Finding an academic job

Information on finding and getting a job in academia and beyond with a PhD.

Quick link: z.umn.edu/acjobs

Short Slideshow on Finding an Academic Job

This is an informal collection of advice and resources on the academic job search process. A number of folks have contributed to it over time, so authorial voice shifts in places. If you disagree with any given point or want to amplify others, feel free to email manson@umn.edu.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of other places to find in-depth advice on the academic job process, so this document covers the ‘big picture’ elements and pitfalls that are especially important or that are not emphasized elsewhere. It also points to a curated series of articles and guides for each main section: overview, application, interview, and aftermath.

Note: this document focuses primarily on the academic job process for folks with a PhD. There is a growing body of advice and resources for the ‘alt-ac’ domain, or jobs that need a PhD but that are outside the confines of the tenure-track professor job. Bear in mind that the majority of jobs that PhDs get are NOT on the tenure track and that you should always prepare a plan B.

Part 1: Reality check

Being an academic is really fantastic in many ways. Getting some potentially distressing stuff taken care of right up front is important. There are plenty of places to hear the reasons why you SHOULD try finding a job in academia, but let's explore some reasons why you may NOT want to pursue this path. Special section on why maybe why you should NOT apply for an academic job. Note that these observations are based on personal experience and biases, so take them with a grain of salt.

The post-Covid-19 job market will not be great, and it is interacting with other forces. That said, institutions will still need people, and what they need will be influenced by what is happening worldwide. As with any job, emphasize your fit for a particular position and argue that you bring strengths to your new job that meet the challenges of this time, especially around online and hybrid teaching and topics of interest (e.g., health, climate, race).

Part 2: Resources for finding a job

Oh, hey, great, you are still here!

What follows is some advice and links to resources. These include a collection of articles that we have collected over the years, available to people at the U of M via their x500 login (see Article Collection). Given the depth of the collection, we do not try to replicate too much advice here, although we do answer questions or address points that seem to pop up regularly in my conversations with students. So, again, make sure you read at least a few of the articles! This document is no substitute.

Overview

You may be tempted to just jump in with both feet and start firing off cover letters, but the job search process is a strange beast, and it is well worth your time to familiarize yourself with the ins and outs. Be sure to develop a good overview of the process. This is true of jobs off of the tenure track as well. There are many sources of information out there, so here is the barest overview of the process:

1. Do you want a job?
2. Find jobs
3. Build applications and apply for jobs
4. Interview
5. Aftermath

Articles. Read at least a few overview articles in the Article Collection.

• Articles with the “Overview_” prefix are overall guides to the process
• “Job_” articles deal with negotiations and how departments make their decisions
• Articles with the “Application_” prefix are overall guides to the process of applying for jobs
•  Articles with the “Interview_” prefix are overall guides to the interviewing process.
• Those with the “Running_search_” prefix give insight into what is happening on the other side of the table.
• Articles with the “Postdoc_” prefix describe postdoctoral jobs (which are increasingly common)
• “NonAcademicJob_” articles describe strategies for finding jobs outside of the academy with a PhD.

Shortcuts! If you are looking for comprehensive guides to the job market, you can start here.

• Stanford’s Guide to the job search process
• Guide for Doctoral Students Year of Candidacy: Guidelines for the Academic Job Search Economists; the economics job market is unlike any other in important ways, BUT this guide is still a great standalone document that all job seekers should read.
• Guide for engineers that has broad applicability
• Guide for computer scientists, ditto on the applicability
• CLA’s Graduate Career Services

Jobs

Learn about the kinds of jobs available to you and then learn about openings. Use the widest array of tools possible for you: emails, listservs, websites, and your networks.

Advice

• You have to treat the job search as a job in and of itself.  One of the most common mistakes is underestimating the amount of time and frustration that can go into the job search. A reasonable estimate for the average job search is 50 to 100 hours upfront and more if you deal with multiple fields, longer periods, or complicated situations. Some people get lucky and apply to one or two positions and get a job, but most people are in for a grind.
• Related, you and your mentor(s) should have worked together for at least a couple of years before your graduation to ensure you have the experience you need for your job (e.g., teach a course, do lab work, have articles). Do your best to fill gaps in your CV (e.g., if you do not have teaching experience, ask to guest lecture in a couple of courses; if you are short an article, prioritize publishing it).
• Start early. You should be working six months from the job season, which usually starts in late summer. Get your reference writers lined up, start working on the first of many drafts of your research and teaching statements, and get those publications into review!
• Be organized. Find whatever system works best for you and stick with it. Keep track of openings, information, due dates, and so on. This is especially important when working with your letter writers and others since you want to give them a lot of advance warning. During your job search, use a system, such as keeping a spreadsheet of jobs and associated information and then using a mail-merge program to take that information and insert it in cover letters. This is helpful for basic stuff like addresses and job titles and more advanced stuff like areas of expertise in a department.

