start@JMU | Offers for newly appointed professors
As a newly appointed professor, you may be in a phase of reorientation and/or a change of role in your first independent or new professorship at JMU. You may therefore have concerns that you would like to discuss and address in a dialogue and, if necessary, coaching. We would like to offer you this forum. Completely confidential and tailored to your needs. You are completely free to decide which questions and/or challenges you would like to address without any predetermined focus. Together we will find the right tool for this.
1. Welcome Talk
You joined the University of Würzburg last year. We hope that your first weeks and months in Würzburg have been positive and that you have settled into your new role well. We - the University of Würzburg's Professional Development department - would like to support you in your work and act as a guide and partner.
For this reason, we would like to introduce ourselves to you personally, show you how we can support you in your work and, of course, learn from you what has already gone well, what is not yet running optimally and what the university as an employer can pay even more attention to in the future. We may not always be the right contact for your concerns, but we usually know the relevant people and channels and are happy to support you.
We are happy to visit you in your office for around 30 minutes or to arrange a Zoom appointment with you. You are welcome to choose a suitable slot - we will regularly send you possible appointments. Can't find a suitable date? Then please contact us directly: Krischan Brandl
We have created a website especially for new appointees so that you can get a rough idea before the meetinggo.uniwue.de/neuberufene
2. Coaching for newly appointed professor
The coaching takes place between you and your coach and is confidential at all times. There is no feedback to the university at any time. Confidentiality is our top priority here. You decide whether you would like to work internally with one of the trained coaches in Professional Development or with an external coach. The meetings take place at a location of your choice , either on or off campus or digitally .
Your coach will support you in activating your resources and potential in order to develop customised solutions for your concerns. Various coaching tools provide an effective framework for your individual reflection and search process . You receive impulses to perceive your behaviour more precisely, to understand it and, if necessary, to change it. You clarify goals, define the necessary steps to achieve them, try them out in practice and adjust them again during coaching.
The journey is often as instructive as the achievement of the goal itself.
In a new appointee coaching session you can
- Clarify your professional goals in your new role.
- realistically planyour own aspirations and goals.
- deal with the challenges of your everyday working life .
- Discuss the demands and expectations of your employees in the context of supervision and management .
- Analyseconflict and problem situations.
- Critically reflect onrole expectations and find a constructive way of dealing with them.
- continuously pursue a personal development goal .
STEP 1: You accept a call, come to JMU and are supported in this process by our Welcome Centre. Once you have arrived, you will be contacted by staff from the Academic Professional Development Centre and asked to meet in person to get to know each other.
STEP 2: In a personal initial meeting , we will introduce you to the support JMU can offer you in the following period. We will present the start@JMU coaching programme to you in detail. If you are interested, we will work together to identify topics that you would like to work on as part of a coaching programme.
STEP 3: Based on the information from the initial meeting, we will look for a suitable internal or external coach for you and put you in touch. Only when both sides have the feeling that working together can work do you start the coaching. If the chemistry is still not right, we will start the search again.
STEP 4: You now organise the actual coaching process completely independently and individually. You decide when and where you will meet and define the topics and goals that are important to you with your coach. This process and its content are completely confidential between you and your coach. At no time will information about this process be passed on to other parts of the university.
STEP 5: At the end of the process, we would like to hear from you that the coaching has (initially) been completed and we are interested to know whether your goals have been achieved through the coaching or whether and what further needs exist.
3. Newly Appointed Staff Forum
The first few years at a new university raise many practical questions:
- How do I select staff ?
- How do I organise collaboration and leadership within my team – from research staff to administrative and workshop staff?
- How do I keep track of the budget and staffing plans ?
- And how do I make time for my research when I’m also juggling teaching, staff management and new organisational tasks ?
In the Newly Appointed Academics’ Forum, W2 and W3 professors discuss such issues during their first few years at the University of Würzburg. They raise their own concerns, hear how others tackle similar situations, and share experiences that can be helpful in day-to-day life.
Possible topics include staff recruitment, different expectations regarding leadership and collaboration, team development, budgets and resources, as well as working with the administration and the faculty. High workloads or challenging situations within the team may also be discussed.
The monthly meetings are facilitated by the Professional Development team and are tailored to the participants’ concerns. Where required, brief expert input is provided. The forum offers a confidential setting for collegial discussion.
You can attend individual sessions or participate on a regular basis .
- How do I manage research staff, postdocs, PhD students and administrative staff at the department, given that their roles, expectations and motivations vary greatly?
- How do I build a team that is not only strong in its field but also works well together? Which structures and routines have proved effective?
- How do I manage to set the right priorities amidst research, teaching, grant applications, committee work and leadership responsibilities?
- What do I want to be known for as a professor, and what should I consciously focus on, particularly in the early years?
- How do other professors cope with the heavy workload and the often conflicting demands of work and private life?
- What should I do when expectations remain unspoken, conflicts arise within the team or difficult conversations are on the cards?
- How do I deal with the conflicting expectations of the faculty, colleagues, staff, students and myself?
- An outside perspective: Looking back, what mistakes would others have liked to avoid during the first few years of their professorship?
