(formerly Adventures in HDFS)
Get Rejected on a Regular Basis
As an interdisciplinary researcher and family demographer, I have been frustrated by the lack of data to answer some of what I believe are the more important research questions. As a tenure-track faculty member at a research intensive university, my (federal) grantsmanship expectations are high if I want to get promoted to full, or to…
Recommendations for Interviewing Job Candidates
I teach a PhD Job Market course on a biennial schedule, and we always talk about ways to combat gender and race microaggressions during interviewing. Over the past year or so, it has also come up in my family development course when we discuss the motherhood penalty, and in talks I gave to the Fisher…
Health and Social Science for All
Recently, I have been reflecting on the state of health and social science in the US. How competitive is it to get an NIH grant? The number of submissions to the National Institutes of Health has grown continually over the past 20+ years; in 2018, NIH received more than 55,000 grant applications, of which about…
How to Succeed in College
Dear students, The science of learning has identified many study strategies that can increase retention and comprehension, yet most college professors rarely talk about these strategies. Below I cover four topics: efficient study skills, accountability structures, distraction blockers, and additional tips. If you apply these strategies to every college course you take, and your life…
Accountability Group
As many of my readers know, and for that matter, anyone who talks to me knows, I am an avid consumer of productivity tips, from blog posts to books. As the mother of four boys ages 5 to 15, married to a full-time employed co-parent, I am super busy all the time. And, I also…
Active Learning Activity: The Motherhood Penalty, at Work and Home
My absolutely favorite assignment every semester is the “family science meme” assignment. I have them make a meme related to our class, and write a short paragraph explaining it. This assignment really helps me understand what stood out to them during the semester, plus the memes are really funny. I noticed last semester that more…
From Distracted to Productive: Time Management Lessons for Students… and Us
I was recently chosen as a Spring 2018 Featured Teacher by The Ohio State University Center for the Advancement of Teaching. As a featured teacher, I wrote a blog post for UCAT. The final UCAT version is a more polished and succinct, but I thought I would post the original, longer version here. Enjoy! From…
Active Learning Activity: Perfect Partners and the Suffocation of Marriage
I have been really busy with life, and work, and lots of other things, so it has been over a year since I have posted! I thought I would share a fun active learning exercise that I do with my family development students related to intimate relationships. Thanks to Kale Monk for some of the…
Work Hard, Play Harder, and Be Gentle with Yourself: Advice for the Beginning of Grad School and Beyond
I have a lot of thoughts on my mind as I wrap up my prosem on graduate education. I have spent a semester talking to young, hopeful, bright first-year graduate students about how to be successful in graduate school. I have also been supporting several students this semester who are currently on the job market…
Fighting Back: Implicit Bias, Micro-aggressions, and Micro-resistance
I have been planning to do a post on diversity in graduate education, but it requires me being vulnerable and I wasn’t even sure how to even do it. On Tuesday, in my first-year graduate proseminar, we had a session on implicit bias, micro-aggressions, and micro-resistance, and ironically, 2016 was the first year that I…
The One-Stop Shop for Academic Jargon Definitions
Tenure. Postdoc. Service. ABD. There are so many terms that we use in academia that beginning grad students don’t understand, and may be embarrassed to ask about. First generation college students in particular – I feel your pain! I am a first generation college student, and I had no idea what a lot of these…
A Publishing Primer
One irritating thing about starting anything new, whether it is grad school or a job, is all of the jargon that no one seems to like to explain. So, in this post I explain what publications are, and the publication process. What Academics Mean When They Talk About Publications A publication generally refers to a…
Advice on Being Advised
The advisor-advisee relationship can be complicated. This post focuses on advice for new grad students on how to navigate these relationships and start off on the right foot. However, these relationships vary on so many continuums – on how friendly they are, how hierarchical they are, how useful they are. . . Thus, some of…
Professional Organizations: Why You Should Join Them, How to Get the Most Out of Their Meetings, and How to Avoid Going Broke Doing So
Professional organizations and their meetings are one of the best parts of academic life. You get access to important professional resources and networks. Conferences are in fun locations – some of my favorites have been Melbourne, San Diego, New Orleans, Lausanne – and once there, you get to hang out with a bunch of people…
How to Take Graduate Courses, and Use Them to Advance Your Career
I have been on a grant writing hiatus from my blog, but this semester, I am back! I am starting a series designed for graduate students early in their career based on the first-year proseminar I teach to our human development and family science graduate students. When I designed this course, my hope was to…
On Campus Interview Questions
Job market season is here! If you haven’t already checked out the Ultimate Job Market Guide or my syllabus for the PhD Job Market Course, now is the time to do it. On that topic, I thought you might all like to see a list of questions I would ask on a campus interview. These…
A Graduate Family Course Syllabus
I have been revising my Theoretical Perspectives on the Family syllabus (see the final product here). [Check out this post for tips on how to design your own interdisciplinary graduate seminars] In a given week, I only want to assign about four readings. But, given that I have to cover theory and substantive topics each…
Dual-earner couples share the housework equally – until the first baby comes
Claire Kamp Dush, The Ohio State University As a tenured professor and mother of four young sons, I am constantly asked, “How do you do it?” What people mean is: “How can you have a full-time job and still manage child care and housework?” I usually respond, “High-quality husband and high-quality child care, in that…
Where should I go to graduate school?
