Dr. Jamaal Green is beginning a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. He completed his Ph.D. in spring 2019 at Portland State University and held a one-year position as a researcher with the State of Oregon Department of Human Services before accepting the post-doc fellowship at Penn.
He advises new scholars seeking tenure-track appointments in the academy to “keep your options open, know that research is a skill, to think about the sets of skills they are building and to be public-facing and outward-facing” by taking advantage of opportunities to present and discuss their research and to be available for work in the public or private sector related to their academic pursuits.
“We all have to hustle, right?” Green remarked. “And I think the question is what kind of a hustle can you have that allows you to be flexible” while seeking positions in academia?
His work with the Oregon Department of Human Services included developing a spatial risk analysis for child abuse and maltreatment and analyzing the location choices of marijuana dispensaries in Washington and Oregon in order to determine whether certain vulnerable populations were disproportionately exposed. Green says he was invited to apply for the position after delivering a speech related to his research. He agreed to a one-year contract that permitted him to apply for post-doc appointments.
Meanwhile, Dr. L. Lamar Wilson is embarking on his first year as an assistant professor in the English department at Florida State University (FSU) in what is a homecoming of sorts for the Florida native and Florida A&M University graduate.
Wilson received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018. His goal of returning to roots and family in northern Florida was attained when he learned of an opening for a creative writing professor at FSU. He was hired during the height of the COVID-19 crisis last spring.
Like Green, Wilson has experience inside and outside academia and believes in having career flexibility. In addition to his extensive CV of scholarship, teaching, poetry and documentary filmmaking, Wilson has worked as a professional journalist for publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
