2017-2018 Off Duty Pay Calendar

HR Policies PowerPoint Presentation

Brandi Gilbert-Hammett: 

Off Duty Pay (ODP) – 9 month vs 12. month faculty.

For 9 month faculty, August 15 or so to May 15 is considered the “on duty” period. May 16 to August 14 is the off duty period. There are other dates that are off duty, like winter and spring break during the on duty period. For those dates, you could compensate yourself to work on a grant of some sort.

Talk with HRor fiscal to start. The Board of Trustees approaches off-duty pay by days.

We have a calendar and calculator that’s online on our college HR website (https://hr.cfaes.ohio-state.edu or specifically, https://hr.cfaes.ohio-state.edu/hraservice-center/hra-resources/faqs). Your department Human Resources Professional (HRP) has access to this information as well.

Plan ahead so that you can make sure you’re compliant and processing ODP in a timely fashion.

Lori Kaser: If you are writing ODP into grants, the most you can do is 2.5 months in a year and 11% per month.

Brandi Gilbert-Hammett: Delay of tenure track — Your offer letter indicates a probationary period, your mandatory time frame for promotion. Always refer back to this. Print your APT and save an electronic and hard copy to reference.

The probationary period varies by rank and what track you’re in. Be mindful of this.

You have a choice to use the APT that you were brought in on or the most current. If it has changed it is helpful to have your original copy.

Things that are permitted for delaying tenure track: Care giving (pregnancy and adoption), personal illness or injury, less than full time during a particular period, having a child for example.

Appointment structures — 12/12 or 9/12. Nine month faculty (9/12.5) — this is what new faculty are hired on.

12 month faculty are working the calendar year, but you can take vacation, etc.

9/12 month faculty are working the academic year.

9/12.5 means you start mid-August. You need time to get prepared before classes actually start. You begin your appointment mid-August and you get a paycheck for half the month. You’re beginning work, getting courses set up, accessing Carmen, etc.

There’s a negotiated salary. When you think about your salary divide by 12.5 for your first year. The following year starting September 1 begins your monthly comp rate.

Nine month faculty cannot get vacation, but each structure gets sick leave. At the end of the retirement sick leave can be paid out. Nine month faculty don’t have vacation because of the OD period. More faculty are coming in as 9/12.

At the time of conversion from 12/12 to 9/12 you will lose your vacation. You can donate it to someone’s sick leave or you can try to spend it down.

The Board of Trustees has designated a period of what should be on duty time. The rest that’s left is off duty. May 16 – August 1.

Use the ODP tool!

Academic off duty are the days sprinkled throughout the year, then there is summer ODP. May is also an odd month.

If you’re going to pay yourself for any days in May, you can only do so at the beginning of the month or the end of the month. You can’t “double dip”

If you’re thinking of converting from 12/12, loop in your department chair and your HR professional.

Conversion from 12/12 to 9/12 in January… yes you can do this, but it’s a big manual job to do behind the scenes. You’re taking five months of pay and spreading it over eight months. Be prepared for a smaller paycheck.

August 15 is the start of on duty pay, the start of the academic year. August 1-14 are ODP eligible days.

There are more ODP eligible days than you’re allowed to pay yourself. There are three months in the summer, but you’re only allowed 2.5 months total. This allows nine month faculty to actually take personal time because they do not accrue vacation. You need personal time.

Elayne Siegfried: Faculty conflict of commitment (Office of Academic Affairs) — Applies to full-time faculty including administrators and staff with faculty appointments.

When external conflicts interfere with your main responsibility (teaching, research, service), your primary allegiance is to OSU. Ex: if you’re doing consulting work. Always disclose this process or your new consulting, etc.  with your Chair or Dean.

Examples of conflict of commitment: if you teach at another university, if you have a private business, conduct research as a private consultant to outside entities.

Ohio ethics law — Can’t authorize a contract with you, your family member or an associate. You can’t disclose confidential information. You can’t receive additional compensation for what Ohio state is already paying you for. Ex: you can’t be paid double for an outreach program.

Financial conflict of interest  — Look at your professional activities and make sure there are not COIs. If you can’t avoid the COI you must refrain. Ex: research funded by an entity in which you or your family is involved.

Ex: working with an industry partner and they want to pay for you to travel to speak at a conference OR you sit on a board and you get financial compensation.

We maintain transparency at the university. It’s in your best favor to put these down on your form! If a conflict is found we do a COI management plan with your Department Chair, Lori, and the Office of Research Compliance. It just keeps you and the university out of financial trouble.

Political Activity

If you are a Classified Civil Servants there are more restrictions … you can’t participate in a patrician way in an election.

Non-Classified Civil Servants (A&P), there are really no restrictions. You can run for part-time office as long as it’s not taking time away from your job…

The Office of Government Affairs at OSU has what you can and cannot do in terms of political opinions/information.

Self-disclosure of criminal convictions — applies to everyone! Check with your HR professional when you’ve had an interaction with law enforcement, and definitely let them know if you are required to go to court. Always be honest and report immediately.

Sally Miller: What kind of management style do you have? Are you a delegator or are you more hands on involved, micro-managing? If you’re not comfortable with mistakes being made, or you have to watch everything… that’s going to determine the size of your group. That’s not bad, you just need to have a small group if you want to be more hands on. On the other hand, if you don’t pay attention mistakes will be made.

Bigger labs feel okay with delegating and are willing to accept that mistakes may be made or things won’t be done exactly as you’d like.

Enrico Bonello: The key to being successful is to empower people. Give them the responsibilities and independence. Whether you will micromanage or delegate also depends on the individual. If they require more management, I would require that they give me a summary of what’s being done to make sure it’s happening.

I see myself as more of a facilitator.

Question: How do you keep people accountable?

Enrico: In our department, we have an evaluation for graduate students supervised by the grad studies committee. We have forms that need to be filled out every year. This adds a paper record of what the students are doing. The professor and the student both have to sign this.

In the short term, I have had to write letters to the Department Chair to say that the student’s behavior needs to change or I may have to let them go. These are extreme cases. Make it clear that they need to live up to their responsibilities or there will be consequences, including termination.

Sally: It’s good to have that department structure. I also encourage getting things in writing.

How do you motivate them to stay on time and get the work done? You have deadlines and objectives for grants. Sometimes it requires bringing in additional post docs or staff members to help meet the objectives.

Enrico: Always expect high product, and have high expectations. Most of the time people will rise to the occasion.

Question: If we terminate their employment can still stay in the department or what if they’ve already been terminated?

Enrico: They have protections, you can’t just dismiss them without cause, you need a paper trail. If it’s justified, the graduate school will support you. Maybe it’s just a bad combination. You work with the student and maybe other faculty in your department or in another department can take them in their lab.

Involve the student advisory committee. You can always say you don’t have funding.

Sally: Once they have a letter that promises them department support, it is always contingent on performance.

It’s important to communicate with the faculty member and the student because the student may try to gain sympathy and make the faculty member look bad. Communicate with the current advisor.

Enrico: Use a mentor in your department, use the graduate studies committee in your department.

Question: How do you attract or recognize talent? How do you recruit stellar students?

Sally: You can’t always. What I usually do is have a video interview if they can’t come personally because a lot of time the international students can’t. That is critical. It’s best when you have a personal reference or it comes from someone you know.

