Top 5 Objectives for Science Alliance Career Programming

Today was a busy day: began with an 8am deans’ breakfast and wrapped up with a workshop on negotiating job offers. I am pleased that they went really well and thought I would share a little of what was addressed at both, starting with the morning meeting and then discussing the workshop in a later entry. To provide some background on the meeting, it was a convening of the graduate student deans from local institutions that sponsor Science Alliance memberships for their students and postdocs. We like to hold these meetings to get feedback from the schools and ensure that our goals are in alignment. I presented to the group the key areas where I think Science Alliance best serves the career development of science PhDs. The following are my top five objectives for future programming (this list is tweaked a bit based on feedback from the meeting and not necessarily in any order):

1. To disseminate information about nonacademic career options. Knowledge about career options and career guidance are certainly lacking in most PhD training programs and I have already presented why it is so crucial. Therefore it should be no surprise that filling in this gap is a priority for me and why I am so enthusiastic about this blog and my pet project, the soon-to-be launched video podcast series on PhD career paths.
2. To provide cross-institutional networking. Being geographically located to the same city is not enough to break down the invisible barriers between institutions; there need to be formal opportunities for students, postdocs, and faculty members across the different campuses to meet and interact. If you need evidence as to why networking is so vital to one's career, I have seen estimates that up to 70-80% of jobs have been obtained through networking. What is more, by increasing your pool of networks, a more diverse set of information and resources becomes available to you. In addition to the many workshops, seminars, and panels Science Alliance hosts every year at the New York Academy of Sciences, we have also held mixers for graduate students, postdocs and summer undergraduate researchers, and regularly hold meetings with the academic leadership and administration.
3. To link scientists to groups outside academia. The Academy, of which Science Alliance is part, has a number of connections to business and industry that could be used to foster the career development of scientists interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. The upcoming Leveraging the Scientific Mindset for the Business World is a perfect illustration of this: I have liaised with the group InSITE to not only provide an introductory seminar on business but, more importantly, a unique opportunity for science PhDs to gain extensive experience through their entrepreneurship fellowship program, which is opening its doors to science PhDs and inviting applications for the fall admission cycle (the program has historically enrolled business and law students exclusively). There is plenty of room to expand in this arena and I have many more ideas I would like to explore.
4. To address topical issues in graduate education and STEM careers. It is imperative to address problems like the under-representation of women and minorities in STEM careers or the extreme time-to-degree lags, and I would like to see Science Alliance play a role in driving these discussions. We are starting by cosponsoring an event in June on Innovating and Updating the Medical School Curriculum, and I hope to extend this to graduate school curriculum, as well.
5. To perform outreach to our members both online and in person. Outreach is essential as I believe there is generally a lack of awareness of the resources that do exist and how to best utilize them and when. I am attempting to make these resources more visible through this blog as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I also plan to visit campuses to speak about basic career planning, networking, and preparing for the job market. Then, for the obvious reason that our members are not exclusively located in the NYC metro area, delivering content via the web is also important simply to ensure our non-local members have access to the programming (minus the networking opportunity); therefore, going forward most of our live events will also be available as webinars.

I was pleased that the deans (from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia, CUNY, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York Medical College, NYU, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, Rockefeller, and SUNY- Stony Brook) agreed with these objectives. One even commented that the most important contribution Science Alliance can make is to meet objective #1, providing nonacademic career options. Indeed, these basic science departments recognize the great need but are not well-equipped to address it and therefore look to Science Alliance to continue to fill in this gap. Overall, I think this is a pretty good list that provides career mentoring in ways that capitalize on the strengths of Science Alliance as an entity that lies outside academe with the ability to convene people across institutions and fields.

What do you think about my list- do you agree? Is there anything you would add?

Lights, Camera, Action: A New Video Series Exploring PhD Career Paths

I am excited to announce that I will soon be unveiling a new feature for this blog- a video podast series, or vodcast (the hipper term I just learned at the CUNY Science Day), exploring career options for science PhDs. The series will consist of 10-15 minute interviews with science PhDs on their post-graduate career trajectories and include both those who have moved away from the bench as well as those who have remained in research. My motivation for launching this series is to help science PhDs make better-informed career decisions by demystifying life after grad school (or a postdoc) and presenting the many options before you.

Increasing awareness of the career options available to science PhDs is critical because the realities of the job market tell us that most will not end up in tenure-track faculty positions. In 2003-2006, only 19% of recent doctoral graduates and 26% of graduates 4-6 years out held tenure-track academic appointments.¹ Nevertheless, a 1999 survey of doctoral students showed that a majority entered graduate school with the intention of being a professor and did not think there were enough workshops on career options; they also reported not feeling encouraged to participate in the ones that did exist. ² One of the recommendations borne out of this study was that graduate programs should “make available and publicize opportunities to help students explore and prepare for a variety of careers, in and out of academia (ibid.).”

