PROMISE @ UMBC: Graduate Student Development
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Got S.W.A.G.? (Secrets to Winning in Academia’s Game) Workshop – Friday, 3/30/12

Dr. Raheem Beyah and Dr. William Robinson, 2011 PROMISE SSI Mentors-in-Residence, will present their annual “Got S.W.A.G.?” workshop for advanced Ph.D. students, postdocs, and assistant professors, at the 2012 National Convention for the National Society of Black Engineers on Friday, 3/30/12.  Dr. Beyah and Dr. Robinson were former graduate students in the NSF FACES AGEP at Georgia Tech, and both are now tenured engineering professors at Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt respectively.  Graduate students who are going to be in Pittsburgh this week should make it a priority to attend this workshop.  Students who are not attending the NSBE conference, or who will not be traveling to Pittsburgh on Friday, should read the abstract so that you can take time to think about some of the issues that need to be addressed to be prepared for success in academe.
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2nd Annual Got S.W.A.G.? (Secrets to Winning in Academia’s Game) Workshop
38th Annual Convention
Westin Convention Center Hotel
Pennsylvania East Meeting Room
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Friday, March 30, 2012
3:45pm –  5pm
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ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
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Title: Got S.W.A.G.? (Secrets to Winning in Academia’s Game)
Presenters: William H. Robinson, Ph.D. and Raheem A. Beyah, Ph.D.
Target audience: Assistant Professors, Post-docs, and Senior Ph.D. students
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Abstract:
Maybe you are on the tenure-track now, or you are planning to accept a tenure-track position soon. But do you have the SWAG to surf the unwritten rules of academia and win tenure at a university? You must avoid being a “one-hit wonder” by sustaining your excellence in research, teaching, and service. The workshop presenters have compiled a list of lessons they learned during the tenure-track process, and will share those experiences with the audience. We will discuss how to maximize your “street cred,” which translates to the impact of your research program. Is your research valued by the community? Can you obtain strong external letters for your dossier? High-impact publications and invited seminars are keys to visibility within the academic community. We will also discuss how to build your “entourage,” which translates to your research group. What is your recruiting and management style? Hiring and mentoring good graduate students is the lifeblood of scholarly impact. We will discuss how to “make it rain,” which means winning competitive grants and young investigator awards. Do the program managers at the funding agencies know you personally? Have you leveraged your first grant (i.e., your startup package)? Faculty members are evaluated by the amount of funds brought to the university. Finally, we will discuss “winning time,” which is the art of preparing your dossier. You must make your case to win tenure with strong summaries of your scholarly contributions in research, teaching, and service. We envision an interactive discussion with the audience in an effort to diversify the landscape of academia [1].[1] D. E. Chubin, G. S. May, and E. L. Babco, “Diversifying the engineering workforce,” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 94, January 2005.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
William H. Robinson received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in 1996, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998 and 2003, respectively. In August 2003, Dr. Robinson joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010. His research explores hardware and software tradeoffs to improve system performance, system reliability, and system security. Dr. Robinson’s major honors include a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and selection for DARPA’s Computer Science Study Panel, both in 2008. Dr. Robinson is a Senior Member of both the IEEE and the ACM, and has additional memberships in ASEE and NSBE.

Raheem Beyah is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech where he leads the Communications Assurance and Performance Group (CAP) and is a member of the Communications Systems Center (CSC). Prior to returning to Georgia Tech, Dr. Beyah was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University, a research faculty member with the Georgia Tech CSC, and a consultant in Andersen Consulting’s (now Accenture) Network Solutions Group. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1998. He received his Masters and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Dr. Beyah served as a Guest Editor for MONET. He is an Associate Editor of several journals including the (Wiley) Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal. His research interests include network security, wireless networks, network traffic characterization and performance, and security visualization. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2009 and was selected for DARPA’s Computer Science Study Panel in 2010. He is a member of NSBE, ASEE, and a senior member of ACM and IEEE.


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