Timeline for Do Postdocs have any seniority ranking or progress?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
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| Jun 1, 2016 at 18:38 | comment | added | Kimball | For math postdocs, the only formal seniority comes from teaching obligations - I don't think there's much correlation between "seniority" and what kinds of classes postdocs teach at my department. They teach what we need them to. This could be 1000 or 4000 level classes their first year. (Though they do get a chance to express preferences after their first year.) I don't know which scenario is more common. | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 0:36 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Ben: Based on your comments I took out some of the information which was specific and detailed to my institution. I don't want to speak for all of math postdocs in the US if it's not representative...and I don't want to call too much negative attention to my own department! (Also, your institution may be more like an "aspirational peer." Finally, it must be said that the cost of living in Athens, GA is notably low compared to everywhere else I have ever lived...) | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 0:35 | history | edited | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 31, 2016 at 22:36 | comment | added | Ben Webster | About salaries: our department (a peer to Pete's I'd say), pays almost 10k more to postdocs, and feel that's not as competitive as we'd like. Also, I received a pay increase as a postdoc at MIT, and since our salaries are public record can confirm that postdocs in our department have received (small) increases over the course of their time at UVA. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 20:45 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @gnome: By "not competitive," I meant that the majority of math departments we consider to be our peers or aspirational peers [a lovely term I learned from a dean on a job interview many years ago] offer more. I didn't mean to imply that (i) no else pays this little or (ii) we can't fill the positions. But it is not an attractive feature of the offer, if you take my meaning. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 20:42 | history | edited | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 30, 2016 at 20:39 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | By the way: non-STEM fields also have postdocs. See e.g. academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/…. My guess is that in many of these fields, postdocs are close to the kind of "visiting assistant professor" position that they often are in mathematics. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 20:35 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @StrongBad: Yes, I agree, at least in theory. However: tenure track faculty can also have faculty mentors. For me, the amount of mentorship I got as a postdoc was about the same as the amount I got in the first two years of my tenure track job (small, but positive, as much as I wanted, and very useful nevertheless). I did not do any joint work in any sense with my postdoctoral supervisor.. (Except that he generously paid me to read through a book he had just written. I did this the summer before I started, and I got paid extra for it.) Tom Church's comment seems applicable here! | |
| May 30, 2016 at 20:29 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Azor-Ahai: Well, I said "pretty bad". The reason is that a postdoc is a training / audition for something else, namely a permanent academic job. The amount of additional salary you get by teaching a summer course is probably not going to offset the loss of research time. This assumes, by the way, that you are teaching during the academic year (as is the case for most math postdocs); if you aren't, then teaching over the summer sounds like a good idea. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 20:25 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Tom: I agree that math postdocs have some distinctive features. On the one hand, a math postdoc is a kind of postdoc, and I think a positive proportion of the users of this site are interested in math postdocs. On the other hand, I included some information about postdocs other than in mathematics. So I think this answers the original question...partially. It would be good to see other answers as well. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 20:19 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @Pete why is that a really bad idea? | |
| May 30, 2016 at 19:40 | comment | added | Tom Church | I do not believe math postdocs can be usefully compared to postdocs in any other field. Accordingly, although this response is excellent (as usual), I do not think it answers the original question. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 19:33 | comment | added | gnometorule | I'm happy - for mathematicians - to hear that $45,000 is not considered competitive anymore (implying that more is now usual)! In my wife's fairly trendy field (neuroscience) that's a standard Postdoc salary when provided through PI grants (pretty much always during the first, or first two years), and if you want more, you need to go out and get your own grant (which still would probably be capped by the $55,000 you mention). | |
| May 30, 2016 at 17:24 | comment | added | StrongBad | In addition to a doctoral degree and temporary, the NIH and NSF, at the least, also require "mentored advance training" in post doc positions (see my answer. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 15:24 | history | edited | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 30, 2016 at 15:22 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @Chris: It means the first thing, if by "work" you mean anything that contributes to the department / university rather than the postdoc's own research program. Such a postdoc would be free to (i) get an outside, even non-academic [though it seems unlikely] job over the summer, (ii) apply for summer research funds (e.g. NSF provides some), or (iii) try to teach a course over the summer if they really want a "12 month salary". For postdocs interested in a tenure track job at a research university, the last is a pretty bad idea, IMO. | |
| May 30, 2016 at 8:56 | comment | added | user4512 | When you say the salary is for 9 months, does that mean that your postdocs aren't expected to work over the summer, or that they are expected to bring in other funding, or that they are expected to work 33% more than the words in their contract would seem to indicate? | |
| May 30, 2016 at 5:57 | history | edited | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 30, 2016 at 5:31 | history | answered | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 3.0 |