POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLARS AND RESEARCHERS
Finding and Arranging Opportunities
 There
are many avenues by which scholars, researchers and faculty can come as
temporary academic visitors to the United States. Those described below
are the most common.
University
deparment often have invitation positions, usually a year in length, for
visiting scholars, researchers or lecturers. To be invited as a visiting
scholar or visiting lecturer a candidate must be a recognized authority
in the field. If you have an outstanding reputation as a researcher or
have personal or professional contacts with U.S. faculty, you may often
arrange a special invitation position.
Visiting Professors
and Lecturers
One of
the most common structures for organizing postdoctoral experience in the
United States is through a faculty exchange or visiting professorship.
In working on a temporary basis with faculty or researchers at universities
in the United States, you will need to be aware of constraints and pressures
on academics, as well as the underlying structure of the faculty system.
In almost
every academic institution, faculties are organized into departments based
on academic field, or occasionally into multi-disciplinary centers for
focus on a certain academic area. Each department operates independently,
headed by a department chair, under broad university guidelines. Faculty
members of a department usually choose their own department chair, either
a senior member of the department, or occasionally someone from outside
the university. In many cases, the position of department chair rotates
from one department member to another, changing every three or four years.
In other cases, the department chair remains as long as other faculty members
agree. The department acts as a democratic body, determining requirements
for degrees (within broad limits set by the university), admitting graduate
students, deciding whether degree candidates qualify, choosing teaching
assistants, determining curriculum and hiring new faculty by participation
of all members. In some departments real power lies with the a whole, more
than with the chair as an individual. In other, the chair is more powerful.
Faculty
titles denote academic rank. In ascending order, they are Lecturer (or
Instructor), Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor. Except
in the case of very distinguished senior professors, most faculty members
address each other by first names and do not use these titles in conversation.
Lecturers
and Assistant Professors have a full teaching load - usually two classes
that meet three times a week with a laboratory or perhaps three classes
without a laboratory. In addition, they may have one or more committee
assignments (the curriculum committee, the honors committee, etc.), which
take several hours per week. Add to this grading time, as well as conference
time and office for students, not to mention the many hours of research
or writing necessary to build a reputation for scholarly research.
Under
the system of promotion current in most university departments an Assistant
Professor has five to seven years to gain "tenure". At the end of this
time, a committee of peers (other university faculty) votes whether or
not to recommend tenure for an Assistant Professor. One of the most important
considerations is the faculty members research and publication record.
Tenure is a guarantee that he or she will remain employed by the university
until retirement. Unless the institution suffers extreme budget cuts or
the person commits a serious moral offense (however, since tenure is granted
by the department and not the university in many institutions, faculty
members can still lose their jobs if the department is eliminated). In
most cases granting tenure carries with it an almost automatic promotion
to Associate Professor.
The purpose
of the tenure system is to preserve academic freedom, to prevent an institution
from firing a professor for making unpopular or radical statements or advocating
unorthodox ideas.
Today,
with tight university budgets, the effects of the tenure system have put
strong pressure on Assistant Professors to succeed early.
What difference
does this system make to visiting scholars and researchers? If you are
given a years appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor or Lecturer,
you will be make similar commitments of time and fulfill similar teaching
loads. Similarly, if your faculty collaborator is working toward tenure,
you may find that he or she has little extra time available for collaboration.
In centers or institutes devoted entirely to research, however, investigators
often have fewer distractions from research.
Faculty
in the United States tend to identify first with colleagues in their academic
field and second with their institution, except in smaller colleges at
which teaching is the primary activity. This is perhaps a consequence of
the emphasis on research and publication record as a measure of success.
Faculty
salaries are often lower then salaries at comparable levels of business
or industry, ranging from an average of approximately $26,000 for a Lecture
to about $50,000 for a Professor, with an overall average of $41,000. Faculty
salaries in engineering are 21% higher than the average. Many faculty members
serve as consultants to business, industry and government, both as a source
of outside income and a stimulus for professional development.
Senior
faculty members sometimes hold joint appointments with part-time teaching
responsibilities and part-time administrative responsibilities. Often administrative
duties reduce the time and energy available for effective research.
