JProf TU

The tailor-made framework program “JProf TU” offers comprehensive support to assistant professors of TU Dortmund University during their qualification period for a lifetime position. With JProf TU, TU Dortmund University ensures that its assistant professors are addressed in a target group-oriented manner, supports successful onboarding, ensures qualification, networking and consulting, and provides visibility to this status group. The program offers specific qualification in areas that are particularly relevant for this job profile and accompanies the assistant professors on their career path. The various elements of the program enable the assistant professors to network with each other and with the relevant central contact persons at TU Dortmund University. Furthermore, JProf TU regularly provides a newsletter adapted to the specific needs of this target group.

JProf TU is intended for the more than 30 assistant professors at TU Dortmund University, with and without tenure track. The program complements the offers of the BMBF-funded Tenure Track Academy and the Research Academy Ruhr (RAR). As a central qualification phase for a full professorship, the assistant professorship is characterized by specific opportunities and challenges: The professional role development towards manager, supervisor and independent researcher, as well as the challenges of gaining visibility as a researcher and developing a research profile with pronounced third-party funding and according publications, national and international networking, and the achievement of appointability and preparation for appointment procedures. The components of JProf TU are designed to facilitate these challenges for this status group.

The JProf TU program offers measures in five superordinate fields:

The (1) Onboarding for assistant professors is an annual welcome event in the winter semester, in combination with a workshop on the topic of “New Role: Self-conception, Rights and Duties of Assistant Professors”. Assistant professors starting in the summer semester can attend the RAR workshop “Effective Design of One’s Own Professorship”. Thus, target group-oriented qualifications provide support to a successful start into the assistant professorship in every semester.

For further (2) Qualification and (3) Networking, we offer a workshop or a “Networking and Information” event each semester. Their topics are specific to the profile “assistant professorship”, such as “Profile Building and Chair Management”, “Personnel Management and Supervision of Assistant Scientists” or “Prepped for the Interim Evaluation”. If required, contact to a partner who has already undergone evaluation can be arranged upon request. The external trainers hired for these workshops have acquired a doctoral qualification and are familiar with the professional field of academia.

For individual (4) Advice and support, mentoring and status talks are organized. Mentors are W2/W3 professors of the respective department or alternatively colleagues who are closely related to the subject. After the initial meeting at the start of the assistant professorship, the frequency and form of the exchange is agreed on individually. In addition, status conversations take place between the first and second year (with the Dean) and between the fourth and fifth year (with the Vice President Research) after the appointment to a assistant professorship. They allow the opportunity for feedback and dialogue between assistant professors and the department as well as the university management, but are explicitly not part of the interim evaluation.

In order to provide the target group with increased (5) Visibility, TU Dortmund University provides an overview of all assistant professorships including their respective research focus on a central website.