The article below is a re-post from the Spring 2017 American Sociological Association Sociology of Development newsletter (see the pdf here: https://sociologyofdevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/spring-2017-socdev-newsletter-4-11.pdf).

The newness of the sub-field of sociology of development means it shares some things in common with an interdisciplinary field such as science and technology studies, namely, dispersed resources, disputes about the canonical literature, and questions about disciplinary boundaries, utility, and longevity. As an interdisciplinary scholar working in sociology of development, I want to stress that the comprehensive exam and candidacy exam are important to help you build confidence in yourself as a scholar. Yet those important benchmarks, together with your transcript of courses, are ultimately a negligible part of a search committee’s hiring decision. Instead, to get a position, you need to build the necessary social network during your graduate studies.

I argue for the importance of strategically utilizing your comprehensive and candidacy exams to build your social network while you are a student completing your doctorate. This strategy is important to prepare to go on the market for a variety of jobs, but it is especially important if you are interested in a tenure-track sociology of development position in higher education. Sociology of development is a field in the making and there are few institutional resources; it is more likely that as you cobble together your scholarly-identity, sociology, interdisciplinary studies and global studies departments are likewise cobbling together a few tenure-track lines to offer new positions[1]. As a development sociologist, you will be unlikely to find a position in a sociology department. You should keep this disciplinary diversity in mind as you prepare to write your comprehensive and candidacy exams.

Many graduate handbooks will say that your comprehensive exam should demonstrate that "you have an emerging understanding of the breadth and diversity of the field … and are starting to find your place in it…. are able to accurately represent … compare, synthesize, apply, and critique an array of… perspectives and ideas"(Rensselaer STS Graduate Handbook 2016). What, however, does this mean? The obvious answer is that you must showcase your ability to explain the depth and breadth of the field, and its knowledge gaps, through well-written arguments. This ability is the mainstay of any social scientist. However, this is not all the comprehensive exam represents.
The work done by a comprehensive exam (defending your knowledge of the field), and subsequent candidacy exam (defending your proposed research) is three fold: internal to your department, it displays your knowledge and ability; internal to your person, it develops your self-confidence and expertise; external to your department, it creates official certification of your expertise. The last two pieces of work are the most important, because they help you to build your social network while you are a student working on your doctorate.

By building your social network, I am talking about the folks that you plan to be in scholarly conversation with in the early part of your academic career. Their publications should grace your reference lists for your exams. You should be seeking them out to meet for coffee at the Rural Sociology, ISA, and ASA annual meetings and the bi-annual Sociology of Development meeting. You also should be applying to present on panels they have organized at various meetings. The idea is that the scholars who will be reviewing your application among 60-200 other applicants should have some vague idea of who you are and what you work on before your application ever crosses their desk.
For this to happen, your comprehensive exam and candidacy exam should have a mix of literature to include: (1) old & frequently cited, (2) recent, relevant & cited, and (3) new & highly relevant. You should keep in mind that dead people cannot hire you and neither can recent graduates. Therefore, focus the majority of your exams on recent, relevant and cited literature. Additionally, your reading list for your exams should include a mix of scholars inside and outside the heartland discipline of sociology as befits your interpretation of development sociology's canonical literature. Again, please bear in mind that these are not just the scholars with the most novel or foundational ideas, but ones who have grouped around particular scholarly ideas where you feel you can soon make a contribution: very soon, face to face. I am not advocating complete cynicism when choosing your readings for your exams; instead, I am advocating what a mentor has told me recently: "think sociologically" about your career. Your comprehensive and candidacy exams are about more than the life of the mind.


[1] In his 2014 article in Inside Higher Ed, Jaschik suggests that there is a market for sociologists specializing in interdisciplinary studies and global studies. As a development sociologist, you can fit either role. However, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the market for sociologists, overall, is shrinking by 1%. Therefore, jobs will be hard to come by for sociologists across all industry, but especially the already hyper competitive industry of higher education.

On Wednesday June 3rd I attended the Michigan State University Academy for Global Engagement Fellowship Program public session (see http://vprgs.msu.edu/event/academy-global-engagement-fellowship-program-0). This public session was open to non-fellows (such as myself), and had two parts. In the first part, panelists discussed “Understanding Federal Funding, Congressional Appropriations, and Agency Priorities”, while in the second part they discussed “Establishing Relationships with Funders: How Do You Talk about Your Work in a Compelling and Intriguing Way so that Funders Listen and Remember?”