After you decide to go to graduate school [after reading Should I go to graduate school] and are accepted [see Crowdsourced Advice for Students Applying to Graduate School], it is time to decide where to go to graduate school. Many students are making those decisions now. Yesterday I received an email from a student who…
Do I have an effect? Definitions, Examples, and an Infographic on Causal Language
Causal language is a term that gets thrown around often in peer reviews because causal language irritates many seasoned reviewers. I knew when I started these posts on causal analysis, that I wanted to write something on causal language. I googled causal language and looked at what came up – and I could not find…
How Structural Equation Modeling is Ruining Family Research
Look out readers! This is my first of a series of posts I am working on related to causal analysis. About two weeks ago, I attended the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) annual meeting. It is a long meeting – I usually get there on Tuesday, and don’t leave until Saturday. And, while at…
Where should I submit my paper?
When you are in an interdisciplinary department, deciding where to submit your paper is fun, and confusing. I already told you about the time my student and I rewrote a paper we had rejected from Demography for the Journal of Family Psychology (it was accepted). But, how do you decide which journal to submit to?…
Why I believe in Family Science
Today I am publishing the first publicly available ranking of Human Development and Family Science programs in North America, at least the first ranking that I am familiar with. Why did I go to the trouble of creating this ranking? Because I believe in human development, and in particular, family science, and you should too.…
Hair Flipping and Hiring
For many years now, basically since I was in charge of my own hair, I have had long hair. Before that (circa 1984) my mom always told her friend Sandy who cut my hair to leave it no longer than shoulder length; I have three sisters and my mom did not want to mess with…
How to Succeed in Graduate School While Really Trying
We are midway through the autumn semester, and I have been reflecting on my graduate proseminar course, which is essentially an introduction to graduate school. Some programs have these types of classes, and others do not. So, in this post I give you links to articles I assign and a few tips I give to…
Guest Post: Leadership Matters, So what’s the Matter with our Leadership Today?
I was recently having coffee with my friend and colleague Dean and Professor Steve Gavazzi to discuss the National Council on Family Relation’s Future of Family Science task force [more on that in a future post] and I mentioned my series of blog posts on self-regulated learning and graduate education. Steve asked me – did…
Self-regulated Learning and Graduate Education: What Graduate Programs Should do Part 2
Well, it is time for my final post in my series on self-regulated learning and graduate education. This series resulted in the following posts: Motivation, Self-Regulated Learning, and Graduate Education Information to Promote Grad Student Success Tools to Promote Grad Student Success: Writing Skills Tools to Promote Grad Student Success: Research Skills Tools to Promote…
Self-regulated Learning and Graduate Education: What Graduate Programs Should do Part 1
Today I want to wrap up my series on self-regulated learning and graduate education. I want to revisit my original question: “What information, tools, tasks, and activities could we provide to promote our graduate students’ learning, intellectual development, and achievement of their post-graduate school goals?”. Over a series of posts, I reviewed information and tools…
Tools to Promote Grad Student Success: Presentation/Teaching/Media Skills
The final tool that graduate students need for success is presentation/teaching skills. This topic is often ignored in graduate programs – grad students are rarely taught how to teach before they are thrust in the classroom, and likewise, grad students are rarely taught how to make a good presentation, or practice presentations in front of…
Tools to Promote Grad Student Success: Research Skills
I am still on the topic of self-regulated learning and graduate education. Today I want to discuss another tool that graduate students need for success: research skills. The art of conducting research has many components. First, students need to formulate research questions, preferably research questions that are going to be incremental, if not significant, additions…
Tools to Promote Grad Student Success: Writing Skills
Well, apparently I took the summer off from blogging. I wasn’t necessarily planning that, but I was really busy with grant submissions, travel, paper revisions, etcetera. I had a great time at the International Association for Relationship Research conference in Australia in July, and I also visited and gave talks at the University of New…
Information to Promote Grad Student Success
Last week I posed the question “What information, tools, tasks, and activities could we provide to promote our graduate students’ learning, intellectual development, and achievement of their post-graduate school goals?” So, let’s start with the first part of that question – what information could we provide to promote our graduate students’ learning, intellectual development, and…
Motivation, Self-Regulated Learning, and Graduate Education
I have been working on revising our grad handbook, and leading some revisions to our graduate curriculum this year in my role as grad studies chair. One process I looked at was the end of the year report. We have grad students submit annual evaluations. These annual evaluations were used to give students a rating…
Designing an (Interdisciplinary) Graduate Seminar: The Crowd-Sourced Syllabus
Designing syllabi for graduate courses is a lot of work, particularly when they are seminars, and particularly when you are in an interdisciplinary program. In an interdisciplinary program, you might want to teach a seminar on a topic, say intimate relationships, but may only know the research in the discipline (e.g. clinical psychology) you were…
Don’t take my word for it: Crowdsourced Advice for Students Applying to Graduate School
I did a presentation a few years ago for prospective graduate students at the National Council on Family Relations annual conference. In preparation, I gathered advice for students applying to graduate school. You can see the contributors below. Do you agree with the advice? What is missing? Contributors: Elizabeth Adkins-Regan, Paul Amato, Mitchell Bartholomew, Alan Booth,…
Should I go to graduate school?
