National survey: Covid-19 impact on early career faculty

In the survey, we have asked the respondents to share with us ideas for solutions to the various impacts and causes of harm. Here, we summarize them.

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Funding

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• Greater flexibility:

  • Extending grant periods (no-cost extensions)

  • Extending startup fund period

  • Greater flexibility in allowed usage of startup funds

  • Greater flexibility is usage of travel funds and other sources:

    • for private childcare

    • for working environment at home

    • for internet infrastructure

  • Postpone grant submission deadlines

  • Adjusted reimbursement criteria for research productivity

• Dedicated grants

  • For early career faculty

  • For increasing research team

  • For extending research thesis periods

  • For compensation of direct harm to specific projects

  • For bridging between grant periods

  • For salary compensation due to increased child care expenses

  • For funding additional research assistants

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Teaching

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• Adding administrative assistants to reduce teaching load (help with uploading content to virtual platforms, recording and producing lectures, technical devices)

• Increasing the number of tutors

• Reducing mandatory teaching load (especially for parents)

• Aid from senior/tenured/retired faculty

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Administration

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• Relief from participation in committees

• Increase administrative staff (secretariats, libraries etc)

• Allow early sabbaticals

• Limit number of administrative meetings

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Managements

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• Care and communication:

  • Communicate acknowledgement of stress and challenges

  • Personal communication for status followup

  • Nominate institutional representatives of early career faculty

  • Special attention to extreme cases

• Active support

  • Mental consultants

  • Management consultant services for team managing

  • Routine Covid-19 tests for early screening of infected employees

  • Prioritized access for experimentalists

  • Maintain working status of databases and archives

  • Invest in international visibility of early career faculty

  • Enable safe spaces on campus for research in humans

  • Enable outdoor spaces for personal and academic interaction:

    • install boards and shades

    • for seminars and lectures

  • Improve VPN infrastructure

  • Continue to improve remote access to libraries and archives (including inter-institutional)

• Policy makers and funds:

  • Promote greater participation in research and data based regulations

  • Facilitate import of research goods

  • Prevent cuts in research budgets and funds

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Promotion

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• Extension (opt in/out)

• Excellence criteria:

  • Supplement evaluation:

    • More recommendation letters from local researchers

    • Ask to evaluate body of research even in absence of prior recognition

    • Promote and credit national collaborations

    • Take into account achievemenets in submitted (yet unpublished) manuscripts

    • Look into content over impact factor

    • Account for increased virtual teaching load

  • Adjustments to threshold:

    • Lower number of publications

    • Lower number of grants

    • Lower number of graduating students

    • Lower number of recommendation letters