University of North Carolina Reviews in Raleigh-Durham, NC Area

Pros

It is a prestige university with excellent students which help you survive and thrive.

Cons

It is a big university so not every one can get the full attention of the faculty.

Advice to Senior Management

If you are a student who have a strong drive, come here and thrive.

Pros

oldest university in the country, excellent reputation, good climate, good colleagues.

Cons

recent limited General Assembly support, university is too linked to General Assembly funding, limited interaction between excellent parts of each university, limited interaction aongst campuses.

Pros

Office of Postdoctoral Affairs is very active and helps with permanent job placement. Gym facilities are very nice. Research (biomedical) facilities are new, as well as a wide variety of "core" facilities (ie, mass spec, etc).

Cons

As most post-doctoral positions, it is low paying and you work incredibly long hours and weekends. Depending on your advisor, management can be ineffective.

Advice to Senior Management

Formalize the relationship between a post doctoral advisor and a post doctoral research fellow. Also formalize the way in which feedback is given.

Pros

Great pay, very flexible, great people

Cons

Sometimes not much direction, bad communication between tutors

Advice to Senior Management

Let manager do her job, she knows what shes doing

Pros

-knowledelge acquisition
-training
-best practices
-customer service
-supervisory support

Cons

-unlikely advancement in the organization
-some immature supervisors

Advice to Senior Management

Build in post-grad mentoring and career steps

Pros

Great intellectual environment, great colleagues to work with, very bright students and trainees.

Cons

Major decisions made about what happens in the hospital is somewhat dissociated from clinical practitioners in the hospital

Advice to Senior Management

Engage the clinical practitioners more, particularly in decisions which affect how they work and patient care.

Pros

Medical benefits are good because the employee portion is reasonable.

Cons

The CIO has no clue as to what is going on and his actions indicate he doesn't want to know. ITS has become one of the most negative places with people starting to turn on one another. External departments do not "like" ITS and have no confidence. A lot of departments are trying to find a way to handle some or most of their own IT processes.

Advice to Senior Management

CIO - Climb out of your BMW and come down from your ivory tower and try to muster enough concern about the employees. Better yet, perhaps there is another university that you may be interested in working for.

Pros

Leadership and growth opportunities, great growth

Cons

some bosses are not qualified

Advice to Senior Management

Careful selection of CDs...have more students participating....bad CD's pick bad CD's

Pros

The great byproduct of PhD study. It works well to practice teaching skills and research skills. Free to select almost all course across the campus.

Cons

Low level work, time consuming, multi-role playing.

Pros

Lots of shared resources and good university support for post docs. Cost of living is reasonable in the area. Lots of great culture and unniversities inthe triangle area.

Cons

Lab dependant negatives. I joined a laboratory that was run by a PI who was in the last years before retirement and it was a very isolating experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Hiring new faculty who have some management skills would help new post docs. Also having a review of where post docs go after UNC and rewarding those PIs who train successful post docs would be nice.