On professional development for adapting your research program for impact

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The more time I’ve spent in the academic world, the more I have felt and seen a reluctance to seek out professional development help for being a better (or different kind of) researcher. There are lots of seminars, courses, and programs to help you improve your teaching, and lots of courses and programs designed to help you be an administrator or advance your career in that direction. But there are very few to help you to change or advance your research program.

On the one hand, I understand this. Getting a PhD means (in theory) you can figure things out on your own. And of course, everyone’s research programs are unique to them (by design).

On the other hand, I never learned how to adapt and scale my research program over time. My PhD helped me to learn how to do the research I was interested in doing, not how I would have to adjust as I started adding to the knowledge base in my area. I’ve had to learn the hard way how to adapt and scale my research program.

Like most tenure-track faculty, I spent my pre-tenure time focused on building my independent research program and pumping out as much research as possible. Towards the end of my pre-tenure time, I also got wrapped up in a variety of university-level research and service opportunities, including one designed to improve the amount of interdisciplinary research conducted on campus, which led to the founding of a community-engaged research center designed to meet communities where they are to answer research questions that are important to them.

I also became the chair of our faculty senate, helping to lead our campus through the investiture of a controversially hired chancellor and the first year of the COVID shutdown. These exposures also made sure I was top of mind when senior leaders were looking for someone to stand up a research institute intended to examine student wellbeing through the lens of substance misuse.

While I would like to be able to say that I said yes to these opportunities with a well-considered plan in mind for how they would help advance my career. I did not. I said yes to some of them because I needed the resources they provided to offset deficits in other places (ex. teaching time buyout), in other cases I said yes because I was flattered to be asked, and in still others I was deeply connected to the impact the work could have in my state and academic research more generally.

At no point did I stop to think about what these experiences were adding to my career trajectory. At no point did any of my leaders stop to ask me about my future goals. Occasionally, colleagues would comment on how busy I was, but that felt like a badge of honor, not a warning for potential burnout.

Does this sound familiar?

I’ve managed to get myself out of most of those previous obligations now and am working to realign my research program to capitalize on these experiences and exposures while doubling down on how my work can have the greatest impact. I think we assume that researchers will continue producing and replicating work in their narrow area forever. For some researchers, this is certainly the goal. But this is certainly not the case for everyone, especially if your work is about improving outcomes in the world outside of the academy.

If you want your work to have the greatest impact at some point, your focus will need to shift away from strict knowledge generation for other academics towards considering how knowledge from your field can be applied. To do this successfully (i.e., make the impact, while also doing the things you need to do to keep your job) you will have to become a different kind of researcher. This takes time and guidance. You need someone to help you put a plan together, think through the opportunities, give guidance on when and how to say “No”, and record all of this so you can share with your chair, dean, and senior colleagues how your work is both rigorous and applied.  

I didn’t have this kind of help, but let me lend my experience to you, so you don’t have to learn it the hard way.

P.S. There are still some spots available for a free Discovery call (use the link below to sign up today).

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