What is a customary startup package for a USA Engineering TT position at an R1? My colleague and I, both postdocs, are going to TT positions at separate R1 public universities. For various reasons, our advisers have little idea what present startup packages look like. I am in Industrial, he is in MechE.

Here are some guesses from our last brainstorming session:


Equipment (thinking 100k or so)
Cash for travel, supplies, etc (Thinking 50k or so)
Grad student support (thinking 1-2 grad students for 3 years)
Postdoc support (might be substituted for a grad student)
Summer salary (for 2-3 years)


Thoughts? Additional things?
Nothing in your proposed startup packages sounds too unreasonable. The only thing that might be a problem is the number of years of support. You’ll want to know how much it costs to support a grad student, between tuition and stipend. The larger the cost, the fewer the years of support you’ll be able to ask for.

Also, I would expect that the department will not support a post doc, but would instead prefer you to use their funding to support graduate students.