When people are looking for something specific they want to work on, they’ve read your papers and know your lab, etc. I got more interest when I was involved with a professional society and that gave me a lot of visibility.

Enrico: When a student contacts me via email for example, look to see if they’re detail oriented by the way they write. I ask them why they are interested in working with me. If they lead their email with “dear sir” I don’t respond to them.

I look carefully at what comes in though the graduate studies committee, or I have people contact me directly and look to see if they make a strong opening and know how their experience fits into the program. I almost always will have a Skype conversation first to get a sense of how interested they are.

In students I really want, I pick them up at the airport, I take them around Columbus, show them how nice Columbus is. The personal touch is important.

Sally: Get back to students right away if there’s a student you’re interested in. Arrange those Skype interviews right away. If they’re really good, they’re going to be pursued by other places as well. The better students are going to have lots of opportunities.

Millennials / students want communication and motivation.

Question: How do you deal with students who personally don’t feel like they measure up?

Enrico: We try to talk to them a lot about imposter syndrome. I like to clear expectations up front. I created a list of expectations for my incoming students. I will not sign your dissertation if you don’t have two papers submitted when you graduate, etc. It’s very direct, but it’s an opportunity to engage with students initially. This is a high quality program and I have high expectations. Here it is. They have to sign it and understand that they will need to work hard.

Sally: You can’t compare students to yourself because we’re where we’re at because we’ve been through it already. Not everyone will live up to your expectations so you have to find where they will fit in and do a good job or let them loose. It’s rare it will go that far though.

Have an experienced post doc and/or staff member that can also help students. You will get very busy. They are going to have to do a lot of it on their own. It’s important they can network within the department or lab.

Enrico: Don’t treat graduate students as technicians. You should empower them, respect them and give them independence. They need to learn how to do science on their own and be independent speakers.

Questions: How do you structure your time between meeting with post docs vs. grads, etc.?

Enrico: I have an open door policy so people can always come in and talk to me. We also have bi-weekly lab meetings as brainstorming sessions. We talk about our own research and what the issues are and we come up with solutions for each other. It creates a bit of community.

Right now because of funding I only have one post-doc and one grad. I also encourage the grad and post-docs to meet together too.

Sally: My schedule is so tight and I did a lot of international traveling so it was hard to have scheduled lab meetings.

I also have an open door policy… it would be better if we met as a group more often. When we call a meeting there’s usually just some issue to deal with as a group. For research, it’s just small groups. We meet if they’re working on similar things.

I encourage students to read the research papers, not only to learn what’s in them, but so they know how to write a research paper and structure it.

Question: How do you handle too much editing as a student voice vs. too much editing in the voice you want?

Enrico: Resist the temptation to write it in your own words. They need to learn how to write.

When you recruit new students you need to be selective. It’s okay to wait for a better student because it will be easier for you and better for them.

You can ask for a writing sample. I have even asked for a synthesis paper to see if they understand the work going on in my lab.

Question: How do you manage students that are not well-aligned with your interests and that are not interested in a core of what you want your program to be?

Sally: I encourage students to pick up side projects, but emphasize that your first role is to get this done.

Question: Where do students go when the soft funding runs out?

Enrico: Somehow we managed to support the student with departmental funding, university fellowships, etc. We can never really project beyond three years, so you have to trust that somehow you’ll get more grant funding or through the department or some other way.

Question: Collaboration … how do you initiate a collaboration? What makes a good collaboration or makes them easier?

Sally: I prefer to be a sub-awardee rather than the lead.

It’s helpful to know people ahead of time or to network etc. the best thing is to get on someone’s grant proposal because you have some specific skill they need.

Elizabeth Drotleff: OSU’s Industry Liaison Office is the office you can come to for help in outreach, industry and initiating and cultivating relationships with companies to enter into research collaborations. We help to smooth the process so faculty can concentrate on the science.

I work very closely with Mike Adkins from OSU Office of Sponsored Programs and Jay Dahlman from OSU Technology and Commercialization Office. Each one of our offices is responsible for a different stage of the collaboration process.

Mike Adkins: When we need to talk about a research agreement we work with Elizabeth’s office. I take care of negotiating the research agreement. This could be a service intensive agreement, etc. I work to make sure we’re setting up the appropriate agreement.

Timelines are tough to nail down. It could be a week to a year of negotiating with the companies, it just depends on the complexity.

We work with intellectual property agreements. We sometimes pull Jay into this. You should get Jay’s office involved at the beginning of this process. We also help with the submission of a proposal. We can review your internal budgets, especially. If we get outside of what I’ve been allowed to approve then we go to TCO.

Jay Dahlman: Our office handles intellectual property (IP), licensing, industry sponsored research, etc.

We can be creative with the language as long as we are within the state of Ohio law. The question we need to ask is should we be doing this, what’s the best interest of the faculty member, what’s beneficial for the university?

The purpose of the office is to identify assets. We try to engage frequently with faculty to see what people are working on. We try keep up with faculty grants, etc. Faculty are the life blood for us. You invent things and we support you.

It’s a cradle to grave office, we can look at the value, the idea, the marketability, etc. We can start developing an intellectual property strategy. We help get the industry interested enough to want to license or collaborate.

If sponsored work needs to be done and a company will fund it, then we bring Mike in. We transfer our assets at OSU to industry to generate revenue, etc.

OSU copyright policy means you can have revenue from these agreements.

Mike: If a company asks for confidentiality or a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), these funnel through Jay’s office. I can catch all questions and direct you to the right person though, so feel free to reach out to me.

These arrangements are usually established before entering into a research agreement when the company has some confidential information and wants to protect the information.

Jay: Material Transfer Agreements: for profit entities requesting access to different materials with the end goal of commercialization. We can leverage value, etc. if an industry contact is looking to get a hold of some materials — get my office involved! We need to get the proper agreement in place. They will benefit monetarily through those materials, you should too.

Elizabeth: There are typically no costs associated with a NDA. There’s no monetary value

Mike: Our federally negotiated rates do not cover all costs, our current rate is 56%. This covers building space, lab space, janitorial and admin services, etc. You should try to get 56% F&A because it still won’t recoup the entire amount needed.

If you get push back from an industry partner on the rate, we can have discussions about lowering the amount, but it will only come with college and department approval. This is done through the ePA-005.

Once you submit the ePA-005, it is automatically routed for approval to the college and department. I also get an email notification. Once it’s approved, then it takes my approval to move forward with lower rate negotiation if you need it.

Elizabeth: In general, our offices are here to have business and legal discussions that you don’t need to be having with the company contact. We want you to preserve your positive relationship with the company. We can have the difficult conversations. Take advantage of the services we provide.

When it comes to the overhead rate, a 56% rate is incredibly inexpensive. The companies sometimes have a misconception that this is profit for us, but that’s why you want to pull us into the conversation so we can help explain its purpose. Just pass it on to Mike or myself and we can have the conversation.

While your department and college can agree to a lower overhead rate, university policy is if the company is paying less than the government rate, they do not have a choice between IP access models.

It is strongly not recommended to lower this rate.

