Helium

In this final episode of the show we sat down with our advisor Mark Wiesner. Mark is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a long time Department Chair at Duke University. He also has directed of the Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology for 10+ years where he worked with Christine. Mark has shared insights about trust and building relationships throughout your career. This is the perfect capstone to the show. Please consider heading over to Patreon and supporting Helium Podcast so we can pay to keep the show online and on the podcast servers. 

Courtney joined us in episode 6 as she was driving across the country to her new position at Washington State University. She rejoined us so we could learn how things shaped up in her first year+ of teaching, advising and grant writing. There is lots of reality in this episode, but a bunch of hope for those hoping to land a faculty position someday or starting one soon. She did not hold back telling it like it is and we appreciate her candor. 

We take stock of the past 32 episodes and plot a course for future episodes of the show. We both work in roles where we help integrate teams and enable them to co-create knowledge, and we are going to focus on sharing more of those insights going forward. After a paternity leave for Matt we will return with the show later in the Fall. We will have a few longer interviews of academics but mostly focus on shorter 15 minute episodes centered on teams. 

Creating your own style as a team leader means gathering the best ideas that are out there and adapting them to your personality. We asked 9 different podcast hosts to join the show to share their best ideas for onboarding others into teams or groups. They discuss positives and negatives have they experienced when being onboarded themselves. The bonus is that you also get to hear from 8 great shows that are for you as academics. Download this episode to find great onboarding ideas and your next podcast (or podcasts) to subscribe to. Creating your own style as a team leader means gathering the best ideas that are out there and adapting them to your personality. We asked 9 different podcast hosts to join the show to share their best ideas for onboarding others into teams or groups. They discuss positives and negatives have they experienced when being onboarded themselves. The bonus is that you also get to hear from 8 great shows that are for you as academics. Download this episode to find great onboarding ideas and your next podcast (or podcasts) to subscribe to.  Show notes: www.teamhelium.co/episode32 Shows included are: (1) The Contingent Professor (2) Personal Finance for PhDs (3) Fast Track Impact (4) Working Scientists (from Nature Careers) (5) Grad Blogger (6) Research in Action (7) PhD Career Stories (8) Teaching in Higher Ed

Too much technology and you overwhelm the students and yourself. However, today's students are digital natives and may expect a different approach to learning than students just a few years ago. How do you harness the best of what technology has to offer to improve your courses and make your job easier? Dr. Monica Burns, host of the Ed Tech Made Easy podcast, joined us to share many tips for platforms and approaches for technology in your courses. For full show notes and transcript: www.teamhelium.co/episode31 

How do you obtain the first experiences in the classroom? How do you learn the vocabulary you need to discuss your teaching experience? As host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and a faculty member herself these are the two questions Bonni Stachowiak sees early career researchers struggle with. She answers these questions and also jam packs this episode with manageable steps for any graduate student, postdoc or professor to improve their teaching.

As an early career faculty member you are often called upon to design or redesign a course. This can be something faculty dread as a distraction from research. But by following a framework for course design you can enjoy and excel in this process. In this episode Liesl Wuest walks us through a framework that will allow you to intentionally create your next course in a structured way with learning goals, objectives, content, activities and assessment in mind.  www.teamhelium.co/episode29

Your brain creates your mind which creates your experience. It determines your happiness levels and your ability to make new discoveries. But how well do you understand your brain? How well do you take care of your brain? Author and engineer Sean Webb joined the show to talk about the benefits of understanding how your mental states are created and how you can train your brain to improve your cognitive processes through practices like meditation. Sean makes a convincing argument that meditation is a practice you should start today. 

Dr. Olivia Aguilar, Associate Professor at Denison University, joined the show to talk about her wide ranging experiences. How tough is the tenure process? How much tougher it is for someone who is a first generation in her family college grad? How do you manage and vet the opportunities given to you as a new assistant professor? How do you authentically engage early career researchers who come come from diverse backgrounds? These are just a few of the questions we cover in this interview. 

When you think to yourself, how do I make a bigger impact with my research? Are you lost about where to start? It was great to host Mark Reed, host of Fast Track Impact podcast, on this episode. We dove into the questions you should be asking yourself when you want to increase your impact beyond impact factor. We also discussed how to use social media properly for maximum effect. Mark also touched on mental health issues surrounding social media and academia. How do match your values with the time you are spending each week? 

