Starting new job as a lecturer

[calmdowngoldie]

I'm starting a full-time lecturer role soon (in the UK). First lecturing gig. So, it'll be a learning curve.

Any advice on how to settle into my role with ease?

Any advice on how and where to look to for research funding (environment field)?

Any advice on how to manage my time between teaching, research, and admin?

Any advice on how to prevent burnout?

It's been a lifelong dream to be a lecturer. Any advice you can give so I don't bungle this up?

Any other tips and suggestions will be helpful. I really want to be a great lecturer.

Thank you.

Congratulations on your post!

I found the first few years of being a lecturer very intense (humanities subject). Teaching can be all-consuming, especially if you’re designing and delivering new modules, learning about student support, processes etc. My research didn’t progress as much as I’d have liked, but I understand that’s common so don’t be too hard on yourself. Some tips, from others and that I picked up along the way:

• if your department has a mentoring or buddy scheme, use it and ask ALL the questions. You’ll likely be on probation initially, so you can also discuss things with your probation mentor(s) but sometimes having an additional person to draw upon is good.
• in my department we were given one day free from teaching a week, our ‘research day’. Do try and preserve this for research stuff as much as you can. But equally, there are periods of the year when it’ll be nigh on impossible, so don’t stress about it too much.
• throw yourself into department life: attend events, get to know colleagues, go for coffee/lunch with people. My colleagues are such a joy.

I’ll leave others to comment on funding as I’m way outside your field and have no idea.

Congratulations!
if you’re on Facebook, find the wiasn group and join (women in academia support network).

network and make connections. There might be a staff network Womens group?

be strict with safeguarding your research time

dont volunteer for too many admin roles or take on too much academic housework

think about where you would like your career to go strategically: if your destination is research progression then prioritise this from the outset. Don’t expect yourself to be outstanding at research, teaching, and admin.

dont let too much work seep into your evenings and weekends. There is no end to academia if you permit it. Your to do list will never be done. You have to take care of yourself and manage others’ expectations of what you will/ can do.

be nice to your students 😀

enjoy!!!! For all its pitfalls (every job has them), I never forget what a privilege it is to work doing something I love.

Be wary of ‘women’s groups’, especially if you are gender critical. Some of the worst bullying I have seen in academia has been by women of other women. Be selective about who to trust. That said, being friendly and cordial can open doors. Sorry to be a bit negative but you asked for candid advice …

Thank you all for such useful advice.
@FlySwimmer It’s great that your colleagues are a delight. I hope this will be my experience too :)
And I like the idea of a research day. I’ll see whether it’s something I can make space for personally if my department isn’t practicing it. Potentially I can block out some hours of the day.

@AlwaysColdHands I feel the same. I feel so privileged to have gotten this job and I want to give it my best. I want to be renowned for research, but equally I want to be a teacher that impacts students’ lives not just academically. All my life, my teachers have been the ones helping me to progress from A to B. I would have been doomed without them and they’ve inspired me greatly.

@ExUCU No you’re not being negative at all. Very useful advice; thank you. Sadly, all the workplace bullying I’ve personally experienced have been at the hands of women. I know this is not everyone’s reality and hopefully wouldn’t be for me in academia, so I will keep an open mind and proceed with caution.

Does anyone work work from home at all or do you go into campus everyday? What are the pros and cons of either? Thanks!

I work from home the days I don’t have teaching/meetings, and then practically all the time during the summer or other vacation periods. I live an hour’s train commute from my campus so for me it’s chiefly a cost/time thing. I also share an office whereas at home I have my own space, set up as I like it. Especially for research things, I prefer to be at home: most of my books and other resources are there, rather than in the office. I try to compress my teaching into two days to limit commuting and costs. My DH & I are also thinking of having a child soon, so hopefully this set-up will be a bit more flexible.

However some universities have requirements around days on campus, so you should check that. I personally would hate it.