Mike: Examples of different kinds of contracts OSP does with industry include: Service and Testing with industry, for example you may get some seeds that the company wants you to test in our plots. We’re testing and giving the data back to them. We’re not analyzing, we’re just giving test results. There is no expectation of IP.

If the company wants to see an IP agreement, we wonder if they want us to do actual research and do more than just service and testing. In that case, we would use a standard research agreement, IP included. We’re looking to protect your right to publish, we don’t want the sponsor to direct your publishing, we protect students working on the project. Let us know ASAP if you have a student, we can protect final dissertation or thesis. If the company restricts right to publish, it may impact the student’s ability to finish their work and graduate.

Master Agreement: there is a large volume of work, all forms taken care of upfront.

ILO Master Agreement: The company may not be in one specific area / department. They would have a master agreement upfront. Elizabeth’s office might think it’s a good idea and contact me.

Master agreements are great, it takes a little bit longer if you’re the first project on it. Any subsequent projects under a master agreement in place are done quickly.

Services and testing agreement goes through OSP if it’s faculty driven.

Any agreement that’s signed by a PI is invalid. Only OSP is authorized to sign off on these things.

If you aren’t sure if it’s a standard contract, just contact me and we can figure something out. We just want you to worry about the scientific research that needs to be done.

Policies and procedures change often.

Lori Kaser: You also want this documented in the PI portal so you can refer to this when you go up for tenure. The ePA-005 gives you credit for this, as well as if you are trying to get a research agreement.

Mike: Put the ePA-005 in as early on in the process as possible.

Jay: If you have money coming in as a gift, make sure you have a contract.

Mike: When my office signs the paperwork it takes all the legal repercussions off of you, the agreement is with OSU not you as an individual. If the company sues, they sue the university not you.

Jay: This is super important with CDA / NDA when PIs sign off and make themselves personally responsible.

We enter into extension or academic use agreements if someone wants to take copy written materials and produce them. We can grant commercial rights, but still allow it to go to non-profits, etc. You need to set the parameters on how you will license out for extension and for broader commercial use.

Elizabeth: If you want to engage with a company and ensure the conversations are thorough, contact the ILO. It’s my job to help you have those conversations. What are their expectations, timelines, budgetary cycles, vision of the deliverables? We will have those conversations with you.

Once we get an idea of the company’s expectations, then I better understand what the company needs from a standpoint of agreement. Then we may decide on a master agreement, or a one-off research agreement, etc. in the process of talking to them about the business aspects, we start to talk about the IP access models, i.e. how they acquire rights.

When I’m clear about the direction of the relationship, Mike and I work together to talk to the company about the nuts and bolts of the agreement.

Mike works with the statement of work, puts the appropriate budget together, etc. communicates with the company to get approval.

Then, if in the process IP is developed by the terms of the agreement and the company is going to license, you go to the TCO and Jay gets involved. If there is any background IP that generates new IP then the company may need to license that as well.

Jay: We need to make them aware that we have background IP.

Mike: If you’ve had a conversation with a company put it in the ePA-005. Then I will reach out to the company with the larger terms and conditions, but we won’t move forward with a budget, etc. until we have the internal approval.

We cannot sign an agreement until an ePA-005 is approved. Put the ePA-005s in ASAP!

Elizabeth: If you all ask us questions, it helps us. It’s okay if this is an entirely new world for you. We want to help you understand.

Jay: PI includes: Patents — a piece of paper that allows the right to exclude others from making, including or selling the right in the patent. If I have a patent to something, someone else can’t manufacture or sell the item, etc.

Copyright material — mainly in software… we are starting to see this in the extension area in content that’s valuable for other extension units or commercially.

Tangible property as intellectual property, germ plasm, novel material, chemistry, etc.

Trademarks are run through office of general council. We don’t do a lot of those.

Know How is a catch-all in a licensing agreement. Anything not explicitly described in a patent application, etc.

Elizabeth: With multiple companies on an agreement, reassure companies that we have the right firewalls in place to ensure confidentiality with each company. If the companies can each benefit from the project, we can do a research agreement with multiple companies.

With regards to the budget, we don’t expect a certain cost point. However, you all are the experts, do not sell yourself short.

Mike: Especially if the initial research project has great findings and the company wants to do more and now they have a precedent of no salary.

Jay: There is value in the know-how that you posess. It’s okay to charge for it.

Question: Generally how long does this process take?

Elizabeth: It’s hard to define this. The company might not have buy-in from the management, etc. Another delay may be because of needing to find the right person to talk to. Some companies are experienced with working with universities… some companies see this as a top priority others don’t. You can’t predict. The more conversations you have in the beginning, the more it helps when you get to the actual agreements.

Mike: It depends on who we work with. Typically it’s about a month to a month and a half. Our office gets busy during different times of the year, specifically in the summer, any extended holiday break, etc. when faculty are stepping away from their teaching responsibilities. It also coincides with the fiscal years of the companies we deal with.

Talk to faculty that have other collaborations with the companies.

Kay Wolf: Promotion and tenure at the University-level is under me. I look at Vita and P&T from the highest level, while allowing the tenure initiating units to take the lead because success looks different for each department.

Everyone starts from a different place and that’s okay. The idea is to note where you need to go. Read your promotion and tenure document closely. If you have questions, ask the chair of your department and the chair of your college’s promotion and tenure committee.

It is a qualitative review. We look for high quality. Four high quality publications may be better than many more that aren’t as good.

I read every dossier that comes through this university. I look to make sure that we are consistently looking at who we are and what we are as a university. Even if everyone on the committed have said yes, I still look at them and they can be pulled.

Instruction is important to President Drake, so promotion should honor that. It should show we respect our students at all levels. Mentoring, teaching, student instruction — it is all expected to be at a high level.

Question: What is accomplishment vs. activity?

Kay Wolf: Activity is checking something off… for example, on a committee you may attend meetings but never provide input. Therefore, you didn’t really impact the committee.

What is your impact? How could the research you’re working on not be done without you? Explain the contribution and make your case.

What have you done? Have you taken courses? How are you showing dedication? Who did you mentor and where did they go? Show action over a period of time to get to impact. Take stock at the end of every year. Find a mentor who is honest with you.

When you respond to a review, make sure you read it even if the review is great. Sometimes things may be missing. Review for facts. The Chair will give you ten calendar days to respond. If you don’t agree with what was said you can respond with facts. Provide evidence that was missed. There is no form, this is your response, but do not rewrite your dossier.

It then goes to the college-level committee. They check to make sure the processed was followed correctly. The college looks at things more holistically. This provides one more level of recommendation to the Dean. The college committee is advisory to the Dean.

If the process isn’t followed it needs to go back and start again where the procedure wasn’t followed. This happens rarely, but it does happen.

Then it goes to the Dean who makes a review and writes a letter. You then get another ten calendar days to respond to the Dean and college committee.

When it gets to my office, the Office of Academic Affairs, we look to see if there were mixed reviews (where one group voted no, but everyone else was positive). If so, it goes to the university committee to review. If there were three nos for recommendation it will also go to the university committee for review. This committee writes a letter to the provost and the provost will make the final decision.

A faculty member is the only one who can pull their document and stop the process. It can only be stopped early if you’re going from assistant to associate. However, if it is a mandatory review, you can’t stop it.

