Working for new assistant professor

[labmember001]

I'm interested in the research of a new professor who's starting up their lab this month, but i feel like there's lots of uncertainties when working for such a new professor. Is anyone else facing similar decisions or actually worked for a newly started professor?  

Edited February 1, 2018 by labmember001

[WhyTry]

It’s a great opportunity if you want to learn how to set up a lab. You may be setting up your own one day.. 

There are pros and cons for assistant, associate, and full professors. Check to see if mentorship style matches. 

[rising_star]

I'd make sure they're actually able to set up their lab this month and that it'll be ready to go when you get there. Sometimes there are delays with that, which can affect your ability to do research right away if you join the department. If you do go with this professor as your main advisor, I'd make sure you put more senior professors on your committee since they will be able to provide different resources as a mentor/advisor.

[Eigen]

57 minutes ago, rising_star said:

I'd make sure they're actually able to set up their lab this month and that it'll be ready to go when you get there. Sometimes there are delays with that, which can affect your ability to do research right away if you join the department. If you do go with this professor as your main advisor, I'd make sure you put more senior professors on your committee since they will be able to provide different resources as a mentor/advisor.

I wouldn't worry much about the committee, but I'd definitely suggest picking up a senior faculty mentor or three. I did my PhD with a fresh prof, and it was really helpful for gaining independence and learning how to set up a lab and collaborations and that has been great for my career. 

But he wasn't much on mentoring, and I was completely on my own for the job market- he wrote what I hear are great letters, but that was it. 

I had senior mentors in my department, as well as people I met through conferences that were a lot more helpful in those areas, but who's lab I wouldn't have wanted to work in. 

As an aside, committees are pretty unimportant in a lot of the bench sciences. I met mine three times- once to ask, once for my prospectus, and once for my defense. None of them had any role other than evaluating my work. I know committees in other fields can be more involved. 

[TakeruK]

9 hours ago, Eigen said:

As an aside, committees are pretty unimportant in a lot of the bench sciences. I met mine three times- once to ask, once for my prospectus, and once for my defense. None of them had any role other than evaluating my work. I know committees in other fields can be more involved. 

I also only had the same-ish 3 official committee meetings where I met with the committee as a whole. But for us, the committee is just one type of formal mentorship arrangement. I met with my committee members individually to get specific advice during the year. But yeah, I could have also done this without them being on my committee and many people find support outside of their committee. I picked my mentors first and then invited them onto my committee.

[Eigen]

4 hours ago, TakeruK said:

I also only had the same-ish 3 official committee meetings where I met with the committee as a whole. But for us, the committee is just one type of formal mentorship arrangement. I met with my committee members individually to get specific advice during the year. But yeah, I could have also done this without them being on my committee and many people find support outside of their committee. I picked my mentors first and then invited them onto my committee.

I just differentiate it because I have peers in other programs that meet with their committee regularly as a group, which makes it a lot more important to choose mentors. 

Personally, I chose people for my committee who I felt opened doors of some sort- instruments I wanted to use, connections to a different program/program type. Some of these were going to be mentoring relationships, others were just someone well placed who could speak to my abilities as a scientist. IMO, having people on your committee that get along with your advisor is the most important- and sometimes it's good to have mentors that don't. 

[TakeruK]

2 hours ago, Eigen said:

IMO, having people on your committee that get along with your advisor is the most important- and sometimes it's good to have mentors that don't. 

Definitely. It's terrible to be the student stuck in the middle of two profs having an ego fight. Luckily for me, there were only 7 full active profs in my dept so we all have to get along. With 4-5 person committees, almost all of us basically have half the department on our committees!

[Eigen]

Oh, yeah- I can see that. We had 15 in the department (still pretty small compared to some of the huge departments out there), and you could have people from affiliated departments/schools on your committee as well. 

Even with a committee that got along, one of my committee members and advisor got into an argument during my defense on the proper use of "e.g."..... Was fun to watch while I stayed the heck out of it.

[TakeruK]

Yeah, our committees had to have 4 and 3 had to be within the dept; the 4th can be anywhere in the school as long as the dept chair approves. I ended going with 4 internal to department and 1 from an affiliated one. I added a 5th prof (from my dept) because otherwise it was 3 pre-tenure profs + 1 senior prof and I wanted to have additional perspectives for advice.

The two theorists did get into a frivolous argument about things well beyond the scope of my work so that was fun to watch. I've heard horror stories about a committee member who disagreed with the advisor insisting on a change that the student must make before they would approve the dissertation, but it's something the advisor disagrees with!