Two postdoc positions on host-symbiont interactions available in Meghan Duffy’s lab at Michigan!

Two postdoctoral positions focusing on host-symbiont interactions in lake zooplankton are available in Meghan Duffy‘s lab at the University of Michigan. The successful candidates for these positions will be expected to carry out independent research relating to Daphnia-symbiont interactions in inland lakes. The overall project involves characterizing the diversity of symbionts associated with Daphnia (especially microsporidian symbionts), understanding interactions between symbionts that infect the same host, and uncovering the food web-level consequences of parasite outbreaks in inland lakes.

While there is some flexibility in exactly what each position will entail, two major themes are likely:

• Theme 1, led by one postdoc: Molecular analysis & characterization of the diversity of microsporidia and other symbionts infecting Daphnia, as well as attempts to culture those symbionts in vivo and in vitro.
• Theme 2, led by a second postdoc: Studies of the ecological dynamics of Daphnia­-symbiont interactions, including analysis of impacts of symbionts on food web processes.

The work will also likely involve studies aimed at uncovering mechanisms underlying shifts between parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism.

Postdoc position available in the Duffy Lab to work on predation and parasitism!

Meghan is searching for a postdoc to study the influence of predators on ecological and eco-evolutionary host-parasite dynamics! Read on for more info on the position.

Position Summary
A postdoctoral position focusing on the impact of predators on the ecological and eco-evolutionary dynamics of host-parasite interactions is available in the laboratory of Dr. Meghan Duffy in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. The Duffy Lab studies the ecology and evolutionary biology of host-parasite interactions, using the aquatic crustacean Daphnia and their microparasites as a model system. The successful candidate will have access to a vibrant intellectual community and state-of-the-art facilities in the brand new Biological Sciences Building at Michigan; the Duffy Lab will move to this building in April 2018.

Responsibilities
The successful candidate for this position will be expected to carry out independent research relating to predation and parasitism, using Daphnia and their microparasites as a model system. The project involves lab experiments (at scales from beakers to buckets) in Michigan; setting up these experiments will involve some field work, especially to collect predators and water for experiments (though alternative arrangements could be made if the postdoc is not able to perform field work). Ideally, the successful candidate would also work on larger scale experiments in cattle tanks in Indiana for 3-4 months in summer-fall 2019, based out of Spencer Hall’s lab at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Depending on interest and abilities, the postdoc will also have the ability to work on mathematical modeling of disease. There will also be the potential to develop additional projects building on the strengths, interests, and expertise of the successful candidate.

This position will also involve mentoring of undergraduate researchers in the lab.

How to Apply
Interested individuals should send a CV, a brief description of research accomplishments and future goals, and the names and contact information for 3 references to Meghan Duffy by e-mail (duffymeg@umich.edu). Review of applications will start on March 12, 2018 and will continue until the position is filled. The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity / affirmative action employer.

Required Qualifications
PhD (by start date) with experience in aquatic ecology, disease ecology, community ecology, eco-evolutionary dynamics, and/or evolutionary ecology

Desired Qualifications
Experience working with Daphnia would be beneficial, but is not required.

Other information
Preference will be given to applicants who can start by mid-summer 2018, though start dates as late as Fall 2018 are possible. Funding is available for at least two years, but is contingent on satisfactory progress in year one. The salary for the position is $48,000 per year plus benefits.

Guest post: a career as a research lab manager

Note from Jeremy: This is a guest post from Ann Rasmussen. Thank you to Ann for taking the time to write this post.

This post is part of our series on non-academic careers for ecologists. Ok, this one’s actually about an academic career. But when most people (including me!) think of academic careers, the first thing they think of is a tenure-track faculty career. So we thought it would be useful to readers to also have some posts on other sorts of academic careers.

Hardly any ecology faculty jobs are filled by internal candidates. And you can’t identify the ones that will be. (UPDATED)

If you’ve ever looked at the ecoevojobs.net faculty jobs board, you’ve probably seen speculation that position X has an internal candidate, the implication being that others maybe shouldn’t bother applying because the internal candidate will have an edge or even be a shoo-in. Sometimes, the speculation is not merely that a strong internal candidate exists, but that the position is intended for the internal candidate, so that the entire search is a formality with a pre-determined outcome.

