Field Work Delay

[MTGLAC46]

Hi all -- I have a question for those of you on the far end of the phd tunnel, or perhaps some of your who even have experience (or heard of people) that have had their field research component delayed.

I was brought on to a research group last year in anticipation of our grant being funded to continue some of the lab's previous work in Antarctica. My adviser has a horrifyingly shocking success rate with grants (in 25 years he has never not had PI funding), which is why he brought me on before we had official confirmation. A long series of events later (including major funding uncertainties at the NSF), and we were unfunded this season.

I am very fortunate in that my university guarantees funding for 5 years, and we will resubmit the grant, but the earliest I can get to the field is midway through my 4th year. There is plenty of work for me to do in the meantime on samples already collected, but I was looking forward to doing my own work and actually learning some field skills. Because I'm still early in my career, I could leave my university with a masters and go somewhere else. 

Any thoughts? Does the long delay warrant leaving? I'm really quite bummed because I chose this researcher for their fieldwork style, but I don't want to sell myself short and stay when I shouldn't.

 

[rising_star]

Have you considered applying for funding to get yourself to the field sooner? NSF DDRI, NASA Space Grant, and/or other grants and fellowships might be an option as a way to get yourself to the field to do data collection regardless of whether your PI's grant gets funded.

[TakeruK]

Sorry to hear about this, but I'm glad to hear that you will still have funding to support you as a student during your 5 years there. With the "new priorities" of the current US government, I know a lot of my colleagues were/are very concerned about having funds to support them through completion of their degrees and/or projects. Some potential alternatives were things like changing projects or finishing early.

Have you had a in-depth discussion about these concerns with your advisor yet? I mean specifically about field skills. Maybe there are other opportunities for you that you can still achieve within your own program. It might not get you sent to Antarctica, which I believe is quite expensive, but perhaps there are analogous skills you can develop in different places. For example, my PhD program had a field geology course every semester that was basically a week-long field camp. Or, sometimes different research groups will need some extra hands for their expedition (in my dept a few years ago, there was a call for an extra helping hand for an Antarctic expedition and my friend was able to go that way). Finally, there are field camps run by other programs in the country in the summers that could be helpful too: e.g. https://education.usgs.gov/nagt/geofieldcamps.html Not sure if this is the type of field work you're looking for but maybe there's something like it for what you want to do.

With these suggestions, it won't be your data and your work so it's not the ideal case you're looking for, but it will allow you to get exposure and training on specific field skills. I think it would help for you to determine exactly what you wanted to get out of the original expedition plan and then talk to your advisor and find out if you can meet those goals in some other way. I think it's good to do this even if you think your fieldwork in your 4th year will happen, since things can change and there's no harm in learning more anyways.

I personally don't think switching institutions and starting over at another school/program just because you cannot do this expedition is necessarily a good idea. You aren't guaranteed anything at another school either and funding/grants will always limit or dictate the direction of your research (to some extent) in the future. So, starting over and losing your coursework and current progress doesn't seem worth it. It won't be feasible to do this every time you reach a funding hurdle! But if your main reason to work with this advisor was the fieldwork, and you're not interested in the project without fieldwork, you could consider switching to another group at the same school. Or, if there are many other reasons why you want to leave this institution and this funding thing is just "the last straw" then it might also make sense to move.

One thing that wasn't super clear though was whether your entire PhD project is now unfunded, or that you can still complete your project with the current samples (i.e. only the new data part is unfunded). If your whole project is not funded and there's no funding for you to work in this lab/group at all, then I'd put more weight on moving groups or even moving schools (but again, if you stay in academia for a long time, you will encounter other unfunded situations).