I’ve made it through my first year as a full-time faculty member, and I’m back working with RIME this summer! I spent last year as a visiting faculty member in the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering department at Miami University. I taught Introduction to Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Thermodynamics, along with mentoring a capstone team, trying to get my dissertation research published, and many other pieces of being a faculty member, not to mention my personal life! I’ve spent some time reflecting on my lessons learned this year, and wanted to share them:

1. Make a plan (for the semester, the week, and the day) but be flexible: For me, if I go into a day (or week, or semester) without a plan for what I’m going to accomplish, I’m doomed to failure. I quickly realized that if I didn’t spend a few minutes planning my days and weeks, it was easy to let everything-from grading to writing-run away from me. Everyone is different, but I like to use an online calendar for my “hard and fast” events (such as classes and other meetings), but a paper hour-by-hour calendar to plan out things that were more flexible, like when I would grade an exam, or work on paper revisions. I would spend about 20 minutes right before I left for the day planning the next day, about an hour on Friday afternoon planning the next week, and a day or so laying out the semester in broad strokes. However, I quickly realized that I could not be too committed to my semester, weekly, or even daily plans, as things I hadn’t anticipated-from snow days to unexpected meetings. However, I found that I recovered better from these disruptions with a plan in place.
2. Keep your commitments to yourself and your work: Like many jobs, I found that as a faculty member, there was always more work to be done. I found this to be particularly true in the aspects of my job related to teaching: there is always more lecture prep, or grading, or refining that assignment to be done. Because my role was primarily teaching related, I found my personal research goals often taking second (or third) place, and I could go days, if not weeks, without touching the manuscripts I’m working on. A colleague recommended setting a 30-minute meeting every day where I worked on my own research. I included this meeting in my “hard and fast” meetings on my online calendar, and keeping those meetings with myself made a tremendous difference in what I was able to accomplish over the course of the second half of the year.
3. Learn when (and how) to say no: As someone who is more inclined to say yes than no to new opportunities, this was a hard lesson to learn. I like to say yes to new opportunities-often, they help meet new people, gain new skills, or learn something. However, there are only so many hours in the day, so you can’t say yes to everything!  One of the tactics that has helped me say no is by taking time to think about what I’ve been asked to do. Even when I’m asked in person to take part in something, I will often say something like “thank you for thinking of me! I may be interested but need to check my calendar. Can you send me an email with the information?” Having a ready response has helped me take a moment to pause and reflect if I actually have the time, skills, and interest in participating in new opportunities.
4. Figure out and set your boundaries: This is where I struggled the most over the last year, and an area I am actively working on. During the past year, I sought to set boundaries around the end of my work day and my work week. However, especially during the busy parts of the semester, I often longer days than I planned. While this may be occasionally unavoidable, I do better work and am able to be more present in my personal life when I take time to relax and do things for myself. For me, removing my email from my personal phone was key to these boundaries. With no notification on my phone, I was more able to separate my personal and professional lives and take that time for myself. I am continually searching for ways to balance my professional and personal life and encourage you to do so as well.

I will be starting a new job as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Ohio Northern University, my alma mater, in the fall, and I will be taking these lessons learned into my new role. I can’t wait to see where I go from here and what other lessons I can learn as I go forward!

As of August 2021, RIME has graduated two PhD alumnae, Renee Desing and Abby Clark. Here’s a brief update on what each of them are doing now:

Renee Desing (PhD, 2020)

Since graduating in August 2020, Dr. Desing has continued working with the Department of Engineering Education at OSU as a Postdoctoral Scholar. In addition to supporting the research and activities of RIME, Renee is expanding her research portfolio and interests by also supporting the Inclusive Community-Based Learning Lab (iCBL, led by Dr. David Delaine), Beliefs in Engineering Research Group (BERG, led by Dr. Emily Dringenberg), and the Elevate Research Group (led by Dr. Julie Martin). In her postdoc role, Renee also serves as the Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering…learning how the publication process works on the other side! Outside of work, Renee has continued to pursue her hobbies of running, traveling, and snowboarding, and has even learned how to golf.

Since graduating in August 2021, Dr. Clark started as a visiting assistant professor and Heanon Wilkin faculty fellow at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She has been working in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and has been teaching Thermodynamics and Introduction to Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. She has gotten to work with Dr. Kathy Ehlert, who is a friend of RIME through Dr. Ehlert’s time on the SPRITE project while she was a grad student at Clemson. Outside of work, Abby has been enjoying catching up on craft projects, exploring Oxford, and playing board games with her husband and friends.