Who the fuck does that?!

      I think I get it: you can supervise a student from A since you are in both departments; the colleague cannot,but really wants to for whatever reason. Instead of seeking a zero-time appointment with A and then recruiting students from A to his heart's content, like any normal person, he wants a student advised by you to do work with him while presumably still being advised (and paid from startup) by you.

      Am I close?

      Btw, you can always say that the student is too swamped with his primary project and couldn't possibly take on anything else (you could ask a student if they want the additional thing, maybe they do). You could say that the student does not do well with distractions and adding another project would be devastating for their productivity all around. You can go ask what is needed for a person to be able to advise students from A (I bet all it takes is submitting a CV for the executive cte vote in dept A), and you can even offer to champion the colleague's case.

      This is all under the assumption that the colleague wants a student from A and not just your particular student. The latter is kinda creepy.

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    5. He wants this particular student. The weird thing is that the student wants this as well since the associate prof. has a grant and want to pay this student (and I don't want to right now coz the student has not produced anything yet and has a scholarship which pay all his tuition and stipend).

      I want to say No since the collaboration would mean that I will have to start a new line of research (which I want to eventually in the future) which I don't think I am ready to do right now. It will take me a lot of time and energy to get this student supervised on this particular sub area.

      I want to diplomatic though since he is going to have a vote on my TT.

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    6. Hm. Since the student wants to go, maybe let him/her go? Tell him/her you can't supervise well on that subarea so if he/she wants to work with associate prof, said prof will be supervising.

      Or tell them they need to produce a certain something, then they are free to go.

      I know it sucks when you lose a student this early, but the student sounds opportunistic anyway.

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    7. You said the assoc. prof wants to pay the student but then you also said that the student has his own scholarship with tuition and stipend paid for. What exactly is this assoc. prof going to pay him then?

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    8. The student wants more stipend. He is currently getting $1500/month including summers. Where we are this is a sufficient amount of money.

      I used to get $1200/month excluding summers and we use to live in a big ass expensive city. Never complained since I knew the supervisor is paying for my tuition, resources and overheads.

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    9. Gah. If $1500 is about what other students at your institutions make, yet this student is dead-set on making additional couple of hundred or whatever, then send them off to the associate prof and don't look back. This kid does not have his priorities straight anyway, in that they are willing to trade a good advisor and project for a tiny bit of extra money.

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    10. He has a new car, new bride and a new house. He expects me to pay for all of this. Though I can empathize that people have to make their (and families) ends meet. This does not mean I have to pay for your new Camry if you can get along fine on your old car.

      Other student make $1250 per month on full appointment excluding summers. I am going to kick his butt now if he plays more games.

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