The decision is final when the Board of Trustees votes on it, usually in June. Don’t use your title until this day.

It is not required to use Vita in 2018-2019. It is mandatory to use the OAA handbook format though. Make sure what you turn in is correct. This should take some time! However, don’t stop putting your data in Vita because eventually this will work and your TIU Chair may ask for the information from Vita.

Be sure to describe your responsibilities on a team, market yourself, discuss any mentoring you have done, identify your appointments and provide information on each area.

Do not repeat items in your dossier, think about what you’re trying to convey.

Narratives should demonstrate growth. Describe changes in teaching evaluations, changes in philosophy, noteworthy accomplishments for graduate or undergraduate students, curriculum development, etc.

PowerPoint Presentation: “Getting Started with Vita” from Cricket Nardacci (OSU ODEE)

Cricket: My team is in the office during university business hours to help answer questions about Vita. There are only seven of us for the entire university. The OSU IT Help Desk has no training on Vita.

We moved from Research in View to Vita/Elements because the vendor for RIV decided to kill the program. We have an entire team dedicated to the data migration effort to move things from RIV to Vita; however, you will need to manage the final settings and clean up because you are the expert on your information.

Vita and Elements are two different programs. Because we have such a large institution and we have a diverse array of work, there is no system that can deliver everything for us. Our team wrote a new code that we call Vita that works with Elements. Vita is still glitchy right now.

On vita.osu.edu, there are dedicated sections with resources to help you use these systems.

The top three resources for you are:

• “Getting Started with Vita” help article
• “RIV to Vita Elements Conversion Chart” — this shows where things were managed in RIV and where it will be managed going forward in Vita Elements.
• “Vita Dossier Display Map”

Debby: There will be OSUE training sessions coming in November.

Tracy Turner: I’ve been at OSU for about five years now, and I was at the Columbus Dispatch for 11 years. Reporters typically don’t come in with a specialty… you go where the assignments are. The reporter can cover K-12 one day, and something completely different the next. They come to you as the experts.

Why work with the media? What is the advantage?

It can raise your status and make your department and college look really good.

One of the first things to understand is where the reporters are coming from. We maintain a faculty experts list at the college level. We would love to get you on there. What this is saying is that you are comfortable talking to the media and will respond to them when they call.

What does the media want?

It may be important to your sponsors or your organization, but that doesn’t make it newsworthy. If you want coverage or want to pitch a story, look at the significance of the story and what else is happening.

There have been more opportunities for posting things that aren’t necessarily true with the internet lately, so it is important that we provide people with accurate information.

The #1 goal of any journalist is accuracy.

Reporters have to have context for what they’re reporting. It’s about balance and getting different viewpoints.

Think about human interest… personal stories are more interesting. They ask why should I care? Who is this impacting?

Brevity … when you’re talking to a reporter, get to the point. Most news stories are short.

Before the internet, deadlines meant the end of the day. They had all day to research, report, talk to people, write. Now with the internet, you have one minute. As soon as something happens… reporters are concerned with getting it first not getting it right.

It’s always important to respond quickly, even if it’s just saying to them that you will call them back.

Working with the Media

Understand where the reporter is coming from so you know what to expect.

Ask them what they are looking for… you don’t have to respond immediately with an answer if you’re more comfortable waiting 15-20 minutes and gathering your answers.

Another question you can ask the reporter is to understand what kind of deadlines they’re under. You can also ask them what the format of the interview is, where will it take place, over the phone? Will it be recorded? Etc.

Know your key messages before the interview even starts.

Redirect questions when necessary to respond with your talking points.

Do not say yes or no or add an opinion, go on to your point that you want to understand.

Know your reporters and what their scope is.

Reporters don’t have your expertise.

NEVER say “no comment” … it makes it seem like there is a bigger story there.

You can say “I cant really address that, but you can talk to ….” etc. We have redirected reporters to the university level communications, keeping a separation from negative attention in the media. The university is luckily happy to handle that for us.

Don’t ask to review the story, most news organizations have policies that don’t allow this.

Be cautious… reporters can be friendly but they are not your friends. They are not out to get you, but they are out to do their job. Watch what you say, do not rely on “off the record” … if you don’t want it reported, don’t say it.

Don’t fall for the silent treatment. Reporters are allowing you to tell them what they don’t know. Stick with your key points. Don’t feel the need to bridge the silence with your thoughts.

Respond with grace to abrasive questions, its a reporters job to ask hard questions. They’re not talking to you as an individual, they’re talking to you as a representative of the research or the school, etc. they’re not coming after you as an individual, they’re looking at the bigger picture. You can change the tone with how you respond.

They may disarm you with kindness first, it’s not personal, but it’s a way to get you to open up a bit more.

The interview is not over until it’s over, especially when someone has a camera or recording on you.

Reiterate your main points at the end of the interview when they ask if there is anything else you’d like to add at the end.

Reporters have direct access to our researchers.

Resources for Marketing and Communications: communications.cfaes.ohio-state.edu

Crisis Communications

We have a plan here and how you react makes all the difference. Please come to us if you have a crisis so that we can craft a message with you. We want to be accurate.

It helps to look at the plan, which is on our website. Be responsive, be calm and protect our reputation.

Media Coaching

We can help you, give you sample questions, talking points, draft answers, and help build your comfort level talking to the media. We want to make sure that you are prepared. Know that you are not out there alone. We are there to support you and help you.

We do write news releases and do proactive media. If you are working on research, or have something new coming out, we can work with you to promote it. We can do news releases, pitch stories to reporters. We can look at the human interest side of what you are doing… the research you are doing does impact Ohioans so there are always opportunities to work with you to show impact or tell a story.

We’re getting ready to go into a budget year… the more positive press we can get about what we’re doing, it reinforces that.

You can subscribe to our news releases, we do social media campaigns… adding people to our faculty experts list, we don’t always know who everyone is and what their area of expertise is.

It doesn’t have to be a news release, we can send out social media, photos, etc. it doesn’t have to be a traditional “story.”

We have a few mechanisms to do work with us:

We have a project request form for a larger project or for news releases.

You can also reach out directly to our writers in different subject areas. We will be sharing that soon.

We can promote your research if you have something coming out in an academic journal, etc.

An advantage of working with us is that you do get to review the story that we write. We do not want to get you out of context or misquote you. If you are comfortable with the story and we get the right focus.

Question: I would like to be more proactive instead of being called out of the blue…

We have a person on our team that is focused on proactive media relations. To work with people in the college to pitch stories. She will help get the root of what it is, what are the best ways to get the information out, specialty publications, etc.

We serve the entire college, so we cant do everything for everyone. A lot of departments will do outreach to alumni, their department social media pages, they can let us know about different research that your department is doing.

We are such a large college, so we rely on our department and extension communicators to help educate us and keep us connected to what’s happening on the ground level.

Finding Research Funding

PowerPoint Presentation

Lori Kaser: I’d like to provide an overview of the GDSU. We are a first come first serve service. We provide proposal development resources and run the SEEDS program. To talk about SEEDS a little bit, it is an internal faculty competition. We have a SEEDS Early Career competition for people who have not reached tenure-stage yet or have less than six years experience.

