However, while some faculty advising and postdoc evaluation could be interdisciplinary, much of it needs to be specific to computer science. For example, computer science departments can take advantage of the vibrant research labs in industry to assemble a diverse mentor pool for CS postdocs, and topics covered in the IDP can be customized to meet the unique needs of the CS field. Creation of a faculty “postdoc committee” assignment is straightforward, but the faculty member(s) must be proactive in engaging the postdocs for the assignment to be of any value. Daily interaction with others in the department—students and faculty and postdocs—is also necessary for the postdoc to have a quality training experience.

Determining an effective division of labor and costs between the department and the larger university organizations will be key to creating sustainable programs for supporting a critical resource, our CS postdocs.

We urge all universities, departments, and faculty to consider: “Ask not what your postdoc can do for you, but what you can do for your postdoc … to grow and advance toward a successful career.”

 

References

1. Davis, G. Improving the postdoctoral experience: An empirical approach. Science and Engineering Careers in the United States: An Analysis of Markets and Employment. R.B. Freeman and D.L. Goroff, Eds., University of Chicago Press. 2009.

2. Jones, A. The explosive growth of postdocs in computer science. Commun. ACM 56, 2 (Feb. 2013), 37–39.

3. Jones, A. and Gianchandani. E. Computer Science Postdocs–Best Practices. 2012; http://bit.ly/2mInIFH

4. myIDP; http://bit.ly/2j0zlCB

5. National Research Council. The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited. 2014.

6. NSF NCSES data; http://bit.ly/2j0m790

7. The Taulbee Survey; http://bit.ly/2ANbDRP

Chitta Baral ( [e-mail]) is a Professor of Computer Science at Arizona State University.

Shih-Fu Chang ( [e-mail]) is Senior Executive Vice Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department and the Computer Science Department at Columbia University.

Brian Curless ( [e-mail]) is a Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science

& Engineering at the University of Washington.

Partha Dasgupta ( [e-mail]) is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Arizona State University.

Julia Hirschberg ( [e-mail]) is Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science and Chair of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University.

Anita Jones ( [e-mail]) is University Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia.

Copyright held by authors.

tations, email announcement of each postdoc arrival, department Web-page announcement of any major postdoc accomplishments, monthly postdoc-only lunches, an annual lunch with the department chair, inclusion in all email pertaining to researchers, and encouragement to attend the frequent social activities offered by the department. UW faculty also discuss each postdoc in annual review-of progress meetings, more broadly increasing faculty awareness of both the postdoc community in the department and the individual postdocs. NY hosts quarterly orientations for new postdocs, hosts community building events during National Postdoc Appreciation Week and community excursions (for example, a guided museum exhibit focused on computer science history in NY), in addition to the annual postdoc symposium rotated over consortium campuses for postdocs to present their research to other postdocs and faculty.

 

Institutional Support

Implementing and sustaining postdoc best practices requires a commitment from faculty and staff and support from the university as a whole; each of the sites funds personnel to run their programs. NY has a full-time staff member devoted to the effort, and AZ and UW each have a half-time staff member. NY’s requirement has been greater due to the larger size of its multi-institutional effort and the greater organization and coordination required by the many workshops and other events it runs. UW and AZ also devote individual faculty time to engaging with the postdocs. Having faculty and staff support has been essential to developing sound programs to nurture postdocs appropriately, but such support is often difficult to fund outside of the programs described here, which are currently (but not indefinitely) supported by CCC. At AZ, support and participation from the graduate college and the Science Foundation of Arizona has helped in many events and has shown a path toward sustainability beyond the grant period. At the same time, taking inspiration from their CS program, AZ State University’s graduate college is developing a general program for all its postdocs.

Conclusion ...

Our efforts are a work in progress, and we are continuing to evaluate the impact of our respective implementations of best practices. After completing their efforts, the three sites will collectively recommend a suite of effective strategies for training and nurturing CS postdocs, to ensure their success; these recommendations will appear in a follow-on article that provides greater depth about the programs, discussion of pros and cons of practices tried, and measurements of the impacts of the efforts. We do not expect a one-size-fits-all implementation of best practices. Each CS department has different strengths, challenges, and resources that will define the steps that they can realistically take. But it is clear to us that by taking a few actions, the support for postdocs can be enriched greatly. This observation is reinforced by the findings of a recent study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. 5 Because postdocs now play a major role in the research activity of many departments, the quality of the work of those postdocs is a material determinant of the quality of the research of a department. Postdocs are not just another group to train; they are taking major responsibility in running labs, mentoring graduate and undergraduate students and even teaching.

 

... and a question

We conclude with an important question: How sustainable are these efforts? At a minimum, what we do to support graduate students can often support our postdocs as well. Both are at a somewhat similar stages in their careers. But such programs require dedicated staff, and such staff are expensive. Research awards and travel grants also have costs.

NY and AZ began their program by teaming with offices that support postdocs across the university. Indeed, much of the skill development support could be shared across postdocs in many science and engineering disciplines, yet still be of high quality for computer science postdocs. Individual development plans might likewise be common across “like” disciplines and their administration—to a great extent—supported by a school or the university, rather than by the department’s lesser resources.