Research Assistant Professorship?

[ec86]

Hey guys,

Can anyone elaborate on what a research assistant professor is? I know they're not tenure track and I think their salary is paid straight out of their own grants.

Is it possible for me to pursue a research assist. professorship directly after PhD rather than post-doc? How difficult would this be? Let's assume that I get a sizable grant during the latter years of my PhD and shop around the proposal to universities, will they pick me up and offer me this research assistant professorship easily or will it be a competitive process?

Thanks!

[belowthree]

Let's assume that I get a sizable grant during the latter years of my PhD and shop around the proposal to universities, will they pick me up and offer me this research assistant professorship easily or will it be a competitive process?

Unfortunately grants don't usually move with you until you're already a professor. (And sometimes not even then.) Grants are assigned to institutions, not individuals. At least for the NSF, I assume most others are the same. So it's not like you can get a grant for your project and then run around and ask which institutions want to hire you.

Unless you're talking about something like the CAREER award or a similar program?

[ec86]

Thanks for your response! To be honest, I'm a n00b at the grants processes. I've heard of PhD students in their last year(s) applying for and receiving grants, but I have no idea what the funding body is. Guess I should do more research into the types of grants and criteria for holding them. My dream is to skip the whole post-doc/slave labor deal and go straight to being a professor.

[belowthree]

Thanks for your response! To be honest, I'm a n00b at the grants processes. I've heard of PhD students in their last year(s) applying for and receiving grants, but I have no idea what the funding body is. Guess I should do more research into the types of grants and criteria for holding them.

I suppose it depends on the funding agency and the field. I think at that point they're writing grant proposals more to show that they can (departments that are hiring them do care) than that they necessarily expect to access the money in the grants. Where do you think some people's RA funding comes from?

But maybe they're doing something tricky and they manage to take portions of that grant with them... but in my field and in my institution grad students can't even be PIs on a grant, (grad students apply for grants under their advisors) so I'm not sure how you'd explain to the funding org that you'd need to move an award because someone who doesn't even have their name on the grant moved to a new institution...

Uh, I should mention that private funding is a completely different story and when I talked with a company about funding my research they suggested that if they were going to go for that they'd go ahead put my name on the grant so that I could move it when I moved. (And I was an undergrad...) So... there's certainly some types of funding you can get to move with you. Just not most of the big ones that actually allow nice things universities care about (like "overhead" costs) to be deducted from the award.

My dream is to skip the whole post-doc/slave labor deal and go straight to being a professor.

This is actually quite common in my field... so it may not be as far out there as you'd think.