Navigating the Postdoc Office: Part 2

In a previous article, we discussed why you might want to consider a career in academic administration. Yet we also recognize that many grad students, postdocs and junior faculty members know relatively little about the trajectories of individuals who pursue administrative roles—and, in particular, positions in postdoc offices. Here, we address this knowledge gap by sharing our own experiences and those of a postdoc and other administrators, as well as by providing advice if you are interested in pursuing this career path.

Skills for the Field

Although we have different backgrounds and trajectories, we both found that pivoting into a different field took time, reflection and reframing our professional identity and priorities. In an administrative role, you need a broader skill set than you usually do as a tenure-track faculty member, and the measures of success are different. While the transition can be difficult, we have both grown personally and professionally in our new roles and value the networks we have built in this arena. Below, we list the skills we have found useful and our suggestions for how you might cultivate them.

Communication. You will want to:

• Communicate with multiple constituencies—for example, to hear postdoc experiences and feedback on policy and programming; to address faculty mentorship challenges and keep them up-to-date on postdoc policy, needs, and resources; and to collaborate with offices that support mental health or immigration for holistic postdoc support.
• Create awareness throughout the campus of postdocs’ work and needs individually and as a population.
• Share program outcomes and climate survey data institutionally with the administration and leadership, and/or externally via publications and conferences.
• Practice active listening to integrate leadership priorities with your office mission to advance policy change, and to collaborate effectively with campus partners or organizations that provide additional services for your postdoc population, for instance.

Ways to cultivate those skills:

• Present at society conferences.
• Participate in communications workshops.
• Volunteer as a communications officer for an organization like a postdoc association or graduate student group.
• Coordinate an event for an organization, such as inviting an expert guest speaker or facilitating a workshop on your area of expertise.

Educating, coaching or programming. You will want to:

• Guide postdocs in prioritizing short-term and long-term goals.
• Facilitate workshops covering topics such as mentorship, leadership and career planning.
• Coach postdocs to support their professional development.
• Support postdocs facing personal and/or professional challenges.

Ways to cultivate those skills:

• Mentor students and document the impacts of your mentorship.
• Guest lecture or teach a course for postdocs.
• Facilitate a workshop for your research group, department or postdoc association.
• Engage with teaching resources offered by your institution.
• Volunteer on a committee that is graduate student or postdoc-centered, such as the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) or Graduate Career Consortium (GCC).

Strategic thinking and negotiation. You will want to:

• Understand institutional culture, norms and change-making processes to achieve your goals.
• Create and/or revise policy addressing topics such as postdoc compensation and mentorship best practices.
• Weigh priorities and decide whether to say “yes,” “no” or “later” to different opportunities.
• Strategically plan the distribution of resources and the timing of programming and assessment.

Ways to cultivate those skills:

• Join a departmental or institutional committee.
• Co-write a grant to gain insights into budgeting, purchasing and reporting.
• Lead a collaborative research project across units or institutions.
• Take part in your postdoc association’s strategic planning.

Perspectives From the Field

In this section, we will offer advice from academic administrators at different career stages including a postdoc and more advanced leaders, as well as our own perspectives as early career administrators.

A postdoc now in academic administration. Postdoctoral positions are available specifically for individuals who want to work in a postdoc office or similar department. We spoke with Claire Perrott, a professional development postdoctoral fellow at Syracuse University, to learn about her experience.

After completing her Ph.D. in Latin American history, Claire told us, she attained a tenure-track faculty role before shifting into the museum field. Claire’s experiences in and outside academia motivated her to find a position where she could broaden her skill set, consider potential career paths and work on community building. In Claire’s current postdoctoral position, she supports postdoc professional development programming. She has enjoyed the independence to mold the role so it aligns with her interests and allows her to explore her next career steps.

That being said, Claire emphasized that the collaboration and oversight required for making policy changes takes time and is starkly different from the independence she had as a faculty member. In addition, paths for advancement are not always clear, so Claire recommends addressing this topic and other professional development opportunities during the interview stage. She herself has used the flexibility of her postdoc to investigate different career areas and acquire new skills and experiences while she plans for her next role.

Early-career administrators. We also want to share our own perspective as people who have recently pivoted into academic administration, with an overview of how we came to our current positions and then a reflection on what we have learned so far.