Resources

• The Association of American Geographers has a great site for finding various jobs.
• North Carolina Central University has a good site as well
• Alt-Ac Jobs. As the job market for PhDs in TT faculty lines dries up (or maybe just shifts, we’ll see….), there is growing interest in Alternative Academic (Alt-Ac) jobs. GradHacker at IHE has advice as links to other excellent resources
• The Academic Jobs Wiki has a lot of good links and articles from the perspective of grad students.
• Read this short article on some real advice for a first-time job seeker
• Start keeping track of job listings. Here are some places to begin:

• Association of American Geographers, AAG, maintains an online job list.
• The Canadian Association of Geographers has a job list.
• Chronicle of Higher Education has a job board with thousands of postings.
• HigherEdJobs.com site indexes a lot of administrative jobs as well as faculty jobs.
• H-Net is the Humanities and Social Sciences Online community hosted by Michigan State.
• If you are a grad student on the job market, you should consider joining your departmental job listserv if there is one.

Application

The application is the package that you send to the school. It usually consists of a combination of a cover letter, CV, statements of research and teaching, and writing samples. Note that most places have a multistep process where they winnow down the pool of all applicants to a ‘long list’ of 20 or 30 applications, then a ‘short list’ of 10 applications, and then an ‘interview list’ of 3 to 6 applications.  It can take a long time between the application deadline and the distillation of the interview list. Countries outside of North America may have a different approach (e.g., in the UK, they often invite everyone on the shortlist to come in on the same day).

Advice

• Get help!  Start working on your materials months ahead of time, and then ask your mentors and friends to give feedback. People who have been on job searches lose count of the number of applications that commit one or more very basic errors that would have been caught by a cursory reading by fresh eyes. Sometimes these errors are not a big deal, but a committee vetting a couple of hundred applications needs only a low bar for rejecting the 170 applications that don’t make the long list. This is very important —  don’t let your dream position slip by because of a few spelling errors.
• Postings may request a “statement of teaching interests” rather than the teaching philosophy. In a recent panel of the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) course, several seasoned search committee members opined that the teaching philosophy is deadly to read and doesn’t really give much idea of how effective the person would be as a teacher. The statement of teaching interests might be a much better way to convey that. Try to convey how and why you teach at a high level and with examples.
• Advice will vary on your CV, but “Papers in preparation” on a CV look weak. Maybe stick one or two in there if there is some sort of evidence that it is really in the works, such as an invited chapter in an edited volume or an article in a special issue. This may also be an important way to show you are doing work if you do not have many publications.
• Diversity

• How Do You Read the Diversity Statement?
• Demystifying the Diversity Statement
• The Effective Diversity Statement
• 5 Don’ts in Writing Your DEI Statement

Articles. Read at least a few articles in the Article Collection. There are a lot of messy details that go into a successful application.

• Articles with the “Application_” prefix are overall guides to the process of applying to jobs
• Those with “CV_” focus explicitly on the Curriculum Vitae, which joins the cover letter as one of the most important parts of your application, especially in the early rounds.

Resources

• Special section: check out some expanded information on your resume or CV
• The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has several useful pages, including this explanation of the parts of an academic letter, plus an annotated sample letter.
• Berkeley Career Center offers advice that is a little too "how to demonstrate that someone as great as you would want to teach at a crummy school like East Nowhere State College" but is still worth a read, especially about the length of letters (keep 'em concise!) and organizing the components of the letter. We DO disagree with the advice not to spend time tailoring letters to each specific institution. Seriously, that is not a good idea. Customize the letter.

Interview

Abstract. Congrats, you are one of three to six people chosen from a stack of applications to do an interview. Now is your time to shine, mess up, or both. Be aware of the mission of the place you are applying to. We tend to focus on research-intensive places like ours, but many kinds of colleges exist. A small liberal arts college differs from a community or religious institution. Each place is looking for slightly-to-often different things.

