Day 5: Putting it All Together

The challenges for days 1-4 have been focused on making your scholarly research accessible and how those contributions are measured and reported. We’ve covered just some of the ways that you can address the different aspects of research impact, but today* we are shifting gears for the final challenge.

I invite you to think about what has already been done this week (and if you haven’t done the previous challenges, take a minute and go back to read through them, even if you don’t complete them). Next, step back and think about the work you’re doing, why it matters, and how you can effectively communicate that message to someone else - whether a member of the public, a scholar in a different field, or an administrator evaluating your productivity.

*Information for today’s challenge was pulled from the University of Michigan and the work of Rebecca Welzenbach. Materials for today’s challenge were used under a CC-BY 4.0 license.

Complete today’s challenge

To complete today’s challenge, follow the below steps!

Use this worksheet to indicate all the types of scholarly work that you do (probably much more than you realize!), and to what extent that work is valued by you, your peers, and those who may be in a position to evaluate you.
From the worksheet, pick one area of work that is important to you, but that you’ve chosen to exclude from your CV, or that you anticipate won’t help you in an evaluation. In an ideal world, how would you express the impact of this work?
1. Consider what indicators of success you would be looking for, how you would capture them, and how you would communicate them in a systematic way.
Next, locate the guidelines or evaluation criteria for the next major milestone at which you expect to be evaluated (application for a postdoc position, annual review, application for promotion and tenure, job application/cover letter, etc.).
Read the requirements with fresh eyes, reflecting on your assessment of your own work. Is there alignment between what’s important to you, what you’re doing, and what’s expected?
For faculty members: Look at your UNLVFolio account. How would you update or change how you talk about your work that’s already in Folio? What would you do differently moving forward?