NextGen Professors: Call for Applications

NextGen Professors is a career-development program focused on preparing Cornell graduate students and postdocs for faculty careers across institutional types. The primary audience for this program is doctoral students (in year three or beyond) and postdocs from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the professoriate and/or those with a demonstrated commitment to advancing diversity, inclusion, access, and equity in academia. Participants are members of a cohort who, together, engage in series of professional and career development activities including monthly NextGen Professors meetings, Power Mentoring Sessions with faculty, and the Future Professors Institute. Participants also engage in program offerings of Future Faculty and Academic Careers, which focus on effectively integrating research and teaching skills for career development.

Important Dates

2024-2025 Application Cycle

• Application package priority due date was September 23, 2024
• Decisions released in October 2024

Eligibility Criteria

This program is focused on advancing diversity and inclusion within the professoriate, with an emphasis on engaging doctoral students and postdocs with a demonstrated commitment to advancing diversity, inclusion, access, and equity in academia and/or those from backgrounds historically underrepresented in academia.

Priority consideration will be provided to Graduate School Dean’s Scholars and members of the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society. Doctoral students applying to the program should be in Year 3 of their doctoral studies or beyond. Priority consideration will be provided to advanced doctoral candidates and postdoc preparing for the academic job market.

Application Instructions

To apply, please fill out the NextGen Professors Application, within which you will be prompted to upload the following documents. Follow the links below for our recommended resources on developing these mini statements.

• Curriculum Vitae (CV) 
• Teaching Mini Statement (roughly 500 words or less) 
• Research Mini Statement (roughly 500 words or less) 
• Mentoring and Advising Mini Statement (roughly 500 words or less). You may also wish to see the Cornell FAIM project website for more background on inclusive mentorship principles. Based on your career goals, you may choose to focus more on research mentoring, or on advising students in general.

Note: We appreciate that the task of preparing these documents could feel daunting for future faculty who have not yet begun to develop such statements. However, draft statements should be reflective based on your experiences thus far and should also consider what you hope to accomplish in the near future as you prepare for the academic job market. These documents will serve as baseline products that NextGen Professors will build upon and refine over the course of the year through their participation in this program.

Apply

Selection has been made for the 2024-2025 cohort year. The next application period will open in August 2025.

Sponsorship

This initiative is co-sponsored by the Graduate School Office of Inclusion & Student Engagement and the Future Faculty and Academic Careers program in the Graduate School Office of Career and Professional Development. It is the institutionalization of efforts launched with support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1647094 (CIRTL AGEP). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Contact

Please contact Graduate School Associate Dean for Inclusion & Student & Faculty Engagement Sara Xayarath Hernández (sh267@cornell.edu) or Associate Dean for Professional Development Colleen McLinn (cmm252@cornell.edu) with questions about this opportunity.