The University of Iowa Postdoctoral Association (UIPDA) supports its internal leadership and collaborates with campus partners. This page focuses on onboarding, responsibilities, and resources for UIPDA officers, while also explaining how campus units can effectively engage with and support the postdoc community.

For Officers

For Committee Members
  • Get access to the Shared Google Drive from executive board.
  • Get access to the Teams site from executive board.
  • Mine your saved articles and bookmarks for useful resources.
  • Review the current initiatives on your committee page--which initiatives are you passionate about? Do you have new suggestions for what your committee could be doing?
  • Review your professional societies for useful professional development resources.
  • Consider your career goals, your strengths, and your gaps in training; think about how UIPDA opportunities could be used to create new opportunities.
  • Read the latest UIPDA postdoc survey summary to understand the needs of our posts community.
  • Explore the National Postdoc Association site; familiarize yourself with the resource guides, reports, and advocacy materials here.
  • Awards Committee: coordinate with John Riehl about the Grad College workflow for reviewing applications.

For College Reps
  • Get access to the Shared Google Drive from the executive board.
  • Get access to the Teams site from the executive board.
  • Mine your saved articles and bookmarks for useful resources.
  • Review your professional societies for useful professional development resources.
  • Read the latest UIPDA postdoc survey summary to understand the needs of our posts community.
  • Explore the National Postdoc Association site; familiarize yourself with the resource guides, reports, and advocacy materials here.
  • Identify key contacts in your college--who are potential advocates? Is there someone we should add to the key contacts list?
  • Set up an initial meeting with your associate dean (see key contacts list) to introduce yourself.
  • Meet postdocs in your college and ask about their experiences; this is important so that you can relay the concerns and challenges of your college sub-population to college administrators.
  • Determine if there are college-specific networks for sharing information about events (example: the biomes-grad-postdoc listserv in CCOM or the CCOM and PBDB digital signage).

For Executive Board
  • Get access to the Shared Google Drive from the current executive board.
  • Get access to the Teams site from the current executive board.
  • Get access to the grad-uipda@uiowa.edu email (from John Riehl, Grad College).
  • Mine your saved articles and bookmarks for useful resources.
  • Review your professional societies for useful professional development resources.
  • Read the latest UIPDA postdoc survey summary to understand the needs of our posts community.
  • Explore the National Postdoc Association site; familiarize yourself with the resource guides, reports, and advocacy materials here.
  • Make sure the NPA sustaining membership is up to date (this can be verified on the NPA site); questions can be directed to Kryste Ferguson at NPA or to the UI Grad College).
  • Familiarize yourself with the university org charts, in particular the OVPR, Grad College, and Provost Office.
  • Set up a meet and greet with Grad College staff, collegiate associate deans, and key central units (OVPR, Benefits, etc.). Generally held in late August each year.
  • Learn how to add postdocs to the listserv.
  • Learn how to send emails to the postdoc listserv.
  • Learn how to add events to the main UI calendar.
  • Review these UIPDA event sharing strategies.
  • President: reach out to shared governance leaders.
  • Vice President: reach out to Research Council about joining as the new postdoc representative.
  • Secretary/Treasurer: confirm annual budget with Grad College.

For Webmasters and Social Media Managers
  • Get administrator privileges to the FB page, FB group, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts.
  • Review the campus social media database and Twitter lists; update as needed.
  • Review these UIPDA event sharing strategies.
  • For Twitter tagging, spend some time looking at who responds to our posts--these are accounts you want to tag to get the most traffic.
  • Have John Riehl add you to the Drupal 10 administrator list for the uipda.grad.uiowa.edu page.
    • Reference this training video and this ITS guide or this CLAS guide about navigating the Drupal 8 platform.
  • Review the social media templates on the shared Google drive; use these or create your own (Canva is a great source for these).

For Campus Partners

Share an Event with the Postdoc Community
  • On the UI main calendar, make sure to tag 'Postdocs' as an audience; these events propagate to the UIPDA website calendar.
  • On social media, tag @UIPostdoc on Twitter and @UIPDA on Facebook.
  • To share your event with the grad-postdoc listserv, send event details to shelly-campo@uiowa.edu and the current UIPDA President for distribution.

Present to the Postdoc Community
  • UIPDA hosts guests at every monthly meeting (1st Tuesday of the month, 12-1 PM); email the current UIPDA President for a 15-20 minute slot at an upcoming meeting.
  • If you have a 30-50 minute seminar, contact UIPDA leadership about partnering on a UIPDA monthly professional development seminar. 

Plan an Event for Postdocs
  • Looking for a seminar topic? The NPA Core Competencies highlight critical skills for postdocs. Email UIPDA for a list of topics that were suggested in our recent postdoc survey.
  • Check the list of upcoming internal and external postdoc events on the UIPDA homepage.
  • Strongly consider virtual options and creating recordings that can be accessed later; many of our postdocs prefer the flexibility of attending events from the lab or may have restricted availability for attending in person.
  • What times work best for our postdocs? UIPDA has found that early mornings (8-10 AM) and end of the day (4-5 PM) are less attended. Many postdocs like attending events over the noon/lunch hour. UIPDA generally plans events on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and occasionally Fridays to avoid departmental seminar series.

Avoiding Scheduling Conflicts