Our nation and planet are at a tipping point in the fight against climate change. A strong, participatory democracy and an environmental movement rooted in racially, ethnically, and economically diverse communities across the country are essential to shifting the tide toward the short- and long-term solutions needed for our collective survival. Climate change and other issues plaguing our planet are not just environmental issues that happen in a vacuum—they are about racism, inequality and injustice that impact low-income communities and communities of color more than others in this country.
“At LCV, we value the knowledge, expertise, and skills that individuals bring based on their different group identities, life experiences, and backgrounds. We embed fairness, equity, and inclusivity into our recruitment and hiring practices to reflect our values.” — Frances Magun, Human Resources Recruiter
In 2016, LCV and its sister organization, LCV Education Fund, began an organizational change process to advance racial justice and equity through our work and improve the sense of inclusion within the organization and our network. This long-term organizational change process is based on a few fundamental beliefs, including:
Participating in and having meaningful representation from our democratic process is a right for all people in this country, including communities of color who are among the strongest proponents of climate action, often the first and worst impacted by climate change and environmental degradation, and targeted in voter suppression.
Our efforts to protect and advocate for clean air and water, public lands, healthy communities and a safe climate must be rooted in a deep understanding of racial, economic and environmental justice and advance its goals.
Our staff, board, partners and others who we work with should reflect the racial diversity of our nation and should share our organization’s racial justice and inclusion priorities and values.
Our commitment to racial justice and equity moves beyond being the right or strategic thing to do; it is an imperative for building the short-term and long-term social, political and economic power necessary to protect our democracy and the planet that we all depend on today and for generations to come.
This work is occurring at every level of the organization. We have established structures to ensure leadership and engagement on these issues from our executives, departments, and individual staff across the organization and the Conservation Voters Movement. It is an ongoing and dynamic institutional priority to develop the necessary framework to ensure that as an institution we not only reflect the changing racial demographics of our nation, but also that as we take on the most critical fight of our lives—addressing climate change—we are advancing a more racially just and equitable movement.
This month’s book club discussion with be on Sunday, Oct 25th @ 3pm
We’ll be discussing Mixed Methods: A short guide to Applied Mixed Methods Research and we’ll be joined by the author, Sam Ladner!
You must be a member of the CL Mighty Network to attend. If you are not already a member, you can join for free – for a month – at any time! Learn more
Looking for an opportunity to apply your research skills and expertise to improving employee experience and business outcomes? The People Analytics team at Salesforce is a team of data scientists, data engineers, and consultants working to inform and transform Salesforce’s people strategy. In this newly created role, we’re looking for an emerging people research scientist to join our Data Science & Research sub-team. As a Senior People Research Analyst, you will work as part of our global team to perform research and analyses on a broad spectrum of people issues. The role focuses on providing research insights to understanding and enhancing the employee experience and helping to future-proof the organization for the changing way we work. The ideal candidate will have strong quantitative skills, and subject-matter expertise in both organizational research methods and theories.
On the team, we all get our hands dirty, and all love working with data to solve business challenges. Critical to our team’s trusted reputation is our ability to partner with and influence key stakeholders, design and implement the right analysis approach, and provide insights that can be easily understood and used by the business. We use data from multiple systems and sources to produce thoughtful analysis with little direct guidance and an understanding that the results may be iterative. Our point of view matters to our stakeholders, so the ability to illustrate complex analysis in a concise and simple fashion using tables, charts, graphs, and stories is important to our success. Most of all, the team succeeds by being curious.
So are you ready to create new knowledge, help us think differently about how we do things, and help enhance the people strategy of one of the best places to work in the world?