I wanted to take some time to process what I learned about grant writing so I decided to write about what I learned.

(1) Federal grants are driven by US governmental policy on different time scales. For grants from the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, the time-scale is long where presidential administrations come and go. However, DoD research agencies are unique in that their appropriations by the Executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget tend to be steady. For all other federal agencies, the time-scale is short (perhaps 2-3 years) and the appropriations are usually much more sensitive to various presidential administrations. This is why every couple of years you will see news articles about politicians attacking the research results of various social, behavioral and economic scientists funded through the National Science Foundation (see http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/04/nsf-peer-review-under-scrutiny-house-science-panel), or temporarily disabling programs such as political science at the NSF (conflict of interest anyone?, see http://www.nature.com/news/nsf-cancels-political-science-grant-cycle-1.13501) by taking away their funds. Why do these politicians feel as if they have the right to oversight of federally funded research – because that is a fact. (Although, I would definitely argue, as does the presidential science adviser John Holdren, that oversight is not equivalent to peer review; peer-review is much better at distinguishing the value of ‘basic science’ research projects, which as far as I know is still part of the mandate of NSF.)

(2) Most federal granting agencies are fulfilling policy objectives; thus your research must also fulfill these same objectives. John Albrecht (MSU) and Kitty Cardwell (USDA NIFA)  explain that at DARPA and the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the projects attempt to ‘pull’ new innovations along exciting and novel directions. This means structured long-term technology innovation plans at DARPA. At USDA, Eric Trachtenberg (McLarty Associates) explains, the projects are market-driven by agricultural economics (is this cyclical I wonder?). In contrast, other federal funding agencies (e.g., the State Department’s US Agency for International Development, the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center, and the National Science Foundation’s Office of International Science and Engineering) are VERY responsive to the policy directions of the current administration.

(3) Considering that these agencies must demonstrate their relevance and value to the American public through Congressional oversight, they are very interested in research projects that clearly and explicitly articulate this relevance and value. That is not to say that they do not fund basic research. All of the above federal agencies emphasize basic research except for USAID says Lara Campbell (NSF OISE) and Michelle Jones (USAID). But the “broader impacts” statement at NSF (and its equivalent at the other agencies) is the necessary “icing” that makes the ingredients of the entire cake worth buying.

You will see the influence of governmental policy on the call for proposals (e.g., USDA’s grand challenges), but what is the next step to figure out the fit between what you want to do, and the solicitation? Some of the program officers suggested that a great next step is to actually contact them and give them a “15 minute pitch”. In the interest of conserving the time of the program officers and your own, instead of wandering through a vague exploration of your past research disappointments and future research fantasies, you might start with a clear cut outline of your proposed work.

(4) Communicating with the program officer for the solicitation is key to writing a good proposal. For those working on global research projects, a “clear cut pitch” is one that has realistic outcomes and tells a compelling story about what the agency will gain. Lara Campbell at the NSF OISE explains that such proposals have a viable timeline, are responsive to client needs (the country, institution, or project), and additionally are responsive to funder objectives including an emphasis on the uniqueness of your project. Michael Roth (Tetra Tech ARD) agrees that being responsive to client needs is very important and adds that any proposed innovations should be economically sustainable if being implemented in a poorly resourced region. Laura K. Povlich (NIH Fogarty) explains that being responsive to funder objectives means explaining the connection between your research and the solicitation clearly.

Let’s say you have done all of these things: you have picked a federal agency with a relevant solicitation that matches your research project; you understand the current political priorities that are driving the solicitation creation and have drafted your broader impacts statement accordingly; you have spoken with a program officer for 15 minutes about a feasible project that has unique data (and/or methods) and will incrementally build upon scientific knowledge, technology innovation, or international development. Certainly you will have to be more entrepreneurial than applying to just one funding agency. Time to do all of these steps over again for internal collaborative partners at your research institution and external non-governmental funders!

Beth McMurtrie at The Chronicle of Higher Education has written an article entitled "Social Scientists Seek New Ways to Influence Public Policy." The following quote from McMurtie's article describes something that I have never heard of before, the International Summer Policy Institute at American University. 

