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To mark the 2017 Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science and the launch of our online mentoring resource at go.nature.com/mentoring, we’ve put together a podcast that reflects the importance of top quality mentoring and coaching to early career researchers.
No-one could fail to be moved by the video shared this week of a schoolboy crying over bullying. As adults we hope that we’ve moved away from school bullies. But in academia it seems that bullying is a persistent problem, with up to 42% of academics reporting some form of workplace bullying. In adult life, bullies rarely steal our lunch money or gum our hair. But they do steal our self-confidence, make us feel inadequate and question our work. My own experience with bullying has taught me how to recognise it, and what to do to overcome it in the workplace.
Recently the House of Representatives essentially voted to destroy graduate education in the United States. By taxing tuition waivers as income — and therefore treating their taxable income as two to three times the amount graduate students are actually paid — the Republican tax bill would effectively put graduate study outside of the reach of all but the independently wealthy. While the Senate version of the tax bill does not include this provision, it is far from certain what the final bill after the reconciliation process will look like.
A recent editorial in Nature described the harm that newly proposed changes to the United States tax code will have on graduate student finances. If passed, these regulations — ostensibly designed to simplify tax calculations — will eliminate benefits previously given to students. Of particular harm to graduate students and the scientific world would be the elimination of the tax-free status of tuition waivers.
Congratulations on your faculty position at a newly established college! You think you know what the job entails: teaching, research, and some administrative service. As you read job advice, you wonder why so many pieces include the phrase “survival tips.” “Surviving” was your most-commonly-used word during your PhD and postdoc. Surely, there‘s no more surviving to be had in a brand new college?