Responsibilities:
Conduct statistical analyses connecting multiple sources of organizational data to provide accurate, thoughtful, and actionable insights on people issues and strategies
Partner with teammates, leaders, and stakeholders across Employee Success (HR) and Salesforce to develop a deep understanding of current and emerging issues and challenges, identify priorities for research, and execute impactful research projects
Work proactively to identify emerging opportunities for research insight and quickly execute projects/analyses
Provide subject matter expertise and advice on research design, data collection, and/or evaluation to technical and non-technical audiences
Contribute to developing and executing on the team’s research agenda
Collaborate with data engineers to access data and explain data requirements
Collaborate with people analytics consultants to communicate findings to senior leaders and business partners
Communicate analyses and results, along with implications, to technical and non-technical audiences
Demonstrate impeccable ethics and judgement when dealing with confidential data
Share research insights both inside and outside the organization to become a thought leader in this space
Required Skills/Experience:
PhD (recent grads encouraged to apply) in a field emphasizing people research in organizations (e.g., Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Management, Organizational Development, or related degree), or relevant Masters degree with 1-2 years of related experience
Experience conducting empirical research in organizations, including research design, data collection, statistical analysis, interpretation of results, and making actionable recommendations
Ability to select and apply appropriate statistical methods to people research problems in organizations, including expertise in at least two or more of the following statistical analysis techniques: regression, longitudinal analysis, dimension reduction, factor analysis, clustering, hierarchical linear (random effects) modeling, topic modeling or open text analysis, ONA. Preferably using R or Python.
Subject-matter expertise in at least two areas relevant to people/employee or organizational research, such as: Employee surveys/employee listening, applied organizational research methods, program evaluation, leadership, learning and development, employee wellbeing/occupational health, employee engagement and retention, diversity and inclusion, teams, organizational change and development, employee motivation/reward/performance, or organizational culture.
This is the fifth (and final) post in our Career Pivot Series: five ideas for engaging transition.
I’ve been hearing from lots of folks lately who are navigating career change and transitions, so am sharing some thoughts about a process for adopting an “orienteering” process as you move forward.
Don’t think of your resume in terms of what you have to cut out, but as what you simply must put in. And think in terms of “resumes” not “resume.” Any particular resume that you create should directly respond to a job ad. Think of them as an adjacency pair – for more, see my article Resumes are a Response. As with academic writing, support every claim on a resume by quantifying and/or showing outcomes (results, impacts, anything that is different because of the way you did what you did). I call this process “putting the SOQs on” (support, outcomes, quantification). Research (into an organization, analysis of a job ad) will tell you which socks to put on which resumes.
Putting the SOQs on tends to be an iterative process. You cut things and generate new things, add things and then realize they belong on another resume for another job. Then you notice something that is missing, only to realize that it needs SOQs. Bottom line: Keep someplace to store all the rich descriptive detail about all of your experience, because every time you work on a resume, you will create more of this, and it is great to have – these ideas form the basis for things like pocket examples.
In a nutshell, these are little stories that exemplify how you work, how you think, and what you are passionate about. You definitely want one about a current project, a quality of yours that you would like to highlight, maybe an example of how linguistics is important in the world of work that you are exploring. I like to use free-writing exercises to generate pocket examples – and lists are a great place to begin free-writing. list all of the jobs (projects, tasks, responsibilities) you have ever had before, or all of the research projects you have ever been interested in, places you have been, people you have ever worked with. Let yourself free-associate and chase ideas down rabbit holes – get off track!!! The process always generates lots of ideas and there are always many pocket examples in there – things that you hadn’t remembered or thought about in a while.
Portfolio
If you decide to go the applied research route, it may become useful to have a portfolio, which many people nowadays keep online. Your portfolio describes your research experience using the language of the field that you are wanting to make yourself attractive to. Abby Baujiniemi has done a great job of explaining her previous research experience in her online portfolio.
Places to search for Jobs
Idealist.org (non-profit sector)
Indeed.com (“business” sector)
Fedjobs.gov (government sector)
HigherEdjobs (non tenure-line positions in academia)
LinkedIn – set yourself up a JYMBI (jobs you may be interested in) search with keywords.
GetSalary information
The best place hands-down is Glassdoor.com
There, you can also find reviews of workplaces from current and former employees, which can give you invaluable perspective to what it is like to actually work in a place!
Bring a process of discernment
My own approach to career discernment – structured reflection on where you are, where you have been and where you are going – is a tool that I call “the work interrogatives” – in essence, the who, what, when, where, why, and how of work (best place to start is the WHY). I argue that you need to be thinking about all of these, but that certain of them might be calling your attention more than others – which is worth listening to!
