Tag Archives: WUSTL

Faculty position at WUSTL: The employee’s perspective

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Samantha Morris talks about getting her first faculty position at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.

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{credit}Photo credit: Todd Druley{/credit}

What did you do in preparation for your job application?

It was 10 years of watching, observing, following advice, and soaking up any mentorship and guidance on how to become a faculty member. Collecting these experiences really helped. It was interesting to see that many people didn’t take a traditional trajectory into a faculty position.

When I came to the end of graduate school, a friend told me about a workshop at Harvard Medical School about faculty positions, so I dropped everything and ran there! There were 300 postdocs in the session, which was terrifying when you’re thinking about applying for a position because they’re the competition!

What was your job application strategy?

I thought I should apply to everything so I applied for 33 positions and interviewed for 15.  By seeing different institutions side-by-side I was able to decide more clearly on what I was looking for. It slowly emerged that the places I was most excited about were the ones that had medical schools and close connections to clinicians. Washington University in St Louis certainly has that: many clinicians here are closely connected to