Relationships with
Students
In the
university setting, faculty interactions with students are informal. Often
graduate students and faculty become close friends and work together almost
on equal basis. Since U.S. educational philosophy stresses analysis and
critical thinking in addition to mastery of information class to formats
stimulate of ideas. Students both graduate and undergraduate do not hesitate
to challenge professors in class; in fact, most professors encourage it
as a sign of intellectual independence. Encouragement of questioning, however,
does not mean that professors lack respect from students. Despite informality,
students and faculty maintain a certain personal distance, with students
deferring to faculty members. Faculty members usually construct their own
examinations and papers for their courses, unless the course has a very
high enrollment.
Research Centers
Some universities
are research centers; others not (for a comparison, see Gregory Barons.
The American University. A World Guide). Research and scholarly activity
take place in many kinds of institutions besides universities. Often visiting
scholars, researchers, and faculty come to private or public research centers
or hospitals.
Most research
institutions are administratively organized by field, with both an administrative
and scientific/technical head for each department (in some cases the same
person). Researchers may work together as part of a team, or they may work
alone: all have some administrative relationship to the department. Grants
management staff monitor expenses on the grant, and the principal investigator
is usually responsible for an annual grant report.
Quite
often a foreign researcher establishes an arrangement with particular research
center that focuses on his or her area of research and then obtains a grant
from public or private sources (see Obtaining Funding, page X) to work
there as principal investigator for the grant.
Institutional Linkages
In recent years many U.S. universities have signed reciprocal
agreement with institutions in other countries to exchange faculty and
researchers for of one to three years. The USIA University Affiliation
Program provides an important stimulus for such arrangements.
Short-Term Training
Programs and Seminars
Continuing
education has become increasingly important in American education in recent
years. Universities, hospitals and professional associations offer seminars
and short courses for mid-career professionals in all fields; however,
these are usually a week or less in length and therefore impractical for
someone from oversees. The vast majority of commercially available seminars
for mid-career professionals are also one to three days in length.
Semi independent
training institutes affiliated with universities or government entitles,
however, are beginning to offer short term training in business, agriculture
and other topics of interest to oversees professionals with courses of
three months to a year in length.
Other Arrangements
Scholars and
researchers anticipating a sabbatical or wishing to do research in the
United States often learn of opportunities through speaking or corresponding
with colleagues in the same field or by attending professional meetings.
Professors may also learn of colleagues with similar research interests
through former students who are in United States from U.S. university Faculty
or administrators visiting in their country or from papers in scholarly
journals. Sometimes scholars and researchers negotiate directly with a
department or research center. In business science and technological fields
the probability of arranging a research sabbatical in the United States
is higher then for humanities, social sciences, and the performing arts.
Obtaining Funding
from Local Sources, Private Foundations and National Organizations
Take every
step possible to secure adequate funding for research. Scholars considering
a sojourn in the U.S. should know that the budget situation in most universities
and research centers is currently tight. U.S. government funding for research
has been curtailed. Careful and realistic financial planning will be crucial
for success of your program.
Arrangements
for funding visiting researchers and scholars vary greatly. Often the scholars
home institution pays regular salary while the scholar is on sabbatical.
Occasionally scholars come to the U.S. on their own funds.
Some foundations
and organizations provide grants to support scholarly research in the arts,
science, humanities and health related fields. Although competition is
intense, foreign nationals as well as U.S. citizens are often eligible
to apply. consult sources listed in the bibliography as well as additional
resources available at the nearest educational advising center in your
country. Usually the grant is for a specific amount and support research
at a particular facility or center.
Many grant
applications specify that you present not only a research plan, but also
an agreement with a research institution before they will fund a grant.
It is your responsibility to find an institution that will agree to provide
research facilities, employ you and monitor grant expenditures if you are
awarded a grant. A committee of peers reviews grant proposals.
If you
do receive a grant, determine whether the grant is to you as an individual
or to the institution who then agrees to employ you with the funds from
the grant. If you leave before the grant is completed and the grant is
to the institution, it will remain with the institution.
Perhaps
the ideal situation is to find an academic department in the United States
with a research grant allowing employment of additional researchers. Usually
such arrangements arise through personal correspondence between the people
involved. There is no central source for information of the type.
|