Other resources
The classic of course, is Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute – some of his resources can be found at eparachute.org
One fun way to explore career options: Greta Perel’s quizzes at Real World PhD
This is the fourth in our Career Pivot Series: five ideas for engaging transition.
I’ve been hearing from lots of folks lately who are navigating career change and transitions, so am sharing some thoughts about a process for adopting an “orienteering” process as you move forward.
Networking is hands-down the most important thing for the orienteering process (now and for the rest of your professional life). If you have been exposed to some terrible networking, or some terrible networkers, remember: networking can be affirming and generous and generative! Be the kind of networker that you would want to interact with.
Be curious, be generous.
You have been networking for as long as you have been in the academic context, but we just don’t call it networking in academia. Participating in conferences, pulling together edited volumes, organizing research collaborations – the “peer” in peer review, your classmates, your professors, prospective and current students – everything that you have done thus far has pulled together a community who know you and care about the things that you know and care about and they may well continue to do so….
but
In expanding your career horizons, you will likely need to expand your network to include other people who will be able to introduce you to other opportunities that will shape your career in new directions. Keep the old ties – these important connections have buoyed you as you have buoyed them over the years, and as you replicate this process and find connections in other domains, you will only become better resources for one another in future. To use the language of LinekdIn, many of your “first degree connections” – people you already are connected to – can help you connect to people they know – your “2nd degree connections” – which will have you well on your way!
Networking groups / communities to consider joining:
work task available at Appen for male, 65+ year old, native Spanish speakers from Latin America.
Here are the details of the task:
In this task, using our Appen Mobile Recorder (AMR) application, the participant will create and record commands in Spanish that they would give to a voice assistant (like Siri and Alexa) in the given context, for the voice assistant to help lead perform certain activities. These could be things such as:
· Reminders setup: “Remind me to call the doctor at 10 am”
· Social media: “Show me Maria’s photo from last week”
· Wake up phrases: “Hey Siri / Alexa, etc.”
The data collected will be used to train and develop artificial intelligence algorithms behind speech recognition technologies.
There are a total of 522 recordings, which will take approx. 1-2 hours total to complete. You will have the opportunity to refer family or friends who meet the requirements to participate in this project. See the guidelines for details.
This is the third in our Career Pivot Series – five ideas for engaging transition.
I’ve been hearing from lots of folks lately who are navigating career change and transitions, so I thought I would share some thoughts about a process for adopting an “orienteering” process as you move forward.
One of my own first epiphanies when I first started navigating “beyond” the academic path was the shift in perspective that resulted from reading Maggie Debelius and Susan Bassala’s excellent book, So What Are You Going to Do With That (SWAYGTDWT)? Basically, their approach is informed by the idea that when it comes to career research, you need to go to people the way you have been trained as an academic researcher to go to articles and books.
I “yes-and” their idea to say that yes, approach people AND, if you are going to be approaching people, you need to have an “ask.” You can read more of my thoughts about honoring the ask, but the main idea is that asking is very important – it’s how you start to make things happen for yourself – AND you must be specific.
A good example was a recent post to a listserv that I subscribe to. A woman posted to the group that she had experience doing “interviews, surveys, experiments, ethnographies, focus groups, and on-site fieldwork” and she was looking for opportunities to do this work in an applied user experience research context in the Bay Area. Because her ask was so specific, she heard back from a handful of people including a career coach, and someone who referred her to a recruiter. She started meeting people who introduced her to people, who introduced her to people, which brings me to my next point (oh, and she did land a great job too – BTW).
Ask for things on LinkedIn
We have already talked about LinkedIn as a place to educate yourself about career paths, and a place to search for jobs of course, but it is also a place to actively build and grow (and be generous with) your community, which is the long game here. LinkedIn in a space where sharing and asking for things (in the form of connections, information, ideas, events, resources, and opportunities) is not only normalized, but built-into the design of this platform because its importance is well understood. In asking for things, you give others the opportunity to be generous (and you in turn when others ask – it gives you opportunities to be generous yourself). Give and Take builds community, which will be your support and your connection to opportunity.
What are some of the ways to ask for things on LinkedIn?
