Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Sean P. Murphy. I used to spend my days reviewing essays, referring students to the writing center, offering advice to students about their academic paths, writing lesson plans and assessing the effectiveness of these lesson plans after their implementation in the classroom. I was an English professor. Read more...

By Joseph Barber. “What do you want someone to take away having read your résumé?”
This is often one of the first questions I ask graduate students and postdocs that I work with at Penn before discussing my feedback on their résumé – especially if they are Ph.D. students and postdocs working on transforming their academic CVs into résumés. Read more...

By Melissa Dennihy. A common piece of advice newly hired tenure-track faculty receive is to learn to say no. Invitations to serve on committees, teach new courses, develop curricula, give talks, attend events and meet colleagues will abound in the first few years of a tenure-track position, and if you don’t learn to say no to some of these invitations, you’ll never be able to get any of your own research done. Read more...

By Sam Minner. Summer is the season of leaving. Colleagues retire or depart for other positions, and those leaving as well as those remaining are faced with a tricky issue -- how to handle the farewell. Read more...

By Stephanie K. Eberle. When career counselors talk about interviews, we usually talk about formal, behavioral interviews wherein a candidate has applied for a job and is invited to discuss that application with a potential employer. Read more...

By Aisha Langford. Public speaking is a critical, but often underdeveloped, skill among higher education professionals. Your ability to convey ideas with confidence and clarity is essential for articulating the importance of your research, getting buy-in for your projects and obtaining funding from sponsors. Read more...

By Kirstie Ramsey. As I look back on my employment since graduating with my Ph.D., I realize that there are numerous things that I wish I had known much earlier in my career. This list is not intended to deter you from an academic career, or portray it as being the best job option available. Read more...

By Rob Weir. Anyone who has ever read student course evaluations has seen such a comment. Mostly such remarks come from low achievers and mean either: (a) "The professor actually expected me to problem solve on my own!" or (b) "I didn't bother to look at the three pages of instructions that were posted to the course website." Read more...

By Kerry Ann Rockquemore. I understand how unsettling the tenure-track years can be, and I know that for many faculty members the year you are under review is the pinnacle of that stress. I agree that the system we currently use to evaluate faculty for tenure is unnecessarily lengthy and opaque, but I don’t imagine your campus will be changing its tenure process before you come up for review. Read more...

By Kerry Ann Rockquemore. Take a deep breath -- it’s going to be OK. You’re not the only one feeling like you blinked and all of the sudden the beginning of the new school year is right around the corner (this note is actually a composite of the requests I’ve received in the past week). Read more...