Be proactive!
Postdocs have many opportunities for professional development beyond their fellowship work at UC. These opportunities include career seminars, grant writing workshops, tuition remission for classes, and a variety of networking opportunities. The following are suggestions, descriptions and links to help you get the most out of this step of your career.
Setting career goals and finding good mentorship are two key ingredients for a successful postdoctoral experience. Both of these issues can be facilitated through the use of an Individual Development Plan. IDP’s are often required for training grants and have been shown to be particularly helpful both for postdocs and for their mentors. Download an IDP.
Apply for postdoctoral grants! There are a wide variety of training grants and postdoctoral fellowships available. Researcher's Gateway provides information listing grant opportunities, education and training, networking opportunities, official policies and much more.
In addition, Sponsored Research Services (SRS) holds regular grant submissions presentation to orient researchers to working with SRS on grant submissions to funding agencies. Additional information can be found at http://webcentral.uc.edu/researchetc_cal/calendar/.
Grant Writing
Grant-writing workshops are also available through the Office of Research. These workshops provide valuable training on several topics including proposal writing to several different funding organizations, the balance of writing and mentoring of postdoctoral grant proposals, and editing proposals for resubmission. In addition, there is a great deal of literature available on the internet about writing grant proposals, including the NSF Guide for Proposal Writing.
Tuition Remission
Tuition Remission is available for employees of the University of Cincinnati. Postdocs and their family members are eligible for three credits (typically one class) of tuition remission per quarter.
Teaching Experience
Get experience in teaching through the Preparing Future Faculty Program. This program provides valuable training in teaching, the academic job search, portfolio design and many other topics applicable to postdocs who are interested in a teaching career.
UC Postdoctoral Fellows Association
Be an active member of the UC Postdoctoral Fellows Association. For more information, e-mail cincypdfa@gmail.com. The group plans seminars and meetings of interest to the postdoc population (both research and non-research). The assocation is an advocate to postdocs, and provides a venue for postdoc networking within the University of Cincinnati. Monthly meetings are held on the third Tuesday of the month at 1 p.m. in room 6870 of the CARE/Crawley Building on the medical campus. Minutes from recent meetings are available here.
Research Policies
Learn more about UC's research policies, intellectual property, networking and postdoctoral careers by logging on to Researcher's Gateway. There you can view recent seminars hosted by the OPA and the GSA and funded by a National Postdoctoral Association seed grant.
Network
Network with your fellow postdocs at the monthly postdoc research meeting held in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. This meeting focuses on medically related research but can be broad in scope. A monthly university-wide postdoc meeting may be scheduled for non-medical fields if sufficient interest is expressed. E-mail cincypdfa@gmail.com for more details.