Some of my colleagues are mostly on campus, it seems to work for them. Though I’ve noticed a lot them are the older male profs, who usually have their own office and are not sharing.

Remember too that I’m in the humanities, so no need for any technical or scientific facilities, beyond a good library, for my research. Other disciplines will be different.

My experience is that expectations around presence on campus vary significantly between institutions and even between departments.
My pattern is typically only being on campus 1-2 days per week (on a 0.8 contract). I would say that the majority of staff meetings are now on Teams (for better or worse).

My team’s experience during Covid was that seeing a colleague face to face regularly was crucial, and so when we’re out of term time we generally try to all still get onto campus for one day for the human contact. We share an office (7 of us) so doing sustained tasks such as writing, marking etc are usually left for home working.

Thank you for sharing re wfh. All very useful insights. Thank you, once again!

I would absolutely insist on the need to setting boundaries and protecting your time and priorities.
I have about a decade's experience in a permanent position and especially in the last couple of years it's dawned on me how peculiar the overwork culture is in academia. Yes there is a huge problem with overwork and many people are deeply unhappy or downright depressed because of it. Yes in some if not many cases the overwork is at least partly self-imposed, and people do not easily admit that they would be less overworked if they cared less about career advancement or if they worked more efficiently. Yes sometimes those who are most vocal about overwork do not have many qualms in overburdening more junior or female staff with work and shrugging it off: "Well, if they agree, that's ok, I didn't put a gun to their head". I honestly wish I had been able to identify these kinds of dynamics 10 years ago but I don't think it's at all easy for a junior person.
I would recommend that you try to identify what you want and gear your energies, as much as you can, towards it. If you are interested in moving through the ranks, acquaint yourself with the promotion criteria and work towards them. For example, it is unlikely they will ask you to excell equally in all areas, so focus on those that come most easily to you and do the bare minimum in others - if say you have to have two areas of achivement at 10 and four areas at 5, then having all six areas at 9 isn't going to get you promoted even if it's actually more work and a more rounded profile. Moving through the ranks however is not the be-all and end-all and I would recommend you try to identify and have chats with people who you think are happy doing what they do - for example, some might not be all that prominent within their institutions but then they might be very active within their discipline/professional organization, etc.
Universities are very large organizations, and they all work slightly differently, so don't be alarmed if it takes you a few years to have a reasonable grasp of how everything works, what support is available, where to go for help, etc. However, if you find a person who is well networked within the university and always knows whom to turn to, keep them very close, as they can save them lots of headaches and lots of struggling and thinking you're on your own. In my case that person is the Head of Administration at the School but I've found that some academics can have a comparably good grasp.
If you're doing a teaching-heavy role, your early years will probably be quite time-consuming in terms of teaching preparation but it will get better after that - either because you'll have more materials readily available, or because you actually become more efficient at preparing teaching sessions. Try to maximize efficiency - for example, if you don't keep the same courses from year to year, then at least try to see if there's any material you can re-use; when I'm reading for research, I also flag up articles that I could potentially envisage using for teaching and build a small repository, etc.

@FlySwimmer @AlwaysColdHands @ExUCU @aridapricot

Apologies for pulling you back here.
I'm in need of some guidance having started the new gig and have picked up on some things:

1. Direct manager is on leave so, was 'inducted' by programme lead (manager of my manager). Induction was basically doing what he wants to do which is basically putting out fires, nothing intelligent.

1. I'm doing some marking and quickly realised that students can't speak or write English, plagiarise, and in meetings, they can't comprehend English or engage in a conversation and rather than address these issues, the programme lead masks it and suggest we give them a 50% mark so they don't resit the course, lose their right to live in the UK, etc

This is creating ethical conflicts for me as I worry this will impact standards of higher education. I also no longer feel proud to say I work here.

