Online academic profile in the university department website

[davedove]

Hey everybody !! I will finally be in grad school next year. I noticed that in the official website of my department, grad students have an academic profile in which they highlight their research interests, topics of thesis, and faculty supervisor(s). Is it mandatory to have this kind of "academic profile" as I don't want to have one? Thank you all in advance

Edited July 18, 2017 by davedove

[guest56436]

Why wouldn't you want one?

[davedove]

3 minutes ago, Comparativist said:

Why wouldn't you want one?

Does that mean that it's mandatory? 

[guest56436]

I don't know if it's mandatory or not. But I'm still confused at why this is an issue for you.

[davedove]

2 minutes ago, Comparativist said:

I don't know if it's mandatory or not. But I'm still confused at why this is an issue for you.

What if for example, I want to change research topic after my first year? This won't look good at all  can I have my profile after being more confident (at least in the third year of my PhD) ? 

[guest56436]

These types of blurbs are usually very vague. And they can be changed or updated.

[TakeruK]

Setting aside whether or not you "should" have one for now, you should know that if you do not want your information listed, you could and should ask whomever manages this information to remove your info. There are plenty of reasons why a person might choose to eliminate this information. For example, maybe a student does not want someone to be able to figure out where they are living/working/studying now. If you are at a US school, FERPA generally considers things like your name as "Directory Information" which means that by default, they are able to publish this without asking consent each time as long as they have informed you what information counts as "Directory Information". However, you have the right to ask your school to not publish any of the Directory Information. If you are in another country, look for similar privacy laws.

Now onto whether or not you "should" have one. My opinion is that unless you are worried for your own safety, there is no reason to hide your membership in this department. It's generally in our favour, as academics, to be more visible and noticeable. So, if someone does meet you at a conference, they can search for you and/or your contact information. As for your concern that you might change supervisors, topics, etc....well first, these things are very normal occurrences. Second, to be honest, when you're a new grad student, you're not very well known yet so it is very unlikely anyone will be tracking your profile page closely enough to even notice that you have changed those things. Still, if you don't want anything written down until your 3rd year, you can just not provide the information or keep it very very vague!

[hats]

I'm in anthropology, not sociology, but the five profiles (students between second and sixth years, but nobody on the market) I just checked in my department each have less than 20 words in them. For example, Berkeley is a little more terse than my department, but look here: http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/graduate/current-graduate-students. My department breaks those down into separate webpages, but nobody has full sentences about their research. They just list themes and areas of interest, at the "Cultural anthropology. China. Rural. Kinship." level of abstraction. My page doesn't even appear in the first page of google search results for my name, either; I can only find it efficiently by going to the actual department's webpage.

What are the profiles of other students in your prospective department like, especially of the students in their coursework years? Is the norm to be way more detailed and emphatic than in anthropology? I ask because I don't understand the source of your resistance to having a webpage at all. I don't want to push you into doing something you don't want to—and I don't read your posts as suggesting there's a safety issue—but it sounds like your resistance is coming from a misunderstanding of something about academia. Specifically, you don't need to be committed to your dissertation project yet: people expect (and even value) evolution. 

As far as specifics go, I think it would be pretty normal to have the entire contents of your page be your name and the words "Sociology of gender," since it's sounded elsewhere like you're committed to that interest. If your department runs towards wordy profiles and you want to emulate their style while leaving room for change, you could just drop the word "currently" a lot: "I am currently working on sociology of gender. At the moment I am exploring issues of gender and race. My interests right now also include immigration and sexuality." It sounds like that might be too much for you right now, so maybe you can save that strategy for later. Personally, I would advise you to list between one and three interests or fields, like "sociology of gender," in your profile, but I don't feel strongly about it. If it feels right to you not to list any interests just yet, I think you should feel completely free to create a profile with your name and nothing else. If there's no safety issue, take confidence in yourself! List yourself publicly as a student in your department; you are smart and you deserve to own it. I think not having a profile at all might feed your impostor syndrome too much, but I think it should be normal to have a blank-except-for-your-name profile for the first couple years and fill it in later. (I am not "diagnosing" "impostor syndrome" from your posts, but rather working under the assumption that this is a condition shared by literally every graduate student.)