We have a SEEDS Team competition, which is two or more faculty members working together and a SEEDS Team Partnership Grant, which is an option to work with a commodity group or industry partner who brings a match.

The Partnership Grant has two deadlines per year. The next deadline is March 8.

After this meeting, Melissa will send out the SEEDS RFP.

Overall, we get about $1 million a year. We fund about 10 Early Career Grants with $50k a piece, a few for Partnership and some for student competitions.

Pam Schlegel: A good resource for finding funding is Lori’s monthly research newsletter. It includes the newest competitions that are out there, but the number one is the Spin Database which links into grants.gov etc.

Lori: On the sponsor websites, all federal sponsors list their solicitations on grants.gov. Just because we work with USDA-NIFA so much, if you go to NIFA grants it will bring up a whole list of RFPs available through NIFA.

Pam: Unsolicited vs solicited solicitations.

Solicited: submitted in response to a certain thing that the sponsor is looking for.

Unsolicited: submit work / ask if what you’re doing works for a sponsor.

You found your solicitation… within that there will be an RFP or a PA with everything you will need to address or have ready to go. Primarily your research narrative and budget.

We have budget templates, but the approval doesn’t come from the GDSU, it comes from your Sponsored Program Officer (SPO). We can provide budget justification templates, conflict of interest templates, etc.

The SPO hits the submit button, but we can put all that information in there for you. Our whole goal is to provide you time to work on your narrative, because the research portion is the most important. If we have time, we can do some editing and proofreading as well…

We also work a lot with other universities to get sub-award documentation. That frees you up to work on the narrative.

Lori: Please reach out to us when you have questions. It may be a simple question, or you may need help with everything… We will talk you though it and we know that you are new. We are here to help! We want to help make the process not so intimidating.

Question: What is the sponsored program officer? Who is that?

Pam: That is the person you have to go to to let them know you are submitting a particular proposal, and they give you approval on the budget you come up with.  They work with us to get that budget approved. Typically you and I are not able to hit the submit button for the proposal.

Lori: It’s through the Office of Research at the University-level, and within that office is the Office of Sponsored Programs with Sponsored Program Officers. Each department has an assigned SPO.

The Office of Sponsored Programs does not provide editing. They are reviewers of budgets and can submit the proposal for you. They make sure all of the boxes are checked, etc. but they are not writers and editors.

Question: How long does the process take with the Office of Sponsored Programs?

Pam: Ultimately give yourself as much time as possible. Usually with in six weeks time that you are planning on submitting a proposal, then we can start pulling all the info together. We can do it quicker, but again, we only have as much time as we are allotted

Lori: SPO will want at least two days before you’re planning to submit, because in our college, several people may be submitting to the same grant at the same time.

Pam: We also do faculty development with D.C. Days and First Mondays.

D.C. days is a competitive program, and it’s an opportunity to meet with federal program officers face to face. We usually take people in April or May, this year it will be the third week of May.

Summer: It’s very helpful… We went to USDA, NSF and NIH… We talked with Program Officers and Directors. I was also on an NSF panel and learned a lot from that. Great networking opportunity.

Pam: The different agencies we go to depends on who applies. Typically we go to USDA. We usually fly in on a Sunday and leave on a Wednesday. It’s just a good time to get together with other FAES people.

Typically, D.C. Days will have an RFP in October and we have a letter out in December. So look for that next year.

We also provide faculty and staff training workshops and other opportunities.

Lori: We will have a 2017 training schedule coming out soon.

We also provide research compliance administrative approvals. We follow up on the financial conflict of interest forms that you need to file at least once a year. We also handle the responsible conduct of research training for the college.

ePA-005 approvals – our office approves those forms.

Terry Snoddy:

Federal Capacity Funds (USDA-NIFA)

Susan Dimit helps in the USDA REEport system.

Shawn Adams does financial reporting

Angie LeMaster helps out with Extension

Capacity funds.

What are these?

A competitive grant – you apply for the funds.
Capacity funds are legislative. We get the funds and we create the projects to spend the dollars.

Base funds and other sources: Hard and soft dollars

Hard dollars are funds we typically count on each year and soft dollars are more cyclical.

Base funds: how we fund salaries, benefits, etc.

Research has four programs: Hatch, Hatch Multi-State, McIntire Stennis (forestry research), Animal Health

Extension has three: Smith Lever, EFNEP, RREA

How are they used?

In research capacity funds: 100% allocated to faculty salary and benefits

Extension: Smith Lever 100% allocated to salary and benefits for faculty and staff across Extension

To spend these funds, we have to have an active research project in one of the categories above. You can have your own project or be a co-PI. For new faculty, we give you a grace period of one year, but if you have a research appointment you should have a Hatch project.

REEport is the USDA project administration. Once the project is active we can pay some of your salary with these funds. These are very general. Many faculty try to fit it in with their overall research focus.

Dr. Dave Benfield is the administrative lead. He reads all the reports that come in.

Extension is a little easier in that they don’t have project level requirements for Smith Lever. Likely, part of your appointment is paid in Smith Lever funds if you have a faculty appointment in Extension.

Lori: Any further questions?

Question: Are Post Docs allowed to apply to the SEEDS program?

Lori: If you have PI status at the university as a Post Doc. PI status is granted by the Office of Research. There is a procedure… The CV goes to the Department Chair, then that goes to the VP of Research and Grad Education for the college, and then goes to Office of Research.

Question: Is $50k the max you can get from SEEDS?

Lori: Yes. The whole idea for SEEDS is to get the initial research data so you can apply for bigger and better funding sources. It is meant to be one or two years of funding so you can collect data and move forward with bigger proposals.

Question: Can you have SEEDS Early Career collaborators that are not early career?

Lori: Yes, but they cannot be lead PI or co-PI and they will not get any of the budget money. But they can be collaborators.

Question: If we have an industry grant that we are writing, can we retroactively apply for the match for the grant?

Lori: Yes, but it has to be within the same fiscal year.

Question: ePA005, there are a lot of questions about invertebrate animals and IACUC?

Lori: Some of the protocol information, does it need to be in place before you submit the proposal? No. Office of Research understands that once you know you get funded you’ll initiate your protocol. It’s a lot to do upfront to not get funded.

Academic Publishing and the Responsible Conduct of Research Presentation

Responsible Conduct of Research Curriculum

OSU Research Data Policy

OSU Research Misconduct Policy

Responsible Conduct of Research Training for FAES

Academic Publishing and Academic Conduct of Research

Jen Yucel, Ph.D.:

Overview of the Office of Research:

There are over 500 people that belong to the Office of Research.

Key people/offices to make note: Office of Sponsored Programs: Christine Hamble, Interim Director.

Office of Responsible Research Practices for Human and Animal Protocols.

University Laboratory Animal Resources

Research Compliance Director – Jen Yucel

OSU Libraries Resources:

Two main places where you may interact with the library:

Subject Librarians: experts who can help in a particular area. This can be helpful for interdisciplinary research. (library.osu.edu/find/librarians)

There are subject librarians who work with the faculty in Wooster.

The Research Commons a physical space and a set of services and partnerships. It is located on the 3rd floor at the 18th Avenue Library in Columbus. It also includes an interface with IRB, a data management librarian, geographic information services, and more.

If you have a research related question, you can go to the Research Commons website for that information or if you don’t know where to start or who you go to.

