Faculty Applications: Research Statement : AeroAstro Communication Lab

1. Introduction

The purpose of this CommKit is to help guide you through exercises to write your faculty application research statement. After reading this document, you will be able to outline your faculty research statement and effectively demonstrate both your research vision and unique attributes that make you the best candidate for the job.

Table of Contents

2. Criteria for Success

A successful research statement will:

Explain your overall research vision.
Explain why your proposed research is important
Explain why you can achieve your vision.
Explain how you will achieve your vision
Explain who will support your research.

3. Purpose

Your research statement in your faculty application package serves to quickly and effectively communicate your vision for your future research as a faculty member.

The faculty search committee uses this statement to evaluate:

Your creativity and ability to identify worthwhile research topics
Your technical communication skills
Your knowledge of the field
Whether you would be an interesting and productive colleague
Your “fit” with the institution
Your overlap with existing research areas
Your possibility to develop new areas where they want to grow
Your ability to get funding for your work and for the university

4. Structure Diagram

In aerospace engineering, research statements are 2-4 pages long, with a focus on past and current work. Research statements typically have the following content breakdown shown in the pie chart below.

Pie chart to illustrate the content breakdown of a faculty research statement that has three labels: Introduction 25%, Department Alignment 25%, Research Areas 50%

While there are no strict rules, we recommend this general ratio of introduction, department alignment, and research areas for your faculty research statement .

There is no mandated structure for a research statement, but we recommend the following elements.

Introduction:

Explains your research vision, the problems you seek to address, why these problems are important, your core research areas, and your specific “brand” or assets you bring to the position.

Research Areas:

Highlights your 2-3 core research areas and provides supplemental examples of your work in these areas. This can be a mixture of your previous work and how it would inform your future work, and also future research directions you are going to pursue as faculty. You should highlight why each direction you want to pursue is important, and what expected outcomes or impact could come from these research directions.

Departmental Alignment:

Explains your alignment with the department and helps characterize how you will behave as faculty. There are many different approaches you can take to this section, and there is no expectation for what exactly you should include. Some examples of what is commonly put in this section are:

1-2 specific PhD projects your future students will pursue
Sources that you will seek funding from
People you would collaborate with in the department
Department research initiatives that align with your work
University research initiatives that align with your work.

Your department alignment can be interwoven with your research areas. You don’t necessarily need to keep these elements completely separate from your research areas, it depends on the nature of your work, the school you are applying to, and how you structure your statement overall (see the attached annotated examples for some references).

5. Analyze Your Audience

Your research statement will change depending on the school you are applying to. If you are applying to an R1 institute, your research vision will need to connect with the strengths of the department, funding opportunities available, and the job posting itself. Conversely, if you are applying to an undergraduate only, teaching focused school, your material will need to mention more opportunities for undergraduate research. If you are applying to jobs outside of your major, you may need to alter your research vision to feature more application specific examples and background to convey your interest in the field and the relevance of your work.

Faculty postings can receive upwards of 200-300 applicants. Not every faculty search member is going to read your entire research statement, and they certainly aren’t all going to read it thoroughly. Structure your research statement so that readers can understand what you want to do in 20 seconds, 2 minutes and 10 minutes.

20 second readers – Your introduction is critical to succinctly defining your research vision and brand as a faculty member. Your reader needs to understand this vision immediately from the first few sentences of your research statement. 20 second readers are ones that only want to broadly understand the class of problems you are interested in exploring.

2 minute readers – This class of reader is interested in knowing how you will solve the problems you highlight in the introduction. These readers need to easily be able to find your 2-3 core research areas. Ensure that on the first page of your research statement, you mention core areas you will pursue. Formatting can also be your friend here, selectively bolded headings can make your research statement easier to scan, and can reiterate your research areas. It is also becoming increasingly common to include figures in your research statement. Figures can help show the relationship between your research vision and your specific research areas, and also succinctly summarize what your overall statement is about.

10 minute readers – These are your ideal readers that are going to actually read the full document. They are interested in your past projects, and what you envision being faculty at the university will be like. Make sure you have included enough details in the document so that these readers can understand both the significance of your past work, and how it informs your future work. Minor implementation details are not appropriate for your research statement, those can be left to a job talk you will give later in the process.