These things aren't about your final identity as a scholar, after all. It's about what you're doing now. One way somebody might use a profile that says "Name. Sociology of gender," for example, is a visiting graduate student who's living in town this semester to be with their partner emails you and asks about whether the sociology department is having any talks on gender right now. That's a good person to know! Your interests as they mature three years from now don't help that person this semester: they'll be gone by then. Even if your interests have completely changed three years from now, you might have an interesting conversation this year, and interesting conversations are worth something.

Perhaps something might help is to use the word "mature" or "progress" more often. You not being sure of your exact project just yet is a sign of your intellectual openness or your curiosity; it's a virtue. If you want to change your research after your first year, it's not true that "it won't look good at all." If your project or interests change, that's not a sign of your inability to stick with it, or something. It's not only normal, it's a sign that you're learning, that your work is maturing, that you're making intellectual progress. Of course this isn't a magic bullet, but it sounds like you have a lot of negative self-talk going on in your head about your work right now. It might help you to have a positive (and, let me emphasize, true) way of thinking about these things on hand, too.

[cowgirlsdontcry]

At my incoming school, grad students can have a bio page if they wish, otherwise they are just listed according to whether they are MA (literature/Hudson Strode), MFA (prose/poetry), PhD (literature/writing/Hudson Strode).

[fuzzylogician]

12 hours ago, davedove said:

What if for example, I want to change research topic after my first year? This won't look good at all  can I have my profile after being more confident (at least in the third year of my PhD) ? 

Not to repeat the advice you received above, which I agree with -- I just want to add that changing your interests will not look bad at all. In fact, it's entirely common, even expected, that students (any academic, really), will evolve and change their research interests with time. To the extent that anyone will actually see your first-year bio and remember it, no one looking at it again in your 3rd year would be surprised to learn that you might have grown and redirected your interests elsewhere. 

[rheya19]

I'm going to echo what other people have said that it's natural for your research interests to change and evolve. In fact, when you look at many professors' profiles, they note that they have new interests. The profiles start with what they've written extensively on, and then go on to say that currently they're engaged in a related-but-still-different topic. You're not in religion or art, but just as an example, one professor that I wanted to work with went from studying Byzantine Christian art and architecture at the beginning of her career to writing about how post-WWII construction in Europe has impacted our understanding of ancient archaeological remains. 

[klader]

I'd like to add that it's a great way to put yourself out there in the field. As I'm applying to PhD programs, I've been reading through student bios to get a better idea of the work being done in the program. Their names are in my memory now, so if I come across a presentation being done by the person at a conference (which has happened), I'm more likely to go up to them and talk about their research. This is good for the person, I'd think, and good for me as I meet other people in my field who are also in graduate school/recent alumni of programs. 

Of course you shouldn't have to write up a bio if you don't wish to do so, but I feel that it's a good way to get yourself out there. My research interests are up on my school's site, so people will be able to see them if they ever decide to Google me after meeting me/seeing me present/as I'm applying to PhD programs. It's like free marketing almost!

Edited July 20, 2017 by klader

[hantoo]

I agree with everything listed above. I'm not sure how it specifically works in your department, but at my school the online academic profiles can be updated pretty frequently. Also, the webmaster for the department site is another student, so when changes need to be made we can just contact that person. If your interests change, just change the profile!

[TakeruK]

3 hours ago, hantoo said:

Also, the webmaster for the department site is another student, so when changes need to be made we can just contact that person. If your interests change, just change the profile!

I hope that student is being paid for this (or those hours count towards some kind of assistantship!)

[maelia8]

In my department, the website has a secure login for all students and faculty and we can update our own profiles whenever we want by logging in - even down to our profile picture and what we are teaching this semester.. I'd check with your webmaster and see if that is an option if you're concerned about the information getting outdated.

[Sigaba]

It's a mean time in America and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

If you do post detailed information on your department's website, I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you exercise great discipline in maximizing the distance between your personal professional profile and your activity on social media.This exercise includes having zero connection between your professional Twitter account and your personal Twitter account. This exercise includes not using networks at public universities and colleges to express political POVs. The GOP went after William Cronon. Don't think it won't come after you.

(Disclosure: I'm a Republican. Some of us are pushing back as hard as we can. Thus far, we're failing to make much of a difference. And we'll keep trying.)