Some workshops are live-streamed for folks on other campuses. If you’re interested in having a workshop or attending, please let us know if you need it streamed.

Melanie Schlosser, MLS:

Predatory Publishing

This is an area of concern and help is also often needed for graduate students.

Access Models for Publishing:

Subscription Journals: Content is behind a pay wall, but tends to be free for the author to publish. It’s been done this way for a while.

However, with the Internet, things are different now.

Open Access (OA) Journals: Content is freely available online, sometimes funded through author fees.

Hybrid Open Access Journals: publication itself is behind a pay wall unless the author pays an Open Access fee.

TIP: I would strongly discourage people to not pay for hybrid open access! It borders on unethical double dipping from the publisher.

There are good and bad journals in ALL of these categories.

The Problem with Lists:

White lists (“good” journals) vs. black lists (“bad” or predatory journals) / any lists… Don’t rely on these too heavily. Criteria for making it on the list might not be clear; people may have their own agendas for creating the lists, etc.

Advance Fee Scams:

Predatory publishing talks about two different things: First, an advance fee scam. It looks like a journal, calls itself a journal, but really is not. It takes your money.

Recognize these by:

• Little or no published scholarship
• Lack of a named editor or editorial board — or contact these people to make sure
• Promises full peer review with fast turnaround
• Journal website doesn’t make sense (in the about section, etc.)
• They may reach out to you offering to publish your work

Search Google and ask around!

Good journals vs. bad journals:

The other thing people talk about with predatory publishing is low quality journals. It’s not very cut and dry.

Pay attention to these things:

• Will it improve your work? For example, attentive editors who will polish your work and present it in a professional way. Look at what has been published. Is it polished, copy edited, etc.?
• Will it help your research find an audience?
• Will it add to your reputation as a scholar? This can look different based on where you’re at in your career. Have a sense of what you want to get out of publishing your work.

Risk: look at journal scope / subject matter.
Tip: what journals did you cite? — have at least one citation for a journal you’re looking to publish in.

Finally, ask for advice!

• Faculty in your department
• Colleagues at other institutions
• Librarians
• The editor of the journal (ask them, “Would you be interested in an article on…?”)

A little more about fees:

Predatory journals will ask you to submit, accept your work quickly and then send you a bill. It may or may not be listed on their website, but once you are sent a bill it can be tricky to get out of.

Author charges are not uncommon … Figure out ahead of time if there are fees.

In terms of invoicing, we’ve had faculty continue to get invoiced. If this happens, please contact Jen’s office or OSU Legal Affairs to help you.

We are also seeing this behavior in international conferences that are bogus. People get promised that they will be a keynote, etc.

Scams around being on editorial boards. It is hard to get out of so if you are approached about being on a board, do your homework! Talk to people in your field and make sure it is reputable. We have a hard time repairing that damage.

Resources:

Directory of Open Access Journals: doaj.org — reputable place to start

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association: oaspa.org

Jen Yucel: Research Misconduct and Plagiarism

Research misconduct is narrowly defined:

It doesn’t have to be published to be a problem! Even if it’s written in a notebook, any time you are creating data that is not valid it could be research misconduct.

Fabrication: the making up of data or results and recording or reporting them. Ex: fake Excel data

Falsification: manipulating research materials, equipment or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented. Ex: image manipulation

Plagiarism: appropriation of the ideas, processes, results or work of another person without giving appropriate credit. Ex: taking something off the web without credit

Not Considered Plagiarism:

Self-plagiarism (using something from your past text… But it’s something that is a gray area).

Information generated with former collaborators — handled as an authorship or credit dispute.

How much copying is too much? How many different ways can you describe something?

Plagiarism:

OSU licenses the software program iThenticate for use by any OSU faculty, staff or student.

It highlights text in your document that matches other published material to allow you to determine if text is appropriately cited.

There are many watchdog websites, as well as mainstream media who are involved in the scrutiny of research.

Many journals and funding sponsors are actively screening submissions for plagiarized text. This includes grants!

The rise of “academic warfare” and specific targeting of individuals to target competitors.

Question: If a Postdoc or grad student is guilty of plagiarism in a manuscript etc., how does that effect their faculty member?

Answer: The person responsible is the person who did the plagiarism. iThenticate isn’t there to punish wrong doers, it is to help people have high integrity. As a faculty member, tell your Postdocs and grad students to run it through iThenticate as a policy before anything gets to you.

If you have a process like that, use it as a training and teaching tool. Some cultures cite differently, so it’s a good way to teach how to do this. If you have a repeat offender, you can bring it to my office to talk about it. If a grad student publishes plagiarized text in their thesis there can be a serious consequence.

Question: How serious is it as a faculty member?

Answer: It depends. If it’s in a grant proposal and brought to our attention we have to let them know and they could bar you from submitting.

Federally-funded research can debar you if the plagiarism is on federal money.

If it’s a case where they just made a mistake in citation… We try to determine the intent. There are details that change every case.

Question: What percentage on iThenticate is considered plagiarism?

Answer: It requires you to look at what is matching. There’s no defined threshold. It doesn’t matter what percentages it is… Is it big sections of text or a few sentences, etc.? That’s why you need to look at it.

Plagiarism is all about attribution.

If you are using the same methods that you have published before, just make sure to cite your previous paper. It’s not okay when you give the appearance that this is brand new work of yours. Be transparent about where the work came from.

Responsible Conduct of Research Training (RCR):

The university has a research data policy that you should look at.

What is a research record? All of the various forms that research takes that embodies the results from scholarly inquiry.

Data Sharing:

NIH and other federal sponsors expect data generated be shared with the public.

Many sponsors require that you file a data management plan with your grant proposal. We use the online DMP tool with agency specific formats.

Data Ownership:

As new faculty, take a look at the university research data policy. It helps answer a lot of questions about data ownership.

Just because someone leaves doesn’t mean their data gets nullified. The Office of Research tries to stay out of publication issues, like author etc., but we will work on authorship disputes.

Expectations for Authorship:

Many societies and associations have published guidelines regarding the assignment of authorship or acknowledgment on manuscripts. It can be very discipline specific.

If you don’t believe someone should have authorship on the journal, raise that with the senior author and start a conversation.

Science is about what your peers say about you, so it can be tense to enforce a strong reading of these guidelines. The journal should enforce whether or not that person can be an author.

The University doesn’t really have any say on who should be an author.

Have the conversation with the journal because the journal can ask the person, what was this person’s contribution?

Conflict of Interest:

Conflicts can be real or perceived, and both are important. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone is acting unethically, but it needs to be disclosed.

Typically, people think of Conflict of Interest as financial interests… It can also include personal relationships, professional relationships, academic and corporate rivalries, philosophical or intellectual differences.

Your immediate family’s are also your potential conflicts.

Promotion and Tenure Review — Presentation from Kay Wolf

Kay Wolf, OSU Office of Academic Affairs: Promotion and tenure is a quality improvement program. We want you to show your major accomplishments while you’re at Ohio State University. What are your goals and strategies each year and where are you with them?

The idea is to grow and take ownership of your growth.

Teaching is important. What are you learning and how are you growing with it?

