UH Postdoctoral Association – Travel and Career Enhancement Awards
UH has a Postdoctoral Fellows Association (UHPFA) that is organized through the Provost’s Office. The postdoc association runs professional development sessions/opportunities that span a broad range of topics/skills, including recent ones on CV and resume preparation in response to a job post, mastering the craft of teaching, the job search, internal research awards, grant proposal writing, and much more. The UHPFA has a Board that has a Chemistry postdoc (Dr. Meng-Hsuan Monica Wen) as a member.
The UHPFA has two types of internal awards – the Postdoctoral Travel Award and the Postdoctoral Career Enhancement Award. Please note that the 2021-2022 documents have not yet been posted.
Travel Award
The Travel Award has three award periods (Sep-Feb due late Nov, Mar-May due early Feb, Jun-Aug due early May) and provides up to $1,200 to help offset the costs of participation in a national or international conference. Approximately two-to-three awards may be made per award period. The postdoc must make a poster or oral presentation that must be peer reviewed and could have been rejected by the conference. Oral presentations are preferred. It is possible to obtain an award for conference travel/participation that recently occurred.
There are a range of requirements and expectations – please consult the Travel Award guidelines and application. One of the important elements of the application is ‘a letter from the advisor endorsing this travel.’ Advisors are encouraged to write a non-trivial letter that describes the candidate, how this conference is well aligned with their research and future interests, and the expected benefits from their participation. For example, they may be expected to learn about job opportunities, meet representatives from places that are hiring, attend professional development workshops, etc. Obviously, they will present their research. Applications that are missing any of the requested (i.e., required) elements will not be considered.
Career Enhancement Award
The Career Enhancement Award has two award periods (Sep-Feb due in late Nov; Mar-May due in early Feb) and provides up to $1,000 to offset some of the costs associated with travel to and participation in internships, extramural courses, and/or visiting labs to learn skills and conduct collaborations. Please consult the Career Enhancement guidelines and application for full details. As with the travel award above, the advisor letter is important as is alignment of the career development opportunity with the anticipated future career. Typically, up to one award may be made per award cycle.
Notify Postdocs of These Opportunities
Please make sure that your postdocs are aware of these opportunities and get them to APPLY! Also, please write thoughtful and meaningful letters for their applications. In some cycles, NSM has been well represented while in others there have been zero or very few applications.