On My Side: Creating Supportive Research Group Spaces

Reposted (with permission) from the blog of Dr. Angela Little.

The below the inaugural episode of the new podcast series "Piecing Together" by Angie Little. Dr. Angela Little is a researcher and independent consultant in college physics education. Her research focuses on students’ experiences with their first year of college physics. She is a co-founder of The Access Network, a national network of equity programs in college STEM. She serves on the APS Committee on Minorities and formerly served on the APS Forum on Education. She resides in Chicago, IL.

Research group spaces play a key role in academia for getting feedback on work-in-progress. Getting feedback can sometimes be a scary or frustrating thing to do, depending on the culture and practices of a particular group.  In this audio piece, I talk to graduate students and the lead faculty member of a math education research group at UC Berkeley. We discuss aspects of how they try to create a constructive and supportive culture for feedback. I hope this piece is a helpful conversation-starter.

Follow "Piecing Together" on Twitter and Soundcloud.
Learn more about this project on Dr. Little's blog.

The Best Part of My Week

Two years ago I made the transition from academic science to data science. There are many aspects of industry that mesh better with my working style. However one very important industry practice that I feel is lacking in academia (at least for many of the people I have spoken to) are mechanisms for regular evaluation and feedback — especially for graduate students and postdocs.

Lately I've been facilitating workshops on the Impostor Syndrome and having many conversations with people about my process of dealing with and overcoming my own impostor feelings. For me a huge problem with my experience in graduate school was a constant nagging fear that I wasn't performing at an adequate level. There are so few metrics by which to measure success; if I didn't published N papers, make any major discoveries, or win any prizes or grants — how was I to know if I was ‘cutting it?’ And even if I did accomplish some of these milestones, there were always stories of other people who did it more, better, and faster. This was the perfect breeding ground for my impostor thoughts.