On your profile – signal the things that you are looking for by talking about the things that you have done in the past that you would most like to do again in new contexts. List as many details as you can about methodologies and technologies that you use, past clients (if you can talk about them), hint at ideal future clients. Can you give an example of an impact/outcome of your work?
On the newsfeed – “like” and “share” examples of the kinds of things you are interested in (events, articles, people, etc.).
Post – Write and share your own ideas in the form of updates and articles. You can also ask for things directly (if discreetly), framing it as an interest having to do with a current research project is probably the safest way to go: “I am actively researching Jewish cultural and linguistic symbols in Amsterdam” or “literature, empirical and analytical approaches openness and tolerance” promote events, books, or anything that you are interested in. You never know who might respond. These are people you want to know anyway because they share your interests!
Search – find and make connections in a particular geographical area, find groups to participate in, find organizations of interest to follow, find events (virtual or face-to-face) to participate in/share, and especially, people to informationally interview.
Speaking of Informational Interviewing…..
Jen Polk has made an art out of these, and has amassed a quantity on her website – from PhD to Life. Maybe you can find one or two to reach out to to ask for something.
This is the second in our Career Pivot Series – five ideas for engaging transition.
I’ve been hearing from lots of folks lately who are navigating career change and transitions, so I thought I would share some thoughts about a process for adopting an “orienteering” process as you move forward.
I’ll post one idea each week to parallel the five weeks of Career Camp, which is kicking off this week (not too late to join us BTW – if you are interested Contact Career Linguist).
Step Two – Pick One
Think of the research that we did in Step 1 as being like a literature review. Now, you are ready for some analysis, locating yourself within the conversation. This exploration likely showed you what is missing and where you fit in. How is your approach to tackling these challenges similar to / different from the existing ones? How will you extend/apply/challenge the extant ways of doing things? In figuring out where you fit, you can also begin to assess degree of fit. How will I be misunderstood/my training be underestimated? How will this feel (day to day)? What will I need to learn? How will I need to adapt?
Pick one just to start with.
By concentrating initially on one of all the possible paths you might take, you help yourself by managing overwhelm, focusing instead on getting your bearings, becoming deeply knowledgeable about specific worlds of work.
If you simply can’t pick one, maybe try three as Bill Burnett and Dave Evans describe in Designing Your Life. They ask you to come up with three entirely different ideas for what your future might look like, and then spend a couple days inhabiting the reality of each one so that you get an embodied sense for what it would really feel like for you inhabit this possible future.
NB: You might be feeling a sense of loss at this stage. Many career navigators with whom I have worked report that in choosing to focus on one thing, they experience a sense of loss of all of the other possibilities / opportunities that might have / could have / should have been pursued. If you are experiencing this, remind yourself that nothing is lost. The things that you are choosing are just the things you are exploring now. Keep a notebook (or file on your computer) to remind you of all of the things that you have found which interest you. There may well be ways of combining things. OR:
you may well find at the end of this process, that you go right back to your current job, but this time with a much deeper understanding of your WHY
you might find that you land on a job that pays the bills but leaves you time and energy to pursue other passions on the side,
you may choose to focus in the short term on some passions, picking up with the next ones later.
And ultimately, if you find that you just can’t stop thinking about one of the things that you have left to the side for now, consider whether that needs to be given consideration of a thing to pursue right now.
But do pick one!!!
If you put yourself in the shoes of those with whom you are going to be talking with now (see next step), having done the work of selection helps them be able to help you! When someone asks “what are you looking for?” you can give them one specific answer, and while it may not be the whole answer, and it may not be true forever – it is true today and that’s enough for now.
Most importantly, it is actionable (both for you and for them).