Since this report was published, there has been an expansion of resources available to science PhDs, if not on individual campuses then via the web, through school career services offices, postdoctoral affairs offices, national associations, websites like Nature Jobs and Science Careers, and programs like Science Alliance. Typical resources include articles, books, panels, and workshops; the new video podcast series I’m introducing here is but one more tool to add to your career exploration toolkit.

Although one of many resources available to you, I expect you will find unique value in these videos in that they are like experiencing a virtual informational interview- something which everyone should do before deciding on a career path. Informational interviews, not to be confused with a job interview, are helpful because not only do you quickly learn about the practical aspects of a particular job or field but you also have an opportunity to hear about the personal side. In the videos presented here, I will be taking on your role in the informational interview, asking other science PhDs how they selected their chosen career paths, the circumstances that played a role, the steps taken to ready themselves for their career transitions, what they love about their jobs, and the truth about the pitfalls and challenges. And remember, the responses will all be coming from individuals who have at one point been where you are likely to be now: in the midst of grad school or a postdoc struggling to figure out what the heck to do with your PhD. Hopefully these interviews will inspire you and serve as jumping-off points for your own career exploration process.

So stay tuned! The first vodcast will be coming soon….

In the meantime, what are some careers you are most interested in hearing about? What are the questions you would like answered that would have the greatest impact on your career decisions?

References

     ¹  Science and Engineering Indicators, 2010. Table 3-18. Doctorate recipients holding tenure and tenure-track appointments at academic institutions, by years since receipt of doctorate and selected field: 1993, 2003, and 2006.

     ²  Golde and Dore "At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today's Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education" 2001 Table 1. Proportion of Students Interested in a Faculty Career.

Alliance Online

As I endeavor to broadcast more Science Alliance programs over the internet, I consider whether watching an event online has the same benefit as being face-to-face with the speaker. The advantage of the webinar format is that it provides convenient access to our content when distance and time are factors (which for the scientist can come down to, does it require me to leave my building and does it fit between my timepoints). What is more, some level of interactivity is preserved with the at-home viewer being able to type or call-in questions to which the presenter can respond in real-time.

For the sake of convenience, though, you do sacrifice an opportunity to interact with others interested in a topic, and at an Alliance event, the network to which you have access is huge and includes people across a number of institutions and scientific disciplines. So networking is clearly hindered, but is learning compromised, as well?

Online learning is a hot issue in higher education with an ongoing debate about the extent to which teachers should be bringing their classrooms into the virtual space. You can check out some of the arguments for and against online courses in recent articles at The Chronicle and The New York Times. Interestingly, a meta-analysis by the US Department of Education found that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

My take is that online learning can be successful but requires attention to pedagogical methods that have been proven for the virtual environment. This is not unlike the research and preparation that should be put forth to make in-classroom instruction effective.

I will continue to offer Science Alliance events online because I think it is important for our members to have access to the information we present, and will try to consider the unique needs of the virtual attendee. Nevertheless, for anyone local, I would encourage attending events when possible for the networking alone.

Science Alliance Meets Web 2.0

One of the main goals I have set for myself as Director is to strengthen the sense of community among the Science Alliance members through the internet and social media. At some point, I hope to have a platform for members to create profiles so that we can connect and share information virtually. In the meantime, I am aiming to make a majority of the Science Alliance events available as webinars so that anyone unable to attend the live event can still benefit from our programs.

I just watched my first webinar last week (ironically, on Developing a Social Strategy) and participated in a test run of a webinar this afternoon and I have to admit to being quite impressed with the technology. In addition to viewing the PowerPoint presentation and hearing the audio of the speakers in real time, there is also a little box for interacting with the event hosts- you can click a button to raise your hand and type in questions. You can also talk through your computer’s microphone. This type of interactivity is key to help the virtual attendee feel engaged. After all, the webinar has to fight against competing facebook and gmail chat windows, beeping lab timers, and snack breaks. Perhaps feeling like an active participant in the proceedings would help hold the viewer’s attention longer.

Speaking of audience interaction, at one point during our mock webinar the screen flashed to a poll that asked me how I was doing: Excellent, Good, Ok, and Not So Excellent. In case you’re curious, I’m fighting a cold so I selected the last option- but it had nothing to do with the experiment itself. Despite being fairly technologically savvy, I am practically giddy with delight discovering our capability to survey the audience throughout the broadcast. And no, it’s not just a surreptitious way to ensure you’re paying attention… the IT team tells me we have other “ways” of obtaining that information. But don’t worry, we can’t actually see you tuning in wearing your bathrobe… or can we?

Taking the webinar approach a step further, I also have the vision of streaming these broadcasts to remote auditoriums so that groups of students and postdocs can watch together rather than in isolation. I will have the opportunity to test this idea on Monday for the first event I am organizing for Science Alliance (more to come on that in a later post). The seminar is being webinar’d and I am collaborating with Joerg Schlatterer to project the event to a room at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine campus. The mock webinar we ran today was to prepare for this event and everything worked without a hitch.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to seeing how everything plays out next week. Register for the event and you can find out, too!