But internal candidates have factors working against them as well as for them. As illustrated by the fact that they don’t always get the job–even when they’re confident they will! For instance, see here, here, and here. Those are anecdotes, though, so it’s hard to say if they’re typical. How often are internal candidates hired for ecology faculty positions? And is there any reliable way for outsiders to identify positions for which internal candidates will be hired?

According to the data I’ve compiled, the answers to those questions are “hardly ever” and “no”.

Crowdsourcing parental leave policies for tenure track faculty

The goal of this post is to provide a place where people can report about the official (and unofficial) parental leave policies at their colleges and universities. The idea is that, while there’s surely no “typical” parental leave policy, it would help to have some idea of what the range of options is. Hopefully by showing what is possible, some people will be able to advocate for improved policies at their institutions!

This survey is specifically about tenure track faculty. We know there are many other positions at universities, including students, postdoctoral researchers, research associates, teaching faculty, and many others, and recognize that policies differ for these different groups. Our goal here is to start by surveying tenure track faculty to get a sense of the range of policies for this type of position. We’re hoping to expand to other position types in the future; please leave suggestions for which types of positions you’d like this resource for in the comments! (Also note that Margaret Kosmala has compiled information on maternity leave for postdocs at several institutions in the US.)

Note: this post was prompted by a conversation with Tracy Teal (Data Carpentry), who provided helpful feedback on an earlier draft. Thanks, Tracy!

In the comments, please leave information on:
Country
College/university name (optional, but helpful to include)
City/town & state name (optional)
College/university type (e.g., SLAC, R1, community college, etc.)
Official parental leave policy, including information on whether it applies to both birth and non-birth parents, whether it includes adoptions, and any other useful information.
Website with official leave policy:
Unofficial leave policy: do people actually take the leave that is offered? If no leave is officially offered, is there a typical workaround that people tend to use? [My guess is these unofficial things will often be department-specific]
Tenure clock stoppage: Is stoppage of the tenure clock linked with parental leave? Is it automatic?
Dual academic career parents: If both parents are at the university, do they share leave time or do each get their own leave?
Consideration for other health issues before or after leave: Is there any official policy if there are health issues during pregnancy or after the time of official leave?
Other information:

Here’s an example from my university, which has a really great leave policy:
Country: US
College/university name: University of Michigan
City/town & state name: Ann Arbor, MI
College/university type R1
Official parental leave policy: non-birth parents (including fathers and adoptive parents) get one semester of modified duties (typically interpreted to mean one semester release from teaching and possibly also reduced service that semester); birth parents get two semesters of modified duties
Website with official leave policy: http://spg.umich.edu/policy/201.93
Unofficial leave policy: many people take the one semester of modified duties. The second semester for birth parents is fairly new, so I don’t have a sense yet for how commonly people take it (but know several people – myself included – who have)
Tenure clock stoppage: Requires clicking a box on the same form that requests the modified duties
Dual academic career parents: Both parents can take their leave. Both parents can be on modified duties in the same semester.
Consideration for other health issues before or after leave: I think that health issues for the mom would get covered under the two semesters of leave. I know one person who used one of her two semesters before the birth of her child due to pregnancy-related health problems. I don’t think she got a third semester because of those health problems, but I’m not 100% sure.
Other information: This piece has a quote from the former dean of Michigan’s Ross School of Management, Alison Davis-Blake, who pioneered the new policy with two semesters of leave for birth mothers:

 

Note: If you want to comment but don’t want your name publicly associated with it, enter a pseudonym in the name field. You can also enter a fake email (such as email@email.com) in the email field to make yourself fully anonymous. If you enter a pseudonym plus your real email address, the authors of Dynamic Ecology (Meghan Duffy, Jeremy Fox, and Brian McGill) will be able to see your email address, but it will not appear in the comments section.

Useful links related to tenure-track job searches in ecology (and other job searches)

It’s faculty job hunting season, so I’m reupping Meghan’s very useful, recently-updated compilation of links related to tenure-track job searches in ecology.