Random advice

• One question people ask that is often not addressed elsewhere is, ‘what should I wear?’ It may sound a little trite to be worrying about clothes since academics are supposed to be all about the life of the mind and above such quotidian concerns, but a) academics are pretty much like anyone else in making snap judgments based on clothing and b) dressing well (and comfortably!) conveys impressions and can help you feel more confident during the grueling interview process.

• A safe route seems to be business casual combined with a little personal flair and expression. Anything too casual can make you look clueless or arrogant while a suit or similar attire can make you look uncomfortable and/or too dressy for many places unless you moonlight as a banker or mobster, or political scientist. It’s a classic mistake to wear shoes that you normally don’t wear and/or are not broken in. Nothing says “middle school prom,” like dressing up in your grown-up outfit while limping along in new shoes.
• Exceptions for general clothing expectations seem to be made for pretty much anyone, but as with most human endeavors, you have to do it right. Only somewhat tongue in cheek, here are some observations: human geographers seem to be able to get away with an overabundance of black clothing and/or fashionably clunky shoes; biophysical folks can rock that fleece and LL Bean look to go with everything, especially if their job talk features lots photos of them looking rugged; and GIS folks can pull off a certain brand of nerdiness that may extend all the way to not having to tuck in a shirt. Bonus quote from a colleague speaking in support of their preferred candidate, who had been wearing Doc Martens during the interview process  “...and his shoes! Those shoes are the right kind of shoes for this job!”
• Plan ahead. Do not wait until a day or two before traveling to run out and grab interview clothes. You can save a lot of money, time, and angst by developing a simple, versatile interview wardrobe over time. You will need it for other occasions, so why not start now? One of our professors got his ‘interview jacket’ for thirty bucks at a used clothing store during grad school, and it worked out just fine.

• When flying, do not check your bag for critical things you’ll need for your interview. This includes obvious things like nice clothes or a backup presentation and less obvious things like workout gear if you need to blow off some steam by running in the woods before running the gauntlet. If you lose your bag, you start off on the wrong foot in so many senses.
• Interviewing can be grueling, so pack a few snacks to nibble on when you can. Normally fun downtimes like coffee breaks or meals are exactly the opposite. During interviews, you’ll be lucky to cram in a few bits of food into your pie hole while being bombarded by questions from well-meaning but curious future colleagues.

• Pro tip: if you have found you are getting zero time to yourself, fake a bathroom break to get a few moments by yourself to relax and compose yourself. You can also talk ahead of time to the person setting up your visit schedule and just ask that a few breaks be inserted into the schedule.

• Mistakes to avoid

• Not knowing what you want to teach. It is profoundly troubling to see the large number of interviewees who appear as if they never expected questions about what they want to teach. While your research is probably the most important consideration for many concerned, for the love of socks, spend ten minutes on the department website and figure out what is being taught already that you could help teach and think about what you can offer. Ideally, you can present a vision of what you can add to the existing curriculum while offering to help with existing courses. A related pet peeve is focusing solely on what you would offer for graduate seminars while ignoring the fact that first-year courses pay the bills. You aren’t above teaching undergrads, smarty pants!
• Not knowing anything about your future colleagues or department. Spend some time familiarizing yourself with the departmental web page. Learn a bit about their programs and about the people who work there. You don’t need to be an expert in all areas, but you should know everyone in the department's names and research areas. Carry a printout or load your phone up with this information if you need a memory refresher. Knowing names and research areas is doubly important for people not in your subfield. Faculty members have met with too many people outside of their research area who clearly think the meeting is a waste of time because the work of a faculty member and the interviewee doesn’t overlap. This is pretty much the opposite of the kind of person with whom we want to have as colleagues for the next thirty years.
• Not reviewing your job talk. The job talk is often the most important part of your interview: a great talk will offset many sins, while a poor talk looms large in people’s minds for a long time. Despite this pivotal role, many people appear to have just thrown together their talk or acted like it is the first time they have ever really seen their PowerPoint deck. You don’t want to be some sort of over-polished and soulless PowerPoint automaton, but err on the side of preparation! Bonus irritation: spelling errors on your slides!

Articles. Read at least a few articles in the Article Collection. Articles with the “Interview_” prefix guide the interviewing process.

Resources

There is no way to anticipate every question you will ask in an interview or campus visit. However, many questions are relatively standard, and if you think about them beforehand and mentally prepare good answers, your actual answers will be that much more convincing.