What are the outcomes of your service and engagement? We don’t ask as much for younger faculty, but some it’s very intertwined in who you are.

You are an Assistant Professor. Ask for assistance. We want you to succeed and are very proud that you are at Ohio State.

For the six year P&T review, the review begins with the tenure initiating unit (TIU) P&T review. The Chair then writes a letter. You have a 10 day period to respond to the letter, but this is not a chance to rewrite everything.

Take the opportunity to read the letters closely and write a response if you feel you need to. It then goes to the university committee. I read every dossier.

If the TIU was positive and the Chair was positive, but not the Dean or college-level committee, I will also take it forward to the University committee for one final look. The University follows through for you to ensure that the process and criteria was followed by everyone. The appointment will be approved by the Provost and Board of Trustees.

During your fourth year review, the TIU and the Dean will make the final decision. It does not come forward to OAA.

Your mandatory review is the sixth year review.

Clinical faculty reviews are the same as fourth year reviews and end at the level of the Dean. The Dean then decides promotion vs. non promotion and reappointment vs. non reappointment.

Mandatory reviews must go forward. Start working on Vita as soon as it goes up. Reviews must go forward even if you have missing data. Non-mandatory reviews do not have to go forward if you’re missing data.

Working with teams: what is your responsibility?

What is the unique piece that you contribute consistently to your team? Your unique niche is extremely important to the team… You really need to show what this means in your narrative.

STEP mentoring can count as Extension or teaching in your portfolio, but it can’t be both.

Appointments across the campus–with an MOU or in two departments etc.–be sure you’re contributing to other departments correctly and work with your Chair.

Mark Sulc, Horticulture & Crop Science: In documenting team contributions, hopefully your department is seeing the change in science, but it’s very important to describe your unique piece in that. Under every publication, be VERY specific about what you wrote, your research, etc. and hopefully your external letter writers will know what you are doing. They will hopefully say you are a team player, can describe your contribution to the team and say that without you it cannot happen. Another option is to get a letter from a collaborator.

Kay: It helps if you ask the Chair to write a request for the letter to your collaborator so it appears very neutral. When it gets to the
University committee, it’s important for them to understand as well. Think of everyone reading this… Some TIUs or someone at the University-level might not know your work, so describe things clearly and specifically.

Question: Can external letters come from collaborators?

Mark: External reviewers need to come from non-collaborators. They can know you and your work, but cannot have worked with you on a project.

No more than half of the external reviewers can be suggested by the candidate. The P&T committee usually suggests most of them.

In regards to your dossier:

Vita.osu.edu will be launching in April 2017. Research in view is closing on December 31, 2016. You don’t have to fear your data has been lost. Assistance will be provided for those faculty going forward in any manner.

Question: Is this a tool that can be used for annual reviews?

Kay: I would not recommend it. I think you should print everything in December. If someone is new, I would allow them to use a Word document or something else.

Dossier tips:

• Do not repeat
• Think about what you’re trying to convey–what are your strengths? Think that through!
• Recognize your college and unit. This is important! They set the criteria for you and if you don’t understand the criteria, you need to talk with people on the P&T committee and the Chair of your department.

You have two choices when you go up for P&T: to use the document from when you were hired or the document for the current year you are going up.

Narratives — why bother?

It is YOUR STORY. The one place that you can demonstrate the growth of your career. Show outcomes and tell your story through growth.

Jeff Sharp: It’s a lot of work to take on those five external review letters. You don’t want to start that process and then back out if you’re not ready. Just make sure you think about it.

Mark: Your trajectory and works in progress are important at the fourth year review. Most people are making good progress. The committee wants to know if there is momentum.

Jeff: Regarding the idea of narratives: you need to study what your unit’s criteria are. If your narrative addresses them, it would be useful.

Terry Niblack: Avoid overly technical language in the narratives, especially in narratives about research. It’s impossible to interpret some. Make sure you’re communicating to  people who don’t know about your field.

Jeff: Good point. Even when you’re listing journals, let us know this if is a top publication in your field.

Question: What time of year is the dossier due?

Terry: Your department will determine that. That should be communicated to you by your departmental P&T committee. It will probably be in spring to late-spring.

Mark: Every department is different so talk to your Chair and the P&T committee.

Once it is sent to the college, the dossier is sent to the Dean, then the Dean makes a committee of nine different people. The job of the college committee is to determine if your unit review occurred in a proper way. That the right criteria were applied, the right procedures were followed, etc. We look at all the dossiers. There’s usually three sub-committees and we divide each of the dossiers to really, really look at them and then come back with a recommendation to the main committee. At the college-level we read all of them, but at a finer level we look at them again in our sub-committees. If there are concerns, the whole committee looks into it.

The college committee does a very good job of being very objective and sticking to their role to determine that the review was conducted in the proper way. There have been times where flags were raised and the committee went in a different direction from the department, but if everything was done right at the department level, then it should go right through to the university.

If there are issues a the unit level, it has to go back and be reconducted at the unit level.

The committee will then take a vote and writes a letter to the Dean. The Dean then writes their own report.

Terry: Search OAA governance and it will show you the governance documents for every unit.

Question: Is there ever a case that the peer expert might be outside of the department, but within the university or does it always have to come from outside of OSU?

Kay: The rule says external, so it has to be outside of OSU.

Mentoring East Asian Women Scientists and Engineers — Presentation from Karen Mancl

Enrico Bonnello: I’m a Professor in Plant Pathology and have been here for 16 years now. I’ve mentored several of my colleagues through the years.

Hazel Morrow Jones: I did not have a lot of experience being mentored, but as a faculty member I mentored a lot of students and some of my junior colleagues. As Director of the Women’s Place, I saw a lot of faculty who were in crisis mode.

Please don’t assume that you do or do not know all kinds of things. Sometimes you may think “I ought to know that, everyone else does!” But that’s probably not true. It’s okay to ask! That could be anything from how P&T works, to how to teach a lecture class, to anything.

Mentoring is not a one way thing. It’s a back and forth between two people. You should show the mentor what they will gain from you. I ask people, “Would you be a mentor?” and people say “Oh I couldn’t, I don’t know enough,” but you’ve gotten this far by knowing what you do and that is helpful to people!

Most importantly: everyone says you should have a mentor. Sit and think clearly about what you want from a mentor. It’s not a silver bullet. It doesn’t automatically make you successful. Think about who you know and what you want from that. It’s okay to have a lot of mentors. You may have one for teaching, one for support, one who can critique grants. Think about what you want from it and don’t limit yourself. They don’t have to be from your own unit or even your own college.

Set boundaries and talk about expectations from both sides so you both know what you’re getting into to.

The word mentor sound daunting, like you need to be perfect and it will take a lot of your time. But it’s okay to meet up just a few times to talk about teaching, or ask them if they would look over a grant.

Karen Mancl: I was the first woman hired in our department. A project I came up with was to explore mid-carrier low productivity. People in the department are tenured, mid-career, and you don’t do much. So I decided to study that. I learned that a lot of this low productivity was set up with the way they were mentored. So I’ve been involved in developing new mentoring models that keep people productive.

The minority group I have been working with are East Asian women. Mentoring is not an Asian concept. It’s not a part of their career development. It’s very western. So if you bring someone in your program and they come from a culture that doesn’t have experience mentoring then they are at a disadvantage.

