Preparing for an Academic Career for Social and Population Scientists

So you're interested in an academic career...

Fantastic! We've developed a tool to help you assess and improve your competitiveness for faculty positions. ACRA - the Academic Career Assessment Readiness Tool - is based on a research project that surveyed faculty on hiring committees to determine what skills and experience were common among highly rated and selected candidates. The tool was developed with interviews of basic science faculty but confirmed by social science faculty, so it is fully applicable to trainees in social and population sciences. With this framework, we developed a curriculum designed to prepare you for a faculty career every step of the way.

Here's the process:

1. Plan using ACRA

• Know the type of faculty position that you want and learn the hiring requirements for that type of position.
• Plan your training to meet those requirements.

2. Train using our programs designed for academic positions

• Educator training (applicable to social scientists and basic scientists)
• Mentor training (examples draw from wet-lab situations but principles apply to social scientists)
• Researcher training (curriculum was developed with life science professors and confirmed with social science professors)

3. Go for it

• Apply, interview, and negotiate with our programs (open to social and basic scientists) and resources (including examples for social scientists)

Check out our academic series:
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