1. Programme lead is having inappropriate relationship with a PhD Student (I've witnessed inappropriate interactions and now a staff in another department introduced themselves to me and then warned me of the programme lead, saying 'woman to woman, don't do anything with him'). That's led to nepotism where student has already been appointed full time lecturer even while still doing PhD.

What's problematic for me is that both student and programme lead collude to make decisions and then try to micromanage me and pass on their work to me. For example, they arrive (late) and leave work same time, but insinuate I have to stay late as them even though I arrive early. They've caused me to leave work 9pm in Week 1. In Week2, I put my foot down and started leaving at 5pm and since then, the atmosphere has changed. When I email them asking questions, they don't respond. When I call, they don't pick up. They only engage when they need to tell me what they need doing and if I say 'oh I'm doing something else at the time', can we reschedule, they just ignore the communication from then on. They pull me into meetings to assign me work they've both decided they want me to do. They've said they think I'm problematic (which essentially means I'm not willing to compromise on standards), so they've pretty much shoved me to the side. They introduced me to the module leader whose teaching I'm to be supporting and he was hostile. Afterwards, the programme lead told me the module leader is his friend and they'd talked about me and how people like me with certain values are problematic.

1. I'm keen on doing research. Programme lead has been telling me to that teaching is their focus. I keep telling him that his idea of teaching is benign. I'm willing to teach, but he's reduced teaching to putting out fires due to systemic issues they created, for example, teaching students how to log on to a computer, teaching students how to use Microsoft Word, helping them type because they can't spell properly etc.

1. Programme lead insists on being addressed by his title (comes from a culture where things like this are revered as do I). I notice that if I don't address him beginning with his title, he won't respond to the chat or email. He told me once and I told him things like that don't matter here. I'm very uncomfortable with these kinds of things.

Please advice me. What would you do to navigate this workplace where clearly our values and ways of being do not align.
Please don't tell me to resign and find another job. I'm not that privileged. I have adult response and I work hard to get most things; landing this role took me years!
I need to find another job and then move.
Thank you.

I mean I have adult responsibilities :)

Oh @calmdowngoldie I'm so sorry. This sounds really depressing :(

I was wondering if there are more colleagues in the department other than the programme leader, the PhD student and the module leader? It sounds as if they have their own little clique - is there anyone else you can enlist as an ally? What about your line manager when they're back from leave? I think you'd need to do so cautiously but are they essentially able to do as they please?

The bit about you being pressured to pass students, in particular, is very serious. At the same time as you search for allies, is there anyone higher up that you could raise this with? A Head of Faculty who is above the programme leader, or a Dean of Learning and Teaching? I assume the programme has an external examiner - and perhaps exam boards are coming up now in September - can you maybe dig up old exam board minutes to see if an external raised that, or could you raise the issue with them? (again requires tact).

For some of the other problems you mentioned I can think of some practical steps (e.g. creating a more efficient support system so that the programme leader doesn't have to spend so much time "troubleshooting") but I think it would be essential to try and find support.

I’m sorry to hear this, too. This is far from the welcome most of us would hope for. New colleagues should be protected, not exploited, but alas, it would be the first time that the personal boundaries of a new hire are being pushed. One of these issues would be enough to deal with but it’s rare to have all of this combined.

If I understand correctly, your colleagues are bullying you to try to get you to conform to their way of doing things. Perhaps you have ruffled their little clique. Aridapricot has already provided sound advice, and I would agree on the need to find allies. The inappropriate relationship, a clear conflict of interest, is disturbing and something that universities have started to clamp down on.

How long is your direct manager on leave? It seems to me that problem 2 and 2a are the most pressing ones.