• This page also provides links to typical interview questions for academic jobs.
• This IHE article has good advice on conducting mock interviews.
• GES has prepared a list of questions that may be asked of faculty, as well as questions that should not be asked

Aftermath

Abstract. Now is the time to negotiate an offer or deal with (all too often) a rejection letter.

Articles. Read at least a few articles in the Article Collection. Articles with the “Job_” prefix are overall guides to the process.

Resources

Jobs

• Payscale has a shortlist of ideas for when you are negotiating salary
• Monster has a good list of questions to ask when starting or moving

Academic Jobs

• See this excellent list of resources on negotiating what you need

Random advice

• Work with your soon-to-be chair to negotiate a good start-up package, but realize they are caught between being a good steward of institutional resources and making you happy. You don’t want to be a pushover and take the first offer, but you also don’t want to piss off your future colleagues by being a prima donna right out of the gate. Ask for what you really need to get a good start.

• Remember that this is a job, not a friendship. Eventually, you will become friends with many of the people with whom you will negotiate, and they are genuinely interested in having you come to their institution, but for now, you need to focus on getting the most reasonable deal you can.

• Have a list of things that you want and justifications for matching (see below for a list). Often the first conversation or two sets the tone for the rest of the negotiations, so do not get bogged down on one or two items immediately. Let them know you have a list, give them a quick rundown of what is on that list, and then proceed. By the same token, they will probably open negotiations with a set of items and make it sound pretty final. You have to get very good very quickly at understanding what is negotiable and what is not.

• When you ask for stuff, you must have a rationale.  Don’t just ask for a big startup package because you want one; ask because you have specific things you need in the first three years. If you need a lab, tell them why you need one. If you need a really expensive machine, tell them why and emphasize long-term benefits to the institution, such as future grant income. It is always easier for your chair to sell a package to the dean or whomever if they can point to concrete benefits from a specific item on your list. One side effect is that they may make a deal with you: sure, you can have two months' summer salary, but we want you to apply for a grant in your first year. These sorts of deals are usually fine for all parties.
• Most places will distinguish between things they will always pay for (salary, lab rentals) and stuff that is a one-time expense (cash, RA lines). There is often a very real limit on the former and a softer one on the latter, so if the dean or chair comes back and says there is no more room on salary, come back with ideas on how to let them pay for stuff on a one-time basis. Summer salary for the first couple of years may be a better deal for them than trying to bump your annual salary by a thousand dollars. It is not as good for you as a permanent bump but take what you can get.
• Similarly, different units pay for different things and are sensitive to the differences. Since you will likely be dealing with the department more than the college, be alert to signals from your soon-to-be chair on who is paying for what. If there is something that the college or university is paying for (like a lab or access to computing), then the department may be more interested in pursuing that than something the department has to provide.

• Perhaps the most stressful situation you can face, funnily enough, is having multiple offers or having one offer in hand with a few more interviews down the road. If you are entertaining multiple offers, it can be a good idea (but not always) to let the various institutions know. Some places will give you a firm deadline by which you need to reply; other places will give you leeway.  In almost all cases, you should ask for more time if the institution is convinced that you are seriously considering coming there and you are, in fact, very interested.

• While you want to behave ethically and in a timely manner, you may want to also take advantage of the fact that there may be several rounds of negotiating over start-up and other parts of the package as well, which can stretch things out. You have to be very careful in how you do it, but it can pay off to slow things down.
• At the end of the day, they have spent an enormous amount of time and energy narrowing down their choice to you, and they will want to get you. Since it is unethical, you should not purposefully string along a prospect in which you are not interested just to enhance your bargaining position with another institution (although people do).
• If you have an offer in hand and are interviewing elsewhere, phone or email the latter and ask them about their timeline. When do they expect to wrap up interviews and make offers? If they know that you are a likely prospect and have offers in hand, they may move up their timeline to get you.
• This CHE piece has some very good advice.

• Once you get to your new job, try to balance your enthusiasm for change with understanding how the place works. Pretty everyone thinks their graduate school is simply the best, which leads to a lot of comments that start with, “Well, at MY school, we did X, Y, and Z,” with the implication being that it was way better than what goes on here.” There is great value in bringing in new ideas and perspectives, and most places don’t want a bunch of drones who unthinkingly follow tradition just because “that’s how we have always done it here,” but try to figure out why things are done a certain way in your new place before you start trying to dismantle the whole thing.
• Once you have been at your job for a while, try not to squelch the enthusiasm of the new folks. Sure, they can be like puppies sometimes, making messes and tearing things up, but they are the future of the department, and you owe it to them to treat them like the colleagues they are and will be.