This IS Linguistics: Scope, Positionality, and Graduate Apprenticeship when Diversifying the Linguistics Curriculum
deandre miles-hercules (University of California, Santa Barbara) Jamaal Muwwakkil (University of California, Santa Barbara) Kendra Calhoun (University of California, Santa Barbara)
deandre miles-hercules is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their research focuses on language as a nexus for the construction and performance of race, gender, and sexuality, specifically as they pertain to Black, femme, queer, and trans communities. Most recently, deandre has written about the linguistic intersection of Blackness and queerness in a forthcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. Their work has also included research on the phonetic analysis of nonbinary genders, discursive enactment of postmodern racial politics in media production, and the embodied poetics of language in interaction. deandre’s work is supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
Jamaal Muwwakkil is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Interested in sociocultural linguistics, African American Language and Culture, political discourse, and educational linguistics, Jamaal is mindful to center the human experience in his research. His M.A. work highlighted the discourse strategies of conservative student groups on a liberal university campus, with his follow up work detailing how his positionality as a Black liberal man influenced the ethnographic research context. Informed by his experience as the UC Student Regent and work on the UCSB-HBCU Scholars in Linguistics Program, his dissertation will engage with Black undergraduate student development, diversity discourses, and institutional policies.
Kendra Calhoun is a Ph.D. Candidate in Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a sociocultural linguist who studies the intersections of language, identity, culture, and power in face-to-face and mediated contexts. She specializes in language and race, social media discourse, institutional discourse, and humor, with a focus on the linguistic and cultural practices of Black communities in the U.S. Her dissertation research examines diversity discourses, ideologies, and practices in U.S. higher education and their impact on graduate students of color at two Minority Serving Institutions. Her co-authored paper on inclusive pedagogy, “Attracting Black Students to Linguistics Through a Black-Centered Introduction to Linguistics Course,” will appear in the December 2020 issue of Language.
Description of the webinar:
This three-part webinar will engage with a series of critical questions about how to address long-standing inequities in linguistics as individuals, as departments, and as a field. In addition to offering immediate action items, the presenters will discuss questions about the historical realities and desired future of linguistics that should shape how linguists approach both short-term and long-term efforts to diversify linguistics curriculum.
deandre miles-hercules will begin the webinar by interrogating and deconstructing the disciplinary boundaries around the scientific study of language. They will highlight early foundational contributions to the development of linguistics’ status as a discrete field of study from related fields, principally by engaging Saussurean and Chomskyan paradigms. deandre suggests that similar types of interdisciplinary interventions from more socio-politically engaged areas of study in the present can serve to redress limitations of linguistics undergirded by its colonial and racist roots. By “scoping the scope” of linguistics, they provide recommendations on locating productive and effectual scholastic spaces for the study of language moving forward. deandre will explore some answers to the following questions, among others:
How did dominant conceptions of the scope of linguistics emerge over time?
Who gets to decide what linguistics is and should be?
In what ways do ersatz disciplinary boundaries between linguistics and some fields, but not others, reinstantiate repressive tendencies observable in the field over time?
Where can we locate bridges between fields of study that actualize the potential to dismantle asymmetrical power relations in linguistics?
Next, Jamaal Muwwakkil will explore considerations of positionality in curriculum design, pedagogy, and research. His discussion will center on the practice on acknowledging one’s subject position in research, implications of marking the authors’ subject positions for papers assigned in courses, and the potential consequences of not engaging with this practice. Questions that will be addressed in this talk include:
What does it mean to reflect on one’s own positionality as an educator?
How might one’s positionality constrain affordances in research contexts?
How does overtly engaging with one’s positionality impact classroom dynamics?
How does overtly marking one’s positionality contribute to equity and inclusion within Linguistics?
In the final part of the webinar, Kendra Calhoun will discuss the role of graduate students in department-level efforts to diversify linguistics curricula and the broader implications of these efforts. Her discussion will expand undergraduate-focused frameworks of curriculum change by engaging questions about what diversity and inclusion in graduate linguistics programs looks like. She will use a framework of apprenticeship to discuss the faculty-graduate-undergraduate relationship and the need to account for graduate students’ simultaneous roles as students, teachers, and researchers. She will address a series of reflective questions for graduate students and faculty, including:
What are our next steps when efforts to diversify undergraduate curricula successfully attract more minoritized and underrepresented students to graduate linguistics programs?
Is diversification of graduate students in the department accompanied by structural changes to ensure equitable classroom and research experiences?
How are faculty modeling inclusive teaching practices in both undergraduate and graduate courses?
Which “extracurricular” needs are actually inseparable from the curriculum?
The Q&A session will follow the third presentation.