@aridapricot
It is. I've become unhappy on the job.
There are no lecturers; it's not the main campus so it runs on casual staff; so the programme leader and PhD student run the show. They decide what they want to do, when and how.
They are module leaders to half the courses. The other module leaders are not based in my campus and theirs are the ones they've assigned me to work with. ffom what I've gathered, this campus is the university's cash cow (programme is tailored to bringing in the international students), so other staff turn a blind eye. A staff had hinted me that my manager is no different. In fact, I think it'd be difficult to find someone to trust around there. Everyone seems to have an informal understanding of how the place runs. Im also worried about going to the Dean only to find out he's on the same page with them; I don't want them to blackball me. It already feels like that.
They have deliberately excluded me from key information so as not to make a change, for example, not adding me to modules so I can see what was previously taught and begin to familiarise myself with the content; not doing a proper induction so I don't know what the formal processes are, for reporting academic misconduct for example; not adding me to modules so that I can just upload the courseworks I assessed. They are making me do the assessments and feedback, then they review it up so that everyone passes and they upload the marks themselves. If a student plagiarises an entire work, they call them in for an informal chat to appease me, but they don't refer them for due process.
They are basically overriding my scores if it's below 50.

I can tactically request to see minutes from the last Board.
How do I identify allies without shooting myself in the foot?

Cannot speak about many things but re research grants speak to the research office and listen to their advice. Ask if they have example successful grants, which schemes they recommend eg if environment might be nerc but they have demand management. How is they organised etc etc

Thank you.
@aridapricot has been helpful.
They haven't told me when my manager is due to return. When I verbally ask, they give a vague response (he'll be back soon) and change the subject.
I've sent a direct message to the programme lead, asking when he will introduce me to this manager of mine; he didn't respond.

I think they're trying to mentally disarm me by ignoring communications from me. This week, I've decided to stop reaching out to them first and now turn to the intranet for guidance.

Im also worried about going to the Dean only to find out he's on the same page with them; I don't want them to blackball me.

I know what you mean. You are clearly in a situation where you don't feel you have any allies you can trust.
You mention that your programme leader doesn't refer the students for plagiarism so this makes me think that an anti-plagiarism process does exist at your institution? Could you approach whoever is responsible for the process under the guise of "innocent question"? "Hey, we have a situation where this has happened, the student wasn't referred but can I double check this was the right call?".
And I'm aware this is a difficult decision OP but I was wondering if your institution has a whistleblowing policy? The fact that grades are inflated and plagiarism is overlooked with such impunity is a very very serious thing... But I am the first who would think long and hard, and collect plenty of evidence, before whistleblowing.

Thank you for the advice.
I know there's an anti-plagiarism function in place; I need to find it out independently and thanks for the advice, I'll use that tactic. And I think I'll begin collecting my evidence and observe people more to work out potential allies.

Things have gone downhill. The professor raised his voice at me, speaking to me in a condescending manner in front of admin staff. When I spoke to him later on about his conduct, he was dismissive, refused to apologise and walked out during the conversation.

I waited a few days, but he didn't reach out to me to smoothen things over.
I've now spoken to someone in HR about it. They've asked me to put my complaint in writing. What would you do if you were in my shoes? Would you raise the complaint informally or formally?

I'm concerned that this would lead to me being blackballed. I'm a younger woman and of colour. The professor and his protege/ mistress are the only main staff in the department. They call the shots pretty much so a bit worried that they'll collude to show me the door if I can't be subdued.

But I'm also worried that being silent will result in further mistreatment and these things could adversely impact me (confidence, mental health etc). I'm already having sleepless nights and restlessness pondering over what's happening at work.

Any advice at this point would be appreciated.

It is very difficult to advise you, this is a horrible situation and I’m sorry it is causing you so much stress. Before doing anything, I would collect all the evidence in a file and back everything up on a personal device. There is a possibility that the professor will raise a counter complaint. I would also consider joining a union but usually they can only help you before any disciplinary proceedings have been launched against you, so I’d do this quickly. Once you are in a union, you can talk to a union rep in confidence. HR are there to protect the employer.

Thank you for the guidance.
I'm part of a union and have called them today. They said they'd get back to me.
So, I haven't recontacted the HR rep.