Free Consulting, Grants, and Fatal Flaws

One of the big tasks of this summer has been working on a grant proposal. My university doesn’t require me to secure outside funding as some do, but “they” definitely smile on it. Plus, it helps the long-term outlook of my career, it enables me to do meaningful research that I couldn’t do otherwise, and it can buy out summer teaching and course reductions. So I am trying to apply for grants from time to time.

As I wrote on Monday, I polished a grant application and sent it to the people at my university that critique grant applications. The person I was working with (former program officer at the National Science Foundation) said that the application looks really good and stands a reasonable chance of being funded…except for a “fatal flaw.” I was proposing some longitudinal research in an organization, which was fine, and proposing to use students to help with that, which was great, but I didn’t have an organization that had signed on. He said they would never fund such an uncertain project, particularly given that other parts of the grant depended on this one. Never mind the fact that the grant included incentives (in addition to free consulting) that were supposed to help me recruit an organization. Never mind the fact that I tried to “recruit” an organization for a project two years ago and got nowhere while discovering that cold calling managers is about on the same level as dentists and tetanus shots in terms of how I’d like to spend my time.

So I am letting the August 18th deadline pass and planning to recruit an organization this fall and submit the grant in January. I’m a little bummed because it pushes back the anticipated start date of the research, but it does postpone the pressure. And my application will definitely be more competitive with an organization that has committed to be studied. The nice difference between now and that failed experience two years ago is that was not for a funded project but this is. Which means that, because of indirect costs, the university has something substantial to gain by helping me. Which means that people at the university are trying to connect me to alumni and parents of students that can help me. You can help too. Any CEOs that are reading this are welcome to apply!

Tasks for today

1. Finish rewrite of grant proposal and send to the people at my university that will tell me what's wrong with it and why it is unrealistic to get it done by the deadline.

2. Work on lesson plans for the new prep that I am teaching this fall.

3. Make progress on content analysis project.

4. Catch up on the blogs that I read and write an insightful post on my own blog.

Beginning of the End

The first day of classes is one month from today. So, in theory, I have one month left of summer “break.” In reality, meetings and “retreats” start August 11th, so it feels like closer to two weeks. Either way, the end of summer is in sight.

When I reached the half way mark, I think I was in freak-out mode. I was freaking out that the summer was halfway over, but I had barely finished what I wanted to get done for the spring semester and hadn’t really started what I wanted to get accomplished for the summer. Ah, what a month and some changed expectations can do! Maybe a little bit about changing what I expected to get done, but it’s also been a very productive month, in spite of visits from family.

Today is also the end of the summer program in which I was participating. My university has what it calls a Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), which I thought was a really cool and unique idea until I googled it and my school wasn’t on the first several pages. Apparently, SURP is a popular acronym. Basically, they give me a stipend for involving students in my research. So this summer, two students helped me analyze data. One student was a little better than the other in terms of getting stuff to me on time and depth of thinking, and I wish I had pushed the other student a little harder. They both did fine, but one seemed to "get it" a little more than the other. I had hoped to get a little more done with that, but I’m happy with what we did do. It’ll still take me most of the fall to finish the data and write it up, but the summer has definitely helped with that project.

Success!

It’s an awesome feeling to have an article accepted at a journal. I revised and resubmitted an article earlier this summer. I got the “accept with minor revisions” a few weeks ago (mostly grammatical), but it was really nice to get the official acceptance this week. The article is coauthored with a former professor of mine and will be in Western Journal of Communication late next year. Great feeling. (By the way, the editor has been great. Good feedback and incredible turnaround time.)

Yes, I do work during the summer

Last week, I endured a great deal of good-natured ribbing from family about how I get the summers off. My problem is that someone forgot to tell me that I get the summers off. I have already blogged about how busy this summer feels. It is definitely an interesting feeling to be this busy but have people assume that I am on a 3 month vacation. These are the same people that put research in quotation marks when I tell them my job duties.

A friend told me that, to get people reading my blog, I need to blog every day. The problems with that are twofold--first, I have other things to do that take up my time. Second, it's the summer, kind of a monotonous time to start blogging. Nevertheless, I am going to try to bump it up to 3 times per week.

