Boston Blog

Paying attention to postdocs

Boston-area institutions are slowly but finally addressing the needs of the long-neglected workhorses of research.

Corie Lok

Of the estimated 4,000 to 5,000 postdocs in the Boston area, some are getting paid as little as $30,000 a year. Some don’t receive any benefits. Many fret about how much of their paychecks go to rent every month, and those with children worry about the high cost of child care.

These problems are not unique to Boston. In 2000, a report from the National Academies drew attention to the plight of postdocs across the United States: underpaid, under-recognized, isolated, and poorly mentored. That report triggered a nationwide trend among universities to improve the quality of the postdoctoral experience.

The National Postdoctoral Association, founded in 2002, has also been instrumental in recommending policies and practices at the institutional level. Some institutions, such as the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh, have made good progress and are often held up as models.

Still, that progress has not been uniform across the U.S. “There is a good bit of variation between institutions with dedicated postdoc offices and staff and those that don’t, in terms of policies and programmatic offerings,” says Alyson Reed, the executive director of the National Postdoctoral Association. Those with postdoc offices and staff tend to be more progressive in providing postdoc services and policies, she says.

Variation exists among Boston-based universities and research institutions as well. Some have a longer history of addressing postdoc needs. The Whitehead Institute, for example, raised postdoc salaries and improved benefits in 2002, and its postdoc association has been active for about the last five years. Others, such as Boston University and its medical school, lag behind. BU has little centralized administrative oversight for postdocs and doesn’t have a postdoc association.

But a growing number of local institutions are starting to catch up. Harvard University has in the last few months established a postdoc office. The formation of this office was recommended last year by Harvard’s Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering, which was launched in the wake of Larry Summers’s controversial remarks on women in science.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital is opening a postdoc office this month. Massachusetts General Hospital earlier this year launched the Office for Research Career Development for both faculty and postdocs. And thanks to a new dean, Boston University School of Medicine, where most of BU’s postdocs work, is looking to hire an associate provost who will oversee postdoctoral affairs as part of his or her job.

Scroll down to read brief snapshots of what the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, MIT, Harvard Medical School, the Whitehead Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital are doing or hope to do for their postdocs. This is not a comprehensive survey, just a limited sampling.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Approximately 440 postdocs

On the third floor of the Dana-Farber’s Smith building is the postdoc lounge, which has a TV, coffee machine, computer, couch, and refrigerator. It also has a desk where Shannon Bayer, the administrator for the Office of Postdoctoral Training and Career Development, sits when she’s not in meetings so that she can answer questions from postdocs who wander in.

The postdoc office was started up in 2004 because the recently arrived president of Dana-Farber decided that its postdocs needed additional resources, so he hired staff to form the office and start up the Research Fellows Association. “Since the office and the association started from the top down, we have had a great deal of support right from the beginning,” says Stuart Milstein, one of the association’s leaders. He and other members of the association meet biweekly with the director of the postdoc office to talk about postdoc concerns.

Last year, 100 Dana-Farber postdocs attended a one-day, off-site retreat, where they learned about grant writing and other career development skills. The postdoc association determined the agenda and chose the speakers, while Bayer did the logistical planning.

They’re putting on another retreat this fall, this time for 125 postdocs, with an emphasis on careers outside academic research. Bayer’s office also hosts seminars about once a month on topics like grant writing and job searching skills.

Since last year, Dana-Farber has enforced a policy of minimum salaries for newly hired postdocs, says Bayer. Their salaries must at least match the stipend level of a major postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); for incoming postdocs, the 2005 level was $35,568, and for 2006, it’s $36,996.

Starting this year, the institute will chip in some of its own funds to try to bring the salaries of existing postdocs up to the NIH levels. This won’t be easy, because the NIH has been increasing postdoc fellowship salaries quite a bit over the last few years. “Our goal is to try to equalize salaries as much as we can,” says Bayer.

MIT

Approximately 900 postdocs

On the website for MIT postdocs is a list of 48 MIT faculty members, from about a dozen different departments, who have volunteered to be mentors to postdocs outside their research group. It’s an informal program; postdocs must approach someone on the list (or another MIT faculty member) to start the mentoring relationship.

This program began as a pilot project in late 2004 as the brainchild of an enterprising postdoc, who did most of the initial work to find the mentors. Positive feedback kept the program going, which now has a longer list of mentors.