What is negotiable? (Adapted from Jane Tucker and Barbara Butterfield from their workshop on Strategic Persuasion: Effective Negotiations, Problem Solving and Conflict Resolution)

• Appointment information

• Appointment title or titles. You may be able to get some bling after your name (e.g., a buddy got a named professorship for five years, the institution basically just invented it for him in lieu of a larger starting salary).
• Tenure status. If you are coming in with years under your belt, do you want to go up early or take the full six years on the clock? If you have a postdoc, this may be a tough decision, in that extra time may be nice, or maybe just two more years without tenure.
• Sabbatical timing. Do you get any credit for time accrued elsewhere?  Many places want you to log time at their institution, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, especially if you have accrued time on the tenure track at your current institution and you are moving to a new place.
• Start date. Would it make sense for you to start a semester later than normal, or start your teaching a semester later?  If you have a postdoc or some other support right now, see if you can wrap that up before starting your new job.
• Time off, like a gap year or letting you finish up your existing appointment or fellowship.

• Salary

• Focus first on salary because that will form the floor for every year’s pay afterward as well as summer salary. Most institutions suffer from salary compression, which means that new hires will almost invariably start getting paid close to (or maybe more than) many folks who have been there for a long time. Getting an extra couple of thousand now puts off for a few more years that terrible day when you realized that some new whippersnapper is making more one year out of the PhD than you are after putting in decades of work. On the other hand, there may be very real limits on your salary that stem from existing salaries. Many places will simply not give you more than what other people are making.
• Some institutions have fixed pay scales but most have some flexibility. Don’t say yes to the first number they offer unless you have it on very good authority that they deliberately went high or that they have a union scale that they cannot change.

• A good rule of thumb is to request a base salary that is 10% higher than the offer, with the understanding that they’ll come back with anything from 0% to 10% depending on their flexibility.
• If you can, find out what recent hires are being paid to get a sense of what is reasonable and then go a bit higher. This is often pretty easy at public institutions because they will post salaries, a little harder at the privates.
• Understand that there is no ‘prevailing wage’ in that there is too much range among departments and institutions. If you are in a job now or have an offer in hand from a very similar department, then maybe have some leverage, but not much. Geographic and institutional differences usually trump all else.

• Benefits. Often these are set by the institution, but sometimes they are not, esp. at private universities. See whether you can negotiate on healthcare; dental; insurance; parental leave; or spousal benefits. Again, rare, but you need to give the hiring department some options.
• Beyond the base salary, look at bonuses, summer salary, one-time retirement account contributions. Again, less common at public institutions but private ones have all sorts of leeway in what they can offer as an inducement. A guaranteed summer salary, for example, goes a long way to making your life easier the first year or two.

• Spousal job opportunities. This can make or break an offer; if your spouse is an academic, work hard to get him/her a line or at least some sort of post-doc. If they are not academic, see what the U can do to help them find a job (e.g., when I came to UMN, the college set my wife up with lists of alumni to speak with about finding a job in her field).

• Timing is tricky - do you mention the spousal situation during the interview or after the offer?  Most advice I have read indicates the latter - don’t muddy the waters. That said, your spouse may be an advantage if he/she has a set of skills or a good reputation in the field or in another field of interest to the university. Get advice from trusted advisors who understand the institutional situation.

• Research support. Most places give you a chunk of money as a start-up. Ensure the contract specifies any limits on what can be purchased (e.g., can you use these funds for summer salary, or just for equipment and travel?) and whether there is a time limit (e.g., first three years vs. no time limit).
• Housing relocation expenses (e.g., moving van/company, selling/buying costs, realtors' fees).
• Travel budget. Travel is a one-time expense that many places can put together by lumping funds together. This includes travel for projects and for continuing education (e.g., maybe you want to hit the ESRI user conference for three years in a row).
• Facilities / Space. Get details on the amount and nature of the space commitment - is it for a couple of years or forever? Will they just give you space, or will they provide a separate chunk of startup so that you can buy stuff for the space?
• Office furniture and computer equipment. Determine whether you have to pay for basics out of your startup (e.g., CLA provides a new computer every three years, so new hires do not pay for them out of startup but this will not cover a fancy machine).
• Teaching. You will have a set course load, often in line with the standards in your unit.

