Beyond the Tenure Track is a consulting firm that helps in strategic planning of careers for graduate students, post-docs and faculty to facilitate a fruitful career in science. The firm aids scientists at various stages of their careers to utilize their potentials and achieve their transitions into alternate and diverse career paths. Private coaching, which is one of the premier services that the firm provides, help applicants pinpoint specific career paths and utilize all available resources effectively to achieve their goal. From envisioning a career goal with clarity to identifying the resources that can help one attain it, guidance is provided at all stages. The approach is a four point one: envision, assess, explore, and connect. Beyond the Tenure Track was founded and is run by Dr. Fatimah Williams Castro who was here at Rutgers to speak to graduate students and post-docs about envisioning goals and how to work towards achieving them.
Dr. Castro obtained her bachelor’s degrees in Foreign Affairs and African American Studies from the University of Virginia and her doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from Rutgers University. She was the recipient of the Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2011. She has published her work extensively in various professional journals and has been on the receiving end of various accolades, some of which include the Inter-American Foundation Grassroots Development Fellowship, New Jersey Minority Academic Career Fellowship, and Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (honorable mention). She is also an alumna of The Philips Academy Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers. Before taking up the role of a career coach, she had been involved in working with the New Jersey Partnership for Healthy Kids, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and as a consultant with clients such as the National Institutes of Health, March of Dimes, Northeast Public Health Leadership Institute, and Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. In 2012, she was endowed with the Johnson & Johnson HONOR Committee Community Service Award for her contribution to community both at the domestic and international scale. Dr. Castro currently chairs the Workshops Committee of the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology and is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium and the National Postdoctoral Association. Her former affiliations include the University of Pennsylvania Career Services where she served as the Associate Director. She has spoken on professional development for academics at various universities and organizations across the country including Princeton University, Yale University, and the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity.
On September 28, the Rutgers iJOBS program hosted Dr. Fatima Castro to speak to our students and post-docs at an informal meet at the Centre for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM). Dr. Castro began her talk by chalking out the basics of goal setting: defining vision of success, identifying challenges, and utilizing resources for efficient time management. She stressed creating 'sustainable, energizing, holistic definitions of success' and stressed the importance of being able to counterpoise both professional and personal goals. She explained that the very first step towards attaining one’s goal is being clearly able to perceive that goal by delineating the steps necessary towards achieving it. For instance it is not enough to set losing weight as your target; rather it is crucial to specify a plan that can help accomplish it like how much to lose in what time, and what fitness regime to follow. In other words, after setting your goal, the more clearly you can envision the steps that you need to implement, the higher the chances of you reaching your goal in a timely fashion. Dr. Castro also warned against some of the common traps that act as deterrents to achieving one’s goals: unclear goals, lack of specificity in setting goals, no personal attachment towards goals, setting too many goals at once, unclear steps to enforce goals, and lack of consideration of resources needed to reach goals in terms of time, approvals, money. Time management is an essential parameter that one needs to pay attention to in order to be successful. Dr. Castro identified the most common ‘time robbers’ as being the habits of constantly checking emails, social media, not being organized before starting a project etc. Mixing and matching tasks, such as doing high level tasks and mundane tasks together can help significantly in this aspect. She pointed out that clubbing similar activities and doing them at the same time also facilitates one’s mental flow that can get several tasks done more efficiently and easily. You can find out more about Dr. Castro and goal setting from her blog: http://beyondthetenuretrack.com.