MIT doesn’t have an official postdoc office. Since 2003, two administrators—one from the provost’s office and the other from the office of the vice president for research—have devoted part of their time to postdoctoral affairs. Janet Fischer and Marilyn Smith meet monthly with the 17-member Postdoc Advisory Council and help the council host various seminars. Fischer and Smith began working with postdocs after MIT’s then-provost, Robert Brown (now BU’s president), decided that MIT needed to do more for its postdocs.

Every summer for the past four years, postdocs have attended four panel sessions about academic careers. This year, a new seminar series began; topics have included how to choose the right academic institution and lab management.

Last year, MIT recommended that postdoc salaries should meet or surpass NIH levels, though there currently is no move to mandate this.

Penny Beuning sits on the postdoc council and says that MIT has made good progress since she arrived five years ago. “We’ve gone from being behind the curve to at least being with the curve,” she says.

Harvard Medical School

Approximately 675 postdocs

In 2003, a small group of Harvard Medical School postdocs began meeting regularly to talk about how postdoc training needed to be improved. They decided to form an association. It took them several months to gain official recognition as a Harvard organization.

They did receive help from the medical school’s existing postdoc office but had to find their own funding, which came from members of an alumni association, and host their own career development seminars.

The postdoc office at that time was focused mainly on establishing guidelines for minimum salaries and equalizing benefits among postdocs. The current minimum salary recommended, but not mandated, by the dean’s office for a new postdoc is $38,000.

Due to administrative shuffling, the management of postdoctoral affairs was moved to another part of the medical school about a year ago, leaving the status of the postdoc office in question. Now the office is back on track with a new full-time manager and plans for monthly events such as career development seminars and social events.

The medical school’s postdoc office also aims to work with the newly created postdoc office on Harvard’s main campus to establish university-wide policies, such as term limits and the enforcement of minimum salaries, says Judith Glaven, the director of Harvard Medical School’s basic science programs, who oversees the postdoc office. She also has been thinking about developing a mentoring program and would like to work with postdoc offices at the affiliated institutions in the Longwood area to host joint events.

In the beginning, the postdoc association struggled to navigate Harvard’s bureaucracy on its own, but now it has steady funding and things are getting better, says Amy Baldwin, one of the cofounders of the association. She says the various postdoc offices in the Longwood area should work together to give all Longwood postdocs access to the same kinds of events and resources.

Whitehead Institute

Approximately 120 postdocs

Earlier this year, the Whitehead’s postdoc association, led by Andreas Herrlich, sent out a long survey to its members. Seventy percent responded. Some of the questions centered on how the postdoc situation could be improved at the Whitehead.

Postdocs reported being worried about the high cost of child care and were upset about the termination of a child-care benefit last year. They fretted about their inability to save for retirement. Although there was a salary raise a few years ago (postdoc salaries start at $36,000 at the Whitehead), some said it was time for another one.

Herrlich was able to easily get a meeting with the institute’s administrative leaders to discuss the survey results, during which he brought up the child-care, retirement, and salary issues. As a result, administrators are looking into reinstating some kind of child-care benefit and doing a salary review that could potentially lead to a raise, says Herrlich. He added that they also agreed to meet with Whitehead postdocs in an open forum this summer.

Herrlich was happy with the results of the meeting. “This is a good place to work,” he says. “It’s pretty supportive of postdoc issues.”

Massachusetts General Hospital

Approximately 1,000 postdocs

Research hospitals have historically paid more attention to their clinical fellows than those in research. MGH is no exception, but that’s beginning to change. Tayyaba Hasan, a professor of dermatology at MGH, has recently taken on the directorship of the new Office for Research Career Development, which serves both research fellows and faculty.

The planning of an annual career conference is now underway. Hasan says she would like to help MGH postdocs form an association and get policies or guidelines in place for minimum salaries, term limits, and hiring terms and conditions. The office has begun putting on workshops and networking events.

One advancement MGH made last year for all PhDs and MDs was the establishment of maternity-leave benefits: eight weeks of paid leave, with up to 12 weeks allowed, coming out of MGH funds. “It’s a huge step forward,” says Hasan.

Comments

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    Myles Axton said:

    Here is the Nature Genetics editorial in which we discuss the importance to job satisfaction and career progression of setting an agreed research agenda. This is the point at which the postdoc has most control over the future of the research, and apparently there is often considerable potential for misunderstanding between the aims of the postdoc and the aims of the grant holder.

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