6. Best Practices

6.1. Research what universities that you are interested in applying to.

When preparing to go on the academic job market, it’s important to research what schools are hiring and what universities that you would be interested in working at. Some common job websites that post open faculty positions are HigherEdJobs and AcademicJobsOnline. We recommend creating a spreadsheet so that you can track positions you are interested in, what materials they expect you to submit, and their associated deadline.

6.2. Write a 1-2 sentence statement that summarizes your research vision and why it is important.

Nailing this sentence description is the hardest aspect of putting a faculty application together. This one sentence is the key brand identification – what specifically do you want to do using only non-jargon words.

A research vision answers what is the impact of your research on a 20 year scale. You have to think big. If all your first research ideas worked perfectly, would your research vision still be viable? Avoid the trap of thinking too small or tailoring your work too much to a problem that only exists in the current moment.

One common misconception with research visions is to write it in the same tone as you would a traditional research proposal grant. Faculty research visions require you to think much bigger, your faculty research statement must explain why you would change the world. Some example faculty research vision statements are included in the annotated examples of this CommKit.

6.3. Identify what sets you apart.

List what unique aspects of your training or research set you apart from other applicants. In the outlining stage, try to keep this to a 1-2 two sentence summary. Having this shortened summary forces you to succinctly identify your unique attributes, which will be useful for. This brief summary can also be integrated into your brief introduction at the start of the statement, where you are clearly articulating both your vision, and why you specifically are the best to pursue it.

If you are struggling to identify what sets you apart, review your CV. We list a few bulleted ideas below for possible attributes you could highlight:

Awards you have received
Specific sub-disciplines or fields you work in.
Teaching experiences that you have had
Leadership experiences you’ve had
Methods you rely on, and how your methods inform your research vision

6.4 Define 2-3 core research areas that you will pursue that support your research vision

These research areas will become the key supports to your research vision. As stated before, the research vision serves to articulate a huge goal about the potential impact of your research. The research areas answer how exactly you will be able to accomplish that goal.

Unlike your research vision, which should avoid jargon, your description of your research areas should be more technical. It is fine to assume readers at this point are people from your field, so you can increase the level of jargon if it improves the clarity of what you are saying. Mention sub-disciplines in your field, methods, and specific outcomes of these research areas. Your research areas serve to answer what your research lab will actually work on, providing insight to the type of conferences and journals your students would submit to, and your possible collaborators in the department.

There are a few tricky parts to defining your research areas. First, you should be leveraging your prior research experience, but not creating a derivative of it. Remember, you are applying to a faculty application, not for Ph.D. Part II. You need to differentiate your research areas from the work you did in your Ph.D. and from the work your advisor does. This demonstrates that you have both the maturity of a faculty member and the concrete research vision.

Second, you need to add enough specifics to give credibility but leave the reader space to riff on your ideas. Ideally, you want the faculty readers of your application to read your research and be able to envision how they could collaborate with you based on the descriptions of your work. This means you can skip more minor details from your prior work and leave those as questions you can answer in future interview stages. Finding a balance in the level of detail can be a hard balance to strike, and it is definitely valuable to get feedback from those both inside and outside your field specialty on their impression of your research areas from the research statement.

6.5. Include forward looking statements

Be wary of overemphasizing your Ph.D. or Postdoc training and work that you did in prior labs. Include statements that are forward looking such as “My lab will.” Instead of having a huge section that is just listing your prior work, integrate your prior Ph.D. work into your research areas.

6.6. Revise and Iterate, Iterate, Iterate,

Working on your job application package is a lot of work. Each faculty application should be tailored to the university itself. Start early and invest the time to create a good product. It is important to get feedback about your research statement from colleagues from different backgrounds and seniority. Note that it might take time for other people to share their feedback, so plan ahead!

Remember that you are always welcome to make an appointment with an AeroAstro Communication Fellow to obtain additional feedback on your statements.

References:

[1] MIT EECS Comm Lab: Faculty Application: Research Statement CommKit

[2] MIT CAPD “Path of Professorship Workshop”

[3] Nexus NextProf Faculty Workshop