So of course I googled this summer policy institute at American University. It turns out that it is for professors and postdocs in international affairs who want to learn how to write policy-relevant academic scholarship, including some information on how to more effectively reach target audiences. I think that this is a great resource. Especially in the current era of sequestration, where congress can rationalize shutting down scientific funding for a particular unit of science in a federal research funding agency (i.e. political science in the National Science Foundation).

A similar resource that was not mentioned by McMurtrie, is the To Think To Write To Publish project. It focuses on developing communication skills among scientists, science journalists, and social scientists who can make contributions to science and technology policy. One of the principal investigators is Lee Gutkind, the founder of the Creative Nonfiction Magazine. The second is David Guston, a prominent science and technology policy scholar and a past editor of Science and Public Policy.

Another network of scholars that McMurtrie mentions in The Chronicle  is the Scholars Strategy Network. This is directed by prominent sociologist, Theda Skocpol. Unlike the first two, it does not appear to provide training, however its staff actively pursues public venues for the affiliated scholars to share their research briefs.

I welcome further information about opportunities for training in how to make the social sciences more relevant to policy.

I wanted to share my new article which came out in mid-July in the journal Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. Its empirical content discusses the appropriate technology movement as it plays out in the scientific field of ophthalmology. This work comes out of a larger research project analyzing 10+ months of observation and 80+ semi-structured interviews in India, Kenya, Mexico and Nepal. 

I have just finished reading The Humanities PhD at Work on The Chronicle of Higher Education. The author, Megan Doherty has parlayed her PhD in history into a job as a program officer with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington. I very much appreciate her article for the direct insights it gives into how the humanities PhD is very valuable; and also its indirect insights into what kind of work program officers do for nonprofit foundations.

I first heard the term,'procrastiwork' from a 2nd year student during my first year in the graduate program in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer. 'What's that?" I asked Gareth, ever so innocently. Since then, I have become intimately familiar with the word. Especially now that I have some deadlines for my dissertation writing coming up.  Let me try and catalog all of the ways that I have WORKED HARD on NOT writing my dissertation in the last ten days:

In a previous post, I talked about the difficulties for STS PhD candidates just starting the academic job search. Also, I am interested in alternative careers besides academia because the chances of any newly minted Ph.D. getting a coveted tenure-track academic position are pretty slim. These days search committees can pick and choose among many well qualified social science PhD's with competitive vitaes that can 'do' STS. All's told, I am attempting to figure out how to get an academic or non-academic job where I can use the skills I have honed to understand and address interesting problems of science, technology, society and social justice.

Four people have assented to allow me to post their responses to questions about the STS job search here on my blog.  Dr. Jennifer Tucker is the Associate Deputy Administrator of the National Organic Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Dr. Casey O'Donnell is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. Dr. Sean Lawson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah, Department of Communication and Media Studies. Dr. JC is an associate professor at a university. Jennifer and JC graduated from Virginia Tech's STS program, while Casey and Sean graduated from Rensselaer's STS program.

So I have gotten to know the north east part of Madurai pretty well because of outings with Indian and foreign trainees in the Aravind owned Inspiration hostel and Indian colleagues at Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology (LAICO). I will just briefly discuss my three favorites but I have put all of the places I have been (including St. John's Methodist Church) on this google map.

I just read chapter 3 of Kyle Siler's dissertation, entitled “Nascent Institutional Strategy in Dynamic Fields: The Diffusion of Social Studies of Science”. Apparently it has been accepted in the American Behavioral Scientist journal which is wonderful news for Siler, and thankfully he has been kind enough to put up an earlier draft on his personal webpage.

Regardless of some limitations (see my comments below), his quantitative data is interesting. It appears that, at the present time, more U.S. science and technology studies scholars are affiliated with (in the following order): (1) general academic/ interdisciplinary departments; (2) sociology departments; (3) science and technology studies departments; (4) history departments. 

The online version of my co-authored article in Minerva (a science, education and policy journal) with Thomas S. Woodson is currently available from Springer publishing. The unofficial draft copy is available for free on my website. I am excited about my first STS-y publication, and invite feedback from anyone who is interested in providing it.