The challenges in mentoring are two fold: one is cross gender because not only are East Asian women a minority, women are a minority in science and engineering. And also cross race mentoring…

We gathered data through oral histories and interviewed six women from different colleges. We asked them if the programs developed for mentoring women and minorities are effective.

Transition to minority status: these East Asian women were not minorities at home, but they had essentially no mentoring while in Asia. Because of this, these women are very independent and rely heavily on advice from friends.

In most of these departments, they were told by their department chair that they needed to have mentors.

Women mentors can be role models and can provide psycho-social mentoring about handling issues outside of work.

Five out of six of the interviewees found women mentors, but three had to find them outside of their department.

The most important thing we found within mentoring was goal setting. Setting long-term goals and personal missions. A goal is not getting tenure, it is just a step along the way.

Recommendations:

1. Assign mentors
2. If you set up a mentoring team, let at least one mentor be a woman
3. Include work/life balance
4. Strategic planning and goal setting

Enrico B.: In my department we’re now moving towards a more structured process. We expect the committee to meet with a mentee formally.

Question: What do units and departments do to help build the skills needed to be a mentor?

Karen M.: How I start out, for the first six months we develop their long term planning by meeting once a month. Then it backs off to once or twice a quarter or so.

One of my mentees said that I gave them a lot of energy after we met. Other mentors make me feel like I have a lot of stuff I need to do.

Hazel M.J.: It’s so easy for a mentor to fall into the trap of giving very general advice… Ex: “you need to publish more,” so it’s helpful to have someone who helps sort out the specifics of your plan.

Enrico B.: I have informal discussions with mentees all the time. We get lunch together to discuss issues. From my perspective I’m concerned about mentees burning out. They are focused on the fear of failing at tenure. So sometimes I have to tell them to do a little less.

Karen M.: I started mentoring when I was an untenured assistant professor. I’ve also mentored people who are older than me or who have more experience. It’s more typical, but that’s not necessarily a requirement.

Hazel M.J.: There are informal mentoring opportunities like peer to peer, etc.

Question: There are a lot of ramifications for new graduate students coming from Asia who don’t have mentoring. Do you have any advice?

Karen M.: Once they have the opportunity to have a mentor and learn how powerful it can be they really take off. You just need to be more transparent about it. When I inform people that they are my mentor, they look surprised. You need to be formal at the beginning

There were two big worries when the protege was East Asian: one is that they’re going to bother the mentor because the mentor is so busy, but no. I tell them that they need to come to me and set up a lunch to let me know what they need.

Another fear is that they will be taken advantage of by the mentor. They think of it as being an assistant and they will be doing all their work.

I have to open thing up so that people know they can talk to me about their personal life, etc.

Enrico B.: Ultimately your ability to mentor is tied to just being on your job and your life experience.

In our program we’re establishing annual retreats for our graduate students that have professionals regarding stress and mental health. Basically put yourself in the person’s shoes.

Karen M.: We asked our interviewees who helped them make their decisions to go to school, etc., but it was always their friends or they figured it out on their own. It wasn’t their teachers, etc. because of the culture in East Asia.

Question: What is the difference between advising and mentoring?

Hazel M.J.: A post doc should have additional mentors besides just the advisor. Figure out what kinds of things you want to talk to people about and hear thoughts from … Advisors may be good contacts to help set you up with people. 

Karen M.: In order to be productive in reaching your personal goals you need a balanced core. There are four components to this and only one is your career, the other three fall into psycho-social mentoring. One is family, what are your goals and objectives for your family? The second is your part in a community, what is your vision of yourself in your community (a.k.a. your social life)? What strategies do you need to develop? The third is yourself. This is the part that is most neglected. In terms of health and well being, appearance, exercise, etc. in terms of being the kind of person you want to appear and the kind of person you want to be yourself.

I talk to my proteges to see if these areas are balanced.

Enrico B.: There’s a tendency to put enormous pressure on your career, so I do try to present them with a strong sense of balance. It’s critical. But young faculty feel like they cannot take any time off this extreme focus on productivity and “making it” as a faculty member. It’s difficult to convince them that they won’t be losing anything.

Karen M.: When you have that balanced core you’re much more productive. A good test is if you go home and complain about work something is out of balance.

Hazel M.J.: Some of our senior faculty may not believe in this work-life balance and thus that is why seniority doesn’t always make the best mentors.

Question: If there is already a culture of that, how do we begin t o let people know that it is okay to have a balance? How do you shift the culture so that it can be work life balance?

Karen M.: Whether or not you get tenure is not important to me. As long as you make progress on your goals and mission in life. If you’re not doing that, then that is a failure. Seem of my protégées have left Ohio State because they have found that they aren’t in the right job.

Hazel M.J.: Having a good culture as a whole, working on policies and procedures, getting people to understand that everyone is a human being and they have a life and will work best when there is a balance.

So when a full professor has to go home because their child is sick, not giving them a problem about it because that is what you should do and that is okay.

The university’s policy is taking time off the tenure clock for birth of a child. In some departments that’s okay, in other departments some people are afraid to use it because they are worried about what others will think.

Question: Do you have a lot of information or fact sheet about mentoring?

Karen M.: I did start writing a series of fact sheets.

Question: What should the mentee be doing?

Karen M.: When I first started this research, the predominant mentoring model was climbing the model to success. That particular mentoring model came out of the 1950s industrial movement, finding the rising stars and helping them get to the top as fast as possible.

Then in the 1980s, it was the balancing work and family model for women and men who should DO IT ALL.

My mentoring model: instead of it being a climb or having a big plate you have to balance, mine is when you’re young, strong and talented you’re not at the bottom of the mountain you’re at the top! You have so many opportunities! I ask, where do you want to leave your legacy? Then we write a mission and look at those four core values looking at your vision for each area. You’re not burdened by a climb, you’re accumulating things, relationships, contacts, projects etc.

Sometimes you get bumped off track and you’re not rolling in the right direction, but we meet and get back on track. Even when you’re not accumulating or things are getting slower, you’re still rolling.

Most people don’t know their mission because no one asked them.

Hazel M.J.: Has any one refused to do this or come up with a mission for their life?

Karen M.: Yes, this person disappeared for awhile and wasn’t ready, but they did come back… Some people just want you to tell them what to do: How do I get tenure, etc?

Enrico B.: It’s important to choose your mentor as someone you can talk to and have an actual conversation with rather than just getting instructions from. I have a general idea of what it takes to be “successful.”

Karen M.: A lot of people are pushed into their jobs by well-meaning adults at a young age… “You need to do this or that, you can’t do this because you’re a girl,” etc. So when preparing our five year plan, it becomes clear that they are on the wrong path. Our focus becomes preparing them to make a move.

Enrico B.: The informal conversations are the spark for formal, deeper conversations.

Hazel M.J.: I don’t think there are short cuts with human relationships. Why are we in such a hurry?

Enrico B.: Even if I tell some of my mentees to have a balance and take it easy, I don’t know if they will listen to me. All we can do is keep saying it. Many young professionals feel guilty if they don’t fill every minute of every day working

Hazel M.J.: And, at the same time, are carrying guilt for the things they are not doing at home or spending time with their family.