• A number of course releases (and any time constraints on their use). Course releases are often an inexpensive way for departments to up the ante, so don’t hesitate to ask for several (i.e., they are not a ‘real’ cost to the department in terms of dollars they are spending on you, just a cost in terms of you not teaching a course).
• Teaching duties. It may sound minor, but see how much detail you can get on what you will be teaching and when. Often a department will not be able to guarantee you much, but try to reduce your load as much as you can and try to reduce preps (you might get a little bored teaching the same few courses, but it is far more efficient than having to develop a new course every year). As always, it is good to get any agreement in writing.

• Other stuff

• Service expectations. Most places won’t get into the details or it can be hard to assess what is involved with service, but if you are looking for a little wriggle room once everything else is nailed down, see if you can specify limits on committee assignments or responsibilities.
• Child care: see if you can negotiate child care resources or room to jump the line on the waiting lists (e.g., some places have excellent childcare facilities, but it can take years to get in).
• Tuition benefits for children (increasingly rare, but still an option at many private colleges).
• Living expenses. Whether temporary or permanent, some places may help you out (e.g., I was once offered a spot that came with university housing for two years).
• Parking fees. This varies a lot by the institution, but sometimes you can get a spot paid for, or get ahead on the waiting list.  Some schools are legendary for tight parking and the occasional new hire can work a deal to get a contract parking spot.
• Personnel. See if you can get a guaranteed RA or Postdoc thrown in, esp. since departments can often cover this with a combination of funds. There are some places where you can get access to part of an FTE for staff support. Senior hires often have provisions for graduate student support, the thinking being that an advisor may want to bring students along.
• Immigration. If you are not a citizen, make sure you get support for fees and legal assistance for visas and immigration, since that can add up to thousands of dollars. In my case, for example, the ISSS office messed up my job application and the college paid a lawyer to fix the problem.

Dealing with a low-ball start-up package.

Ideally, your start-up package is pretty solid (say in the 30 to 100k range), but many places are simply strapped for cash or assume that you are on the hook for providing your own funding.  

In this case, you must go in strong and strategic but be prepared for disappointment. One approach is the three-part memo combined with a follow-up conversation.

Part 1 is a research overview, a few lines on your research goals (e.g., kinds of questions you want to answer and generally what is necessary to do that kind so research, like fieldwork, travel, big data sets, or specialized computing).  You don't know who is reading this, so you can't assume they understand more than the barest outlines of what you need for your work. That said, keep it short, no more than a few lines, enough for a dean to read and get a sense of the resource needs of your research enterprise.

Part 2 lists 'essentials' like a computer, furniture, support for at least one professional conference, a small book allowance, etc. That will be at least 5k and, more likely, more, so ask for the actual dollar figure (say 7 to 10k) representing the bare minimum of what you need to cover the essentials. Break it down into specific bullet points with name, cost estimate, and short rationale, no more than a line or two. See the list above for items.

Part 3 presents a second list of actual research stuff that is tied to your research overview statement, like costs for travel, support for an RA, and specialized computing. This will vary. For some folks, it will be $ for minor fieldwork but major computing and RA support, while someone who does fieldwork may instead ask for several months of field support and a translator and travel support. Go big on this one, using the list above (e.g., two months of summer support to develop a proposal to the NSF to extend your research on X, or a postdoc to help you do research in place X). Say this comes to 30k, but it could be north of 100k.

The key in all of this to talk to (or email) your chair (or the person with whom you are negotiating) and say something along the lines of 'Look, I appreciate the offer of 3k and understand if you cannot increase it. I am excited to be joining your department and I want to make sure I hit the ground running. That said, I realistically need 7 to 10k to get off the ground, and ideally 30k (or 60k or more) or more to really start off right. If I don't have that level of support then I'll be scrambling for resources instead of doing research that will let me jump-start new proposals and research areas. I appreciate any wiggle room you have here or help to identify other ways to get these resources."

At this point, if your lists are reasonable, with luck they will come back with responses to sub-items - some stuff they'll just pay for (like furniture), some stuff for which they'll dig up new lines (like RA support out of an endowment), some stuff they'll make a deal for (like giving you a course release in exchange for a promise from you to write two research proposals in the summer), and others they'll tell you ‘too bad, but thanks for asking.’

You should get some traction if you keep it reasonable and justify specific items by tying them to concrete research-driven rationales.  Worse case, they come back and say 'Here is your 3k, good luck but you've come across as a professional who sees herself as advancing the larger enterprise.