As an aside, you might also be interested in our series of posts on non-academic careers for ecologists. Starts here.

A happy ending to a tenure-track job search

Note from Jeremy: This is a guest post from Greg Crowther.

***********************

Previously I have whined about the difficulties of getting a good, stable college teaching job.  This whining is perhaps justified by the extremely low supply of these jobs relative to the demand.  But since almost everyone, including me, likes happy endings, I now wish to present a happy ending.  That’s right – I have received and accepted an offer for an ongoing full-time position.  At the age of 44, I have finally climbed aboard the tenure track.

Please help me identify ecologists hired as tenure-track assistant profs in the 2016-17 faculty job season (UPDATED)

Last fall, I compiled data on the gender balance of over 170 newly-hired assistant professors of ecology and allied fields at N. American colleges and universities. The results were good news: 53% of N. American assistant professors of ecology hired in 2015-16 (or in a few cases in 2014) were women.

This year I’m doing it again. To make it easier, I’m asking for your help. This Google Docs spreadsheet lists all tenure-track positions in ecology and allied fields (plus a bunch of other positions) advertised in the 2016-17 job season. If you know who was hired to fill one or more of the listed N. American assistant professor positions in ecology or an allied field, please email me with this information (jefox@ucalgary.ca).

Before you email me, please read the following:

I only want information that’s been made publicly available, for instance via an official announcement on a departmental website, or by someone tweeting something like “I’ve accepted a TT job at Some College, I start Aug. 1!” If you want to pass on the information that you yourself have been hired into a faculty position, that’s fine too. All you’re doing is saving me from googling publicly-available information myself to figure out who was hired for which positions. Please do not contact me to pass on confidential information, in particular confidential information about hiring that has not yet been totally finalized.

Please do not contact me with nth-hand “information” you heard through the grapevine. Not even if you’re confident it’s reliable.

I’m only interested in N. American tenure-track asst. professors who are “ecologists”, broadly defined. That basically means:

• anybody hired into a position with “ecology” or an ecological term in the job title (including positions like “evolutionary ecology”, “paleoecology”, “biodiversity”, etc.)
• anybody hired into a position in a closely-allied fields like conservation biology, wildlife, fisheries, rangelands, etc.
• people who are ecologists, but who were hired into broadly-defined positions such as “biologist”, “plant biologist”, “vertebrate biologist”, etc. A substantial proportion of academic ecologists hold those sorts of broadly-defined positions, so it would be weird not to include them.

If in doubt, contact me with the information and let me decide whether to count the hire in question as an “ecology” hire.

I’m interested in positions at all institutions of higher education, not just research universities. Even if the position is a pure teaching position with no research duties.

UPDATE: I emphasize that I’m only looking for hires at the assistant professor level. Hires at higher ranks are senior people moving from one faculty position to another, which isn’t relevant for my purposes.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Does gender influence when people first apply for faculty jobs?

A couple of months ago, a reader of the blog sent me an email containing a figure she’d made from this year’s ecology job wiki, using data from the “anonymous qualifications” sheet. That figure suggested that women might be waiting longer than men to start applying for tenure track jobs — or, more specifically, that men might be more likely that women to apply for faculty positions while still in grad school or within the first year after getting their PhD. After recreating the figure myself and also looking at the 2015-2016 job wiki and finding a similar pattern, I decided to do a poll to see whether this pattern held up with more data. Results are below, but the quick summary is that women do not seem to be waiting longer to apply for faculty positions (at least based on the poll data).

Poll: What determines when people start applying for tenure track jobs?

A recent conversation I had — starting with a postdoc (not one of mine) and then continuing with others — has me curious about the factors that influence when people start applying for tenure track jobs. I’ve created a poll to try to get insight into those factors. Please fill out this poll if you have considered applying for tenure track positions (or their equivalents in other countries), even if you haven’t actually applied for any yet. I’ll leave the poll open for a few days, and hope to have a post with results appear some time next week.

Update: For the questions, if you applied/got an interview/got an offer before getting your PhD, choose “0”. If you applied/got an interview/got an offer after getting your PhD, but within a year of getting your PhD, please choose “1”.