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Recently, a discussion on Twitter made me realize that finding the right time to meet is not as straightforward. I always thought lunch meetings are the favorite choice, as they provide free food. During the discussion, however, I realized that for those with digestive issues, special dietary needs, or food-related anxieties, lunch meetings can be very stressful. A few other options may also be difficult for your colleagues: early morning meetings: for some colleagues, this timeslot falls before their regular childcare, so they'll have to find (and pay for) a way to attend morning meetings: your night owl colleagues may feel drowsy lunch meetings: as mentioned before, food may trigger problems for some of your colleauges coffee meetings: not everybody likes tea or coffee later afternoon meetings: your colleagues with children may not have childcare outside of those hours Considering these constraints, I suggest you discuss with your colleagues when would be a good time to meet - no...

I recently ran a poll about reading habits in academia. I asked on Twitter how academic read. The four options I considered were: daily weekly whenever a new issue of your favorite journal is released in bulk at the beginning of a new project. The Storify of the results and discussion is shown below. If you want to learn more about cultivating good reading habits, check out this post. [ View the story "Reading habits in academia" on Storify ]

Today, I am interviewing Michelle Thompson for the "How I Work" series. Michelle Dionne Thompson coaches women writers, academics, and lawyers to implement their biggest visions for their lives and society. You can find out more about her at http://michelledionnethompson.com Current job : Coach, Writer, and Professor Current location : New York City, NY, USA Current mobile device : Apple iPhone Current computer : Apple MacBook Pro Can you briefly explain your current situation and research to us? I wear many hats. I teach part time at City College of New York where I teach a Caribbean/Brazilian history survey course, a survey course of the History of the African Diaspora and Women in the African Diaspora. I am converting my dissertation into a monograph for publication. Finally, and the hat that takes up most of the room in the closet, I am the Founder and CEO of Michelle Dionne Thompson Coaching and Consulting where I work with women nonfiction writers and lawyers to take t...

I recenlty published a chapter titled "Field assessment of a concrete bridge" in the book " Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures ", edited by Fernando Pacheco-Torgal, Robert Melchers, Nele de Belie, Xianming Shi, Kim Van Tittelboom, and Andres Saez Perez. This book is part of the Woodhead Publishing series in Civil and Structural Engineering . The description of the book is as follows: Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures provides an updated state-of-the-art review on eco-efficient repair and rehabilitation of concrete infrastructure. The first section focuses on deterioration assessment methods, and includes chapters on stress wave assessment, ground-penetrating radar, monitoring of corrosion, SHM using acoustic emission and optical fiber sensors. Other sections discuss the development and application of several new innovative repair and rehabilitation materials, including geopolymer concrete, sulfoalumi...

I ran a poll about the writing habits of academics on Twitter, as I was curious to see if most people write every day, or if they do a major writing effort when a deadline approaches. The results are in, and you can find more information about the following discussion in the Storify below: [ View the story "Academic writing habits" on Storify ]

Before I start to tell you my story about how I combine research and breastfeeding my baby girl, I need to tell you that it is my deepest wish that all parents are respected for whatever choice they make to feed their child. Breastfeeding, exclusive pumping, donor milk, formula… if your choice is what you want, it is the right thing to do for you and your family. In my opinion, choices empower families, and there is no “one size fits all” solution. I hope that in the future policy makers will enable a wide range of choices to accommodate the different needs of different families. With that said, my goal from the beginning was to breastfeed my baby. I had no idea what this would actually be like, and how this would work out practically as I’d return to work. I’ve been blessed to have great support in the hospital and at home with a midwife to start with breastfeeding, and I was lucky that my husband could bring me the pump I needed when he went on a trip to the USA. I fully realize that...

In "The End of Average", Todd Rose explores how "averagerianism" has impacted our society. In this book, he discusses how companies do better when they look at the individual worker instead of the average worker, and he gives ideas for tailoring higher education to the individual student rather than to the average student. You can find interviews with Rose on this topic here and here . This post describes an example of personalized higher education for an accountant. You can find a good summary of the ideas on higher education here. I've been wrestling with the idea of how to accommodate different learning styles in the classroom in the past. When I was a student, there were courses that I preferred to study on my own - I did not attend the lectures, but sat with the material, and then just showed up for the exam. In the traditional view of higher education, that would be considered as "bad" behavior - but I prefer to sit down in silence and ske...

I recently ran a poll on Twitter about maternity leave in academia. I can't draw a main conclusion about the length of leave, as I learned through the interactions that there are many different schemes: paid versus unpaid, no leave versus up to a year of leave, ... Here you can find the Storify of the discussion that followed from the poll: [ View the story "Maternity leave in academia" on Storify ]

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! When you finish your dissertation, you may be wondering what is next. Have you considered turning your thesis into a book, either an academic book or perhaps a non-fiction book? Or when you have taken on a large project as a post-doc, and published several papers on the topic, you may feel ready to take the next step and write a book about this topic. Granted, after finishing your dissertation or after turning in a manuscript, writing a book may be the last thing on your mind. You'd ...