How do make space for the joy in your career? Early on it feels like you must say yes to anything and everything but as Dr. Emily Bernhardt explains in this interview it quickly shifts to having to make space. This is space for those things that will both define your career and bring you joy. One strategy she shares is putting both financial and time price tags on projects to determine if you want to invest. She also provides encouragement all PhDs (or almost PhDs) out there who want to blend life and career into a joyous mix. 

Is it possible that graduate school transformed you into a less human version of yourself? Are you prepared to handle all humans that will be in your care as an advisor to your students? Are you prepared to take care of yourself properly so you can help others maximize their potential? If you said maybe to any of these questions this episode is for you. Dr. Antes joined us to help us rehumanize ourselves and our relationships to our lab groups. It is not complicated but she lays out some key steps we all need to build into our weeks to be better at creating connections with others.

What are some ways that university researchers can build relationships for collaboration and funding at mission driven government agencies? Gayle Hagler of the US Environmental Protection Agency joined us to talk about how she has seen this work at the EPA. Much of this knowledge can apply further to other agencies that are also mission driven. Understanding the mindset and the priorities of the organization will make you more successful in finding funding. Show notes: www.teamhelium.co/episode23

How do you have to step up your ability to be outgoing in certain situations when you are working in academia? You might not expect a person in the National Academies for Engineering and Science to say that self-doubt still resonates at times. But Professor Bruce Rittmann can still get in touch with that feeling and identifies himself as shy. Dr. Rittmann shared his processes for practicing the outgoing role when he identifies as an introverted person. We also discussed his approach to funding, including some creative approaches he has taken to “kissing the frog.” It was a privilege to have Dr. Rittmann on the show and we can all benefit from his seasoned approach to 45+ years in academia. www.teamhelium.co/episode22

Do you want to start working with undergraduates in your research group? Dr. Dannemiller shared her process on how to interview them for the job and design undergraduate-sized projects. She also details her process for onboarding them including the research expectations document she reviews, the type of proposal she has them all write, and the experiments they trial run before they start. This episode is perfect for anyone wanting to improve the way they mentor undergraduates for research.

As researchers we can spend a good part of the year traveling to and attending conferences. How do you step back and make the most of that time by making a strategy for the conferences you attend and how you divide your time during those conferences? Our guests from the AEESP conference share their strategies and approaches for success and we share ours in a roundtable format. Listen to this episode to make your next round of conferences the best yet.

Dr. Richard Huysmans joined the show to discuss how to develop and nurture relationships with industry. These relationships will lead to more well-rounded mentoring for your students, more research collaboration opportunities and possible sponsorship of you work. How do you start? Ask your senior mentors to introduce you to their industry collaborators. Develop a LinkedIn profile where you talk about what you are passionate about in your research life. Avoid jargon on social media platforms if you intent is to connect with members of industry. Project the type of collaborator that you want to work with onto those platforms.

Dr. Beth Calhoun joined the show to discuss when and how to navigate out of bad relationships with senior faculty. How to avoid the confidence traps she sees young faculty fall into. How to be flexible and not set in stone what your biosketch will look like in the future. How team science helped her early in her career and still helps her to this day. She also shares the advice she would have for her early career-self.

Is your brain more important than your teeth? Do you have daily mental hygiene habits? Author Matthew Kent joined us for this episode based where we discuss his Medium article 5 Ways Your Technology Is Destroying You (and What to Do About It) We get into just how addictive multi-tasking can be and how you brain pushes you to believe you should do more of it. We also talk about the importance of scheduling your brain to have off periods so that your work can be much more creative and productive. We hope this episode helps you as much as it helped us!

As an early career researcher how do you transition from covering multiple research areas to focusing and becoming the expert in a specific area? Greg Lowry talks about how he made this transition and learned to say no to opportunities that did not align. He also gives advice on how to stay grounded in the fundamentals so you can pivot to related subjects later in your career. We also had a light-speed round with Greg on his mistakes, successes and how he breaks away from research work. 

You'll hear about how to build a research group through careful recruiting, listening to students and letting go of what is out of your control. Greg dives into the way he mentors students from the day they arrive in his group, he also discusses how he recruits graduate students to join his group and how he has worked through bad fits before. His purpose is produce the best students because they will go on to have a bigger impact in the world than any of this publications. The unifying theme through all of this is his listening to students, other faculty and industry members. This way he gets a handle on the whole landscape of the graduate student career recruitment through placing them in their next gig (whether that be a consulting position or a postdoc). 

Maren Wood and Jen Polk from Beyond the Professoriate joined us to talk about how mentors can open doors for graduate students and enable them to explore alternative career paths. The key for them is eliminating the default career mindset in academia. Your students can pursue other careers after their time with you and go on to have impactful careers. Want happier graduate students? Have open and honest career discussions with them. 

Mentoring is a big part of the conversation in this second half of our interview with Thomas Seager. The conversation also spanned scales from the day to day practical to broad visions of defining personal metrics for success and the fundamental purpose of research, engineering, and the personal growth and mentoring needed to reach our potential.

What are the incentives and measures of academic success? What are your measures of success? Do these align or will you need to decide what is important to you? We had Thomas Seager on for episode 12 and he shared a ton of insight into the history and future of the university. If you are an early career researcher, or someone who plans on working with universities over the next 5 to 20 years this episode is thought provoking. We had so much fun speaking with Dr. Seager that we had to split this conversation into two parts. The second part is coming your way next week in Episode 13. 

Listening is fundamental to what we do in academia, we take the information and progress of others and build upon that. Yet, listening is never formally taught as a skill. It is assumed that listening can be learned like we learn to walk. With his book Deep Listening Oscar Trimboli is on a mission to change this approach to learning listening. In this interview he describes the five levels of listening and helps us understand how they can be put into practice. 

Caren Weinhouse was starting a new position at Oregon Health & Science University. Before she left her postdoc she wanted to capture a graduate student snapshot of what good mentoring looks like. Caren began by listening to Anthony and Jessica, and brought the mentality that each graduate student, within their time in a research group, can really offer insight about what speaks to their perspective, what makes them feel supported. This episode will alter your approach to mentoring.

Gary McDowell and Becki Lijek from the Future of Research joined us for conversation about better practices around peer review processes. We learned about the Future of Research (Gary is the Executive Director). FoR is now focused on getting better data on early career researchers. This means getting a handle on how many postdocs are out there and where they are going. Their goal is to give more transparency to the whole process. They also share many insights about the struggles of early career researchers (e.g., postdocs) and how that should play into mentoring them. They are running a survey on peer review with early career researchers. The survey link is in the show notes.

Professor Nina Vance from the University of Colorado joined us to talk about the thought process of becoming a professor. She describes her tortuous path, how she finally overcame imposter syndrome and convinced herself that work-life balance was possible in academia. We also asked her how she creates a good group culture, how she weaves creativity into her work and the air quality science she is working on right now.

Sarah K. Peck joined us for a show about the realities of time management. Sarah has some great advice about learning what to let go from your life and what to hang onto. She is ruthless, but it is something we all need to hear if we have big dreams for our lives and work. She also told us about how she runs a mastermind program for people who want to surround themselves with others who are focusing in a similar way. This is not something well-known in the research community, but these groups can make a big difference to reaching your goals. We also talked a little about the problems mothers can face in the workplace and startup word.

Dr. Gardner talks with us about what she anticipates as she enters a new professorship. She has plans in place for how she would like to mentor, create a research group culture and maximize her efficiency. This is part one of an episode we will complete next year when we check in with Courtney to see how her first year went.

Shannon talks about how to distill the message of who you are, what you do, and why it matters. She also emphasizes how to think about your center, group, or lab as a business that depends on growing in both financial sustainability and in impact.

Dr. David Jassby joined us to share advice for academics who want to explore funding from mission driven agencies in the United States. He talks about what it takes to be successful working with these agencies. There are funding opportunities for people working throughout academia. You need to know how to frame your research.

Dr. Katy Peplin joined us to share advice for professors who want to be better mentors to graduate students and graduate students who want to be better mentees. Don't miss the practical steps in the worksheet with the show notes.

Dr. Jose Cerrato joins us to talk about developing a vision for you and your research group. How does starting with you help inform your strategic decisions as an academic?

Welcome to Helium Podcast. If you are a professor or a scientist who struggles to stop wasting precious time we would like to be your guides to a more well-connected, secure and purposeful life as an academic.