Resources

Each postdoctoral fellow hired in the Department of Mathematics is assigned a faculty mentor. Most mentors will take the initiative of getting in touch with their mentees to arrange for a first meeting, but if your mentor does not, it is your responsibility to contact them.

Agree on expectations:

• Ask how often you and your mentor will be meeting.
• Ask whether your mentor will be able to observe your teaching. If not, ask to be referred to a person in the department who has volunteered to help with teaching observations.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses in your background and discuss with your mentor how he/she can support your professional development efforts.

Discuss your career goals and professional development:

• Tell your mentor what type of job you would like to get after your postdoctoral fellowship.
• Review the recommended Year 1 Postdoctoral Development plan with your mentor.
  • Identify action items that can be taken care of immediately and those for which you will need more time.

If you need help, do not hesitate to ask:

• Your mentor can provide professional development advice and guidance.
• Your mentor can answer questions you may have about the university or the department.
• Your mentor can describe our undergraduate curriculum and help you identify courses you may want to teach.
• Your mentor can refer you to colleagues in the department who can help with research, teaching, and outreach activities.
• Your mentor can describe the various seminars we have in the department.

• mathjobs - A place for math related job announcements. Go to groups.google.com and log in with your Department of Mathematics credentials. Then click on 'Browse All' and join mathjobs.

• postdocs - A place for posts of interest to postdocs in the department. By invitation only.

Please see the Software Licensing website

This is a non-exhaustive list of steps mentors can take to help their mentees thrive during their time in our department. Past experience suggests that mentoring can take from five to ten hours per semester, depending on the semester.

Foster a Sense of Connection With Our Department:

• Meet with your mentee early in their first semester, preferably before classes begin and before you are both occupied with teaching and other activities.
  • Ask your mentee about their background, interests, and career aspirations and more broadly, what kind of experience they would like to get during their postdoctoral fellowship.
• Offer to introduce your mentee to other people in the department who share their interests.
• Help your mentee identify projects and opportunities for involvement in the department that match their interests and goals.
• Share information about professional listservs and professional development opportunities that you are aware of.
• When necessary, remind your mentee of people in the department who can provide assistance and resources.
• Encourage your colleagues to invite postdocs to departmental social functions when appropriate, so that postdocs can socialize with other faculty members.

Define Expectations:

• Agree on frequency of meetings with your mentee.
• If possible, offer to observe your mentee’s teaching at least once each year and meet to discuss their teaching strengths as well as possible areas for growth.
  • Take notes about what you observed and what you thought was exceptional about your mentee’s teaching.
  • These notes will come handy when writing a teaching letter for your mentee.
• If you are not able to observe your mentee's teaching, please refer them to colleagues in the department who have volunteered to help: Jason Aubrey, Bruce Bayly, Tina Deemer, Deb Hughes-Hallett, Rob Indik, Bill Velez, Jennifer Wolfe.
• If your mentee's research area is the same as yours, offer to provide feedback on referee reports (for the papers they have submitted) or on panel reports (e.g. for NSF applications)

Encourage Professional Development and Growth:

• Meet with your mentee at the end of each academic semester to touch base about their successes and challenges.
  • Ask if they have any lingering concerns about their work or about the job.
  • Ask for an update on their career goals.
  • Offer feedback on what your mentee is doing and can do to achieve their goals.
  • Do not try to produce a clone of yourself. In particular remember that your mentee may not want a job at a Research I institution.
  • Be aware of our policies for postdoctoral fellows.
• When appropriate, help your mentee distinguish between projects that are essential, either for their job performance or for career advancement, and projects that do not help either of these very much (and that may get in the way of more meaningful work).
  • If a postdoc has been asked to do something and is not sure whether it is mandatory (e.g., teaching a summer course), offer to look into it on their behalf.
• When it is time to select courses for the following semester, talk to your mentee about course content and discuss upper-division courses they may like to teach.
• Encourage your mentee to suggest colloquium or seminar speakers, or work with them to identify researchers they could invite to visit the department.
• If appropriate, suggest your mentee as a potential reviewer for research manuscripts.
• Encourage your mentee to apply for grants. Examples include applying for an AMS-Simons travel grant during the first year, and applying to NSF in years 2 or 3.
• Suggest outreach or service activities your mentee can participate in, and which will be helpful when they apply for jobs or grants.
• When your mentee goes on the job market, offer to write a letter for them. Depending on your relationship with your mentee, this letter may focus on research accomplishments, teaching excellence, or both.
• Offer to look at your mentee’s job application materials, including research and teaching statements.
  • Keep in mind that most liberal arts colleges will look more closely at teaching statements than we do for tenure track candidates, and thus teaching statements for such institutions tend to be developed in more detail.
  • Research statements should be written so that at least the introductory material is accessible to a mathematician not from the postdoc's field.

We ask mentors to observe the teaching of their mentee once every semester and to fill out this departmental form after their visit. We recommend that mentors request a hard copy of their evaluation since it will be useful when they write about their mentee's teaching in support of their job applications.

Evaluation Form

A tool for classroom observation and to comment on your mentee's teaching.

Teaching Protocol

A postdoctoral fellowship should be viewed as an opportunity to develop as an independent researcher, teacher, and scholar. It is also a period of transition between graduate student years and the time you will spend in the workforce.

The following recommendations supplement the yearly professional development plans described below.

• Identify your goals and make plans for achieving them.
• Find diverse activities to support your professional development plan.
• Produce influential research.
• Establish connections and make yourself known in your field, e.g. by attending conferences.
• Think of supervising students.
  • A good place to start is by working with a group of undergraduates in the mathematical modeling course (MATH 485).
  • You may also want to propose small research projects suitable for undergraduates.
  • You could also work with one of your mentor's graduate students and take a leadership role in mentoring.
• Learn how to balance time.
• Determine who you are (an analyst, a geometer, etc).
• Do some outreach.

• Volunteer to give a seminar on the topic of your thesis, so that people in the department know you and your work.
• Plan to attend UA professional development workshops (see main resource pages for details).
• In consultation with your mentor, develop a teaching plan for the next 3 years.
• If you have not yet done so, finish publishing your thesis.
• Develop or update your web site.
• Start exploring new projects; try to be diverse.
• Get involved in some outreach.
• Start drafting research proposals for your second year.
• Apply for travel grants and plan to attend conferences.

• Finish all of the Year 1 items that are still pending.
• Give talks, both inside and outside the department.
• Plan your teaching for Year 3; try to diversify.
• Go to (big) conferences.
• Finish some of your ongoing projects.
• Think about mentoring students.
• Consider applying for grants and for selected jobs.
• Make contacts for potential external references.

• Update your resume and web site.
• Finish your big projects.
• Apply for grants.
• Apply for jobs.
• Make sure to be involved in outreach/service if you have not yet done so.