In graduate school, my two closest sets of friends were the group of chemical engineering graduate students, staff, roommates, friends, and significant others who went to lunch weekly on campus for a period of several years and the University Baptist Church Graduate and Professionals Bible study group that met weekly for conversations, social time, prayer, and reflection on scripture. Both of these groups formed organically between me and some friends who wanted to gather like-minded individuals to socialize regularly. These close knit groups shared joys and struggles, vented, empathized, provided suggestions and advice, and became community for me. Lifelong friendships were forged. The members of the group were diverse in age, race, nationality, field of study, and background. But they had common threads of experiencing some similar phase of life together, e.g., graduate school or being post-undergraduate in a college town.
When we moved to Boston, I joined another two very influential groups that already existed in the area: the MIT Graduate Christian Fellowship on-campus Bible study group and the Massachusetts Associate of Women in Science mentoring circles (two years with two different cohorts). Our GCF group ate dinner weekly, discussed and prayed about challenges with graduate and postdoctoral life, and really got to know each other well. The mentoring circles involved senior graduate and postdoctoral women in STEM. We focused on professional development topics once per month. We gained new perspectives in hearing from people from a wide varieties of fields and career goals. We were able to share personal stories, reflections, goals, and progress. It was also valuable for networking and support. I also collected a great set of resources on professional development topics that I can now share with students and colleagues.
I've been at OSU for nearly 5 years. I have supportive colleagues and friends across campus and throughout the community and a network of peers and senior colleagues across the nation. I love catching up with my external colleagues when I travel, but it's always too brief. What I'm missing is having a peer group going through similar things that checks in on a regular basis. For me this peer group is people on the tenure track in a STEM field at a research intensive university. Such a group is useful for creative brainstorming, conflict resolution, goal setting in a supportive environment outside of the internal evaluation hierarchy, sharing vunerabilities, venting, celebrating milestones, holding each other accountable, and being authentic with people going through challenges at a similar stages in their lives. The idea is inspired by the book Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women Scientists and the business concept of mastermind groups.
I'm looking to form a small group cohort of tenure track faculty peers (5-6 people) ideally within a few years before or after tenure who have roles that include research, proposal writing, teaching, lab management, and/or leadership within their university and their profession. I'd like to meet virtually every 2-4 weeks for ~15/person for an initial period of one year. The group is not restricted to any gender or any specific field of science or engineering. It'll be laid back but intentional with people committed to integrity, support, openness, learning, growing, a spirit of caring, constructive feedback, and advocacy of each other.
If you're interested in joining me in such a group, email me at ashleefv at okstate dot edu or DM me on Twitter @ashleefv
When we moved to Boston, I joined another two very influential groups that already existed in the area: the MIT Graduate Christian Fellowship on-campus Bible study group and the Massachusetts Associate of Women in Science mentoring circles (two years with two different cohorts). Our GCF group ate dinner weekly, discussed and prayed about challenges with graduate and postdoctoral life, and really got to know each other well. The mentoring circles involved senior graduate and postdoctoral women in STEM. We focused on professional development topics once per month. We gained new perspectives in hearing from people from a wide varieties of fields and career goals. We were able to share personal stories, reflections, goals, and progress. It was also valuable for networking and support. I also collected a great set of resources on professional development topics that I can now share with students and colleagues.
I've been at OSU for nearly 5 years. I have supportive colleagues and friends across campus and throughout the community and a network of peers and senior colleagues across the nation. I love catching up with my external colleagues when I travel, but it's always too brief. What I'm missing is having a peer group going through similar things that checks in on a regular basis. For me this peer group is people on the tenure track in a STEM field at a research intensive university. Such a group is useful for creative brainstorming, conflict resolution, goal setting in a supportive environment outside of the internal evaluation hierarchy, sharing vunerabilities, venting, celebrating milestones, holding each other accountable, and being authentic with people going through challenges at a similar stages in their lives. The idea is inspired by the book Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women Scientists and the business concept of mastermind groups.
I'm looking to form a small group cohort of tenure track faculty peers (5-6 people) ideally within a few years before or after tenure who have roles that include research, proposal writing, teaching, lab management, and/or leadership within their university and their profession. I'd like to meet virtually every 2-4 weeks for ~15/person for an initial period of one year. The group is not restricted to any gender or any specific field of science or engineering. It'll be laid back but intentional with people committed to integrity, support, openness, learning, growing, a spirit of caring, constructive feedback, and advocacy of each other.
If you're interested in joining me in such a group, email me at ashleefv at okstate dot edu or DM me on Twitter @ashleefv