As part of my job as grad studies chair, I have received several inquiries into our graduate program. Individuals emailing me are interested in graduate school for a variety of reasons: they love Ohio State and want to teach at OSU, they love teaching and want to teach college students, they love Human Development and…
Going it Alone: The Problem with Graduate Education in Disciplines that Value Solo Authorship
Working with students to get their publications ready for submission can take hours. I have recently been working with a superstar student from the Sociology department here at OSU. This student is bright, eager, motivated, and deliberate. We are working on a paper together, and the student is first author. We had our first formal…
Do Your Homework
My final year of graduate school, I went on the academic job market. I received four invitations for on-campus interviews [aka flyouts], and I attended each. Unfortunately, I did not receive a job offer from any of these universities. The following year, the first year of my postdoc at Cornell University, I applied for only…
The Ultimate Job Market Guide
Going on the job market is stressful and confusing. I have been working on a new course here at OSU called The PhD Job Market – the syllabus draft can be seen here. It is going up through the levels in terms of approvals; it should be offered in Spring 2014. But with all of…
Kill Your Darlings (or Kill Your “Research has found that”s)
When I took our university’s Course Design Institute [which I highly recommend], I learned to think about my teaching in a new way. One of the first questions I was asked was “What do your student need to know to move from novice to expert?” As we reflected on this question, we were supposed to…
Work and family and “one night a week”
I know there has been a lot written about academia and work-life balance – this recent post in Inside Higher Ed tries to get at why academics work so much. In general, the meme about academics working constantly doesn’t really resonate with me [I should also mention that the meme about professors never working also…
Writing Group
As the mother of four (2 sons born in grad school, 2 sons born on the tenure track), people are always asking me “how do you do it?” [Note, my husband never gets asked this question, which is a whole other blog post on gender attitudes.] My go to answer is always “high quality husband,…
How to publish your paper rejected by Demography in the Journal of Family Psychology
One of the best things about being in an interdisciplinary department is that you can publish where you want – there is not a group of “top journals” that you have to push your papers in. My colleagues in Sociology are trying to get papers in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and…
Welcome!
Welcome to my website where you can learn more about my work, and who I am working with, as well as check out my blog. I am a family scholar and demographer. I do not identify with a single social science discipline. Rather, I used multiple disciplinary approaches in my research, from social psychology to…
Welcome to Adventures in Human Development and Family Science!
I have been thinking about writing a blog for a while now. But, with so many great blogs (Family Inequality, Pearls of Wisdom: The Blog, Professional Development, Sociological Images) I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. There are always things I would like to suggest – i.e. check out this great post on writing an…
About Me
Hi, I’m Claire Kamp Dush, a professor at the Minnesota Population Center and in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. This is my blog, which was was started at my former institution, Ohio State, in 2014 and was formerly hosted at u.osu.edu/adventuresinhdfs.
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accountability active learning advising advisors altac annual review campus interview causal analysis crowd-sourcing CV digital distraction distraction blockers diversity Family Science fellowships finding a job gender google scholar graduate school graduate seminars graduate students grants how I do it impact factor implicit bias interviewing job market job talk journals leadership LGBTQ+ mentors NCFR productivity professional organizations prospective graduate students publishing reading out loud rejection self-regulated learning syllabus teaching tenure track work/family balance writing
Claire Kamp Dush 