One of us, Victoria, now a program manager at Yale University, pursued a Ph.D. to expand her teaching experience and determine if she wanted to pursue an academic teaching career. Through Northeastern University’s world history program, she had the opportunity to teach as instructor of record for multiple courses. Recognizing the limited number of tenure-track faculty positions in history and her growing interest in enhancing student experiences over all, after completing her Ph.D., she obtained a combined faculty and administrative role at a small architecture and design school.

From there, her professional work focused on academic administration, teaching and educational development. When a position opened in Yale University’s Office for Postdoctoral Affairs, she relished the opportunity to work with postdocs and postgrads across disciplines, to support them holistically. She was also able to define this newly created role. Two years in, she has valued the opportunity to try new approaches, be OK with failure and grow her professional network.

The other of us, Karena, currently assistant director of postdoctoral services at Georgia Institute of Technology, received her Ph.D. in integrative biology from the University of South Florida, where she conducted research in environmental microbiology and disease ecology. Motivated to develop her teaching skills, she obtained a postdoc position in the Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching program at Emory University. She continued her research and developed an upper-level course in the biology department at Morehouse College. She also participated in professional development programming through Emory University’s Office of Postdoctoral Education, served on an institutional DEI strategic planning communities initiative and revived Emory’s postdoc association.

Those opportunities clarified for her that her values lay in mentoring, serving the academic community, connecting people and creating inclusive environments for individuals to thrive.

When she entered the job market, she used those values as signposts for positions that would motivate her internally, and she then aligned those skills with jobs that interested her. In her current role, she has been able to coach individual postdocs along their career journey, develop and facilitate professional development workshops, organize and host community-building events, and collaborate with different stakeholders to improve the postdoc experience at Georgia Tech.

Postdoc leaders. We also asked several postdoc leaders to share their best advice for people seeking jobs in academic administration.

Jana Stone established the Office of Postdoctoral Services at Georgia Tech in 2013. Now assistant vice provost for professional development and director of postdoctoral services there, she told us she recognizes that graduate students or postdocs wanting to enter academic administration may not have direct administrative experience. With that in mind, Jana looks for candidates who have led initiatives supporting postdocs. For example, chairing a postdoc association, organizing a career panel or serving on an institutional committee can provide insights into the duties and processes of a postdoc office.

Jana further encourages individuals applying for such positions to critically analyze their motivations for moving into this career path. Articulating your motivation in the cover letter and adapting your CV to convey an intentional pivot into academic administration is key, she advises. In addition, you should be ready to discuss ideas on what skills you would like to build and how your future supervisor or institution could support that growth.

Erin Heckler, associate provost for postdoctoral affairs at Yale University, counsels that critical thinking and communication skills are essential, given that you will work with many different constituents in a postdoc office. Before applying for an administrative position, she recommends engaging with your network and doing informational interviews with people in the field. It can help to start cultivating leadership experiences and understanding how institutions work through volunteering with an affinity group, your graduate or postdoc association, or a national organization.

Finally, Erin advises, it is crucial to work on translating how your skills would apply to an academic administrative position. You can use your mentorship team and institution’s resources to help you effectively articulate transferable skills that will speak to an ability to pivot and succeed in administration.

Melissa Ianetta, executive director of the writing and communication program at Georgia Tech, encourages postdocs in the university’s Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship who decide to pursue an administrative career path to participate in activities that will show proof of leadership. Depending on the type of administrative role, that may include chairing committees, conducting program assessments, developing curriculum or participating in donor relations. Postdocs should also be able to demonstrate that they can “secure funds, spend funds, prove that the funds have been spent well and publicize to key constituents the impact of your work,” she told us. Melissa stresses the importance of learning to recognize there are optics to everything you do, to apologize when you make a mistake and to build consensus to move people toward a goal.

In this article, we’ve tried to pull back the curtain a bit so you can see what a career in academic administration can look like and how you might think about pursuing one. We encourage you to think strategically about whether these roles could align with your values, skills and interests. Although we have framed our discussion from a postdoc perspective, graduate students and others can adapt much of our advice to their own circumstances. Academic administration is a dynamic and growing field, and if you are interested in playing a role to support and define it further, an exciting path awaits you.