By Liz Koblyk. While design thinking is certainly trendy, its popularity is at least partly due to its utility as a way to approach complex problems. Unsurprisingly, it has already been applied to career exploration, and is particularly useful when you reach points in your career where there is a problem to solve – like what to do next if you feel stuck, or what to plan for even if you’re content where you are, but can’t envision and prepare for the next part of your career trajectory. More...

By Liz Koblyk. Exploring career options assumes that you have some. So, of course, people sometimes avoid exploring career options because they assume they don’t have any. More...

By Erin Clow. Before choosing a supervisor, get to know them—and get to know yourself. More...

By Ian MacLachlan. Retirement may be the opportunity for a “third career” to try something different. More...

By David Kent. Over the past few months I have been doing some semi-regular teaching at the undergraduate level. It’s been a while since I have taught, aside from an odd lecture here or there. However, one thing has become very clear to me: the further I go in research, the less I’m meant to teach the next generation. More...

By Jonathan Thon. The chair of the search committee has now made it clear that they are prepared to offer you a faculty position in their department and would like to begin negotiating the details of your appointment. Along with this offer you will typically be invited back for a second interview where you are expected to meet with additional members of the department to get a feel for what you will need to launch a successful research lab. More...

By Jonathan Thon. To read the previous articles in this series please visit the links below:

• The door to an academic science career – open or closed?
• Commencing the academic job search – impetus and deadlines
• The academic job search – getting your foot in the door
• Preparing your application package for an academic job
• Preparing for the academic Job Interview
• The actual job interview – what to expect
• Facing facts: the harsh realities of the academic job hunt

The chair of the search committee has now made it clear that they are prepared to offer you a faculty position in their department and would like to begin negotiating the details of your appointment. More...

By David Kent. Earlier this month I was evaluating scientific abstracts for an international stem cell conference (ISSCR). For readers who do not know the process, international experts from across the world get assigned to evaluate the work of their peers to help select which scientists are asked to come and present their work at the meeting. More...

By Melonie Fullick. Some of you may recall that there was a piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books last December that was a strong contender for “Worst Higher Ed Article of 2015.” Written by University of Prince Edward Island professor Ron Srigley, it was in some ways the epitome of a recognizable type: what you might call the Old Man Yells at Cloud school of analysis, closely related to the Get Off My Lawn genre that I discussed in a post last year. This torrent of prose (over 8,500 words of it) received a good deal of attention on social media at the time—in spite of, or perhaps because of, the author’s vicious snarkiness about the apparent failures of Canadian universities. More...

By Melonie Fullick. In a post last year I wrote about how usually, when it’s argued there is an “overproduction” of PhDs, “demand” for doctoral graduates is being implicitly defined by the number of tenure-stream jobs available while “overproduction” usually points to “not enough academic jobs for doctoral graduates.” So how do you define the demand for doctorates when we’re not just talking about faculty jobs anymore. More...