Vacation

I have family visiting this week, and we went backpacking through Sequoia National Park. We hiked from Wolverton to Alta Meadow. Then we left the trails and tried to get to Moose Lake. There supposedly were unmaintained trails in that direction, but we rarely saw them. We made it as far as Pterodactyl Pass, but had to turn back because of weary feet and threatening rain/lightning. The views were incredible--we even saw a bear and her cub (from a safe distance). Best of all, I didn't take any work with me. It was nice to get a few days of recovery ahead of the last push to get stuff done before school starts.

I'm not a Publishing Slut

I think I've recently experienced growth. For as long as I can remember, my attitude about research was as soon as something was finished, send it to a journal to be reviewed. There are definitely times that I can remember when I've worked on an article and polished and got it to the point where I thought it was perfect (though reviewers seem to never agree with me on that). There have been other times when a paper just wasn't very good but was as good as it was going to get, and I sent it out inspite of its flaws. Whether it was a poorly designed study, unremarkable results, or insignificant conclusions, surely someone will want to read it, right? So last week, I had a paper that I had worked on a fair amount, and I had it on my to-do list to send it out. I had the journal picked, I had checked the manuscript submission guidelines, everything was ready. I knew that it didn't have a good chance of even a revise and resubmit. If it got rejected, I had already decided not to put too much effort into sending it out again because it wasn't part of my research program. But still, it doesn't hurt to give it a try once, does it? A host of reasons to not submit this occurred to me, not the least of which was the potential reviewers who would read this mediocre work and might be biased against something later of which I was proud. I said no. I didn't send it. And after the decision, I felt pretty good about it. Growth!

Why I Love My Job

I recently read a great post on another blog about the possibilities that come with this job. I think the details that come with those possibilities sometimes obsure the fun. The fact that I don't have time to pursue all of the possiblities sometimes gets me down. But what a wonderful job I have! I get to learn and be around other people who want to learn. I get to discover ways of helping people communicate with each other in more effective ways. And they pay me for it! It's always nice to be reminded why I wanted to be a professor to begin with.

A 40 hour work week?

Part of me wonders where the standard of a 40 hour work week came from. My level of interest is not great enough to look it up on Wikipedia (the gold standard for researching such things, according to some of my students); I'm just curious. I know that it was associated with a number of labor reforms such as minimum wage and child labor laws. This is why I'm interested. Last Friday, July 4th, I spent a considerable part of the day in my office working on several research projects. And I felt that using this "holiday" to catch up on things was perfectly normal. This got me thinking about the amount of time that I spend working each week. Like many, I was warned during my PhD that it would usually be more than 40 hours a week. I think 60 was the most common response from assistant professors that I asked who were at Research 1 universities. I'm not at an R1 university, but I do think I get close to 50-55. And again, a few hours in the evening or on the weekend seems acceptable. I hate to think that I've given up the benefits that labor leaders fought so hard to provide me--it's just that I can't get it all done in 40 hours. I wonder how many hours are appropriate for assistant professors. Maybe I'll look that up on Wikipedia!

Publish or Profit?

As an assistant professor in organizational communication and as a new blogger, one of the things that I am trying to do more of is look at blogs about communicating in the workplace. I’ve found a number of really good sites recently although I am waiting to list them in my blogroll until I see a little more about how and what they write. One blog caught my eye. I’m not going to identify or link to it because I am still uncertain about how I feel regarding this blog. Coming from a Research 1 PhD program, I feel like I was socialized to believe that research should be done, published (mostly in academic journals), and then those results should be shared with people in such a way as to improve whatever you were studying. For example, if you were studying the ways in which nurses manage their emotions, you would conduct the research, publish it in an academic journal, and help to improve the quality of the nurses’ workplace experiences. Approaching research from this perspective tends to distance oneself from consultants. It’s not that I’m against consulting, it’s just that I was “raised” to appreciate academic research over consulting.

So earlier this week, I was reading this blog that got me really excited. I was completely ready to post a link to this blog as the author talked about dissenting in the workplace, a topic that is closely related to what I research. And then I read the end. The blogger was kind enough to be available for telephone consultation for the modest fee of $75 for a half hour. Part of me was immediately indignant. “Use your research to help people” part of me screamed. But then, part of me thought, “$150 per hour? I must be in the wrong profession.” And then that part felt guilty for thinking that. Like I said, I haven’t decided how I feel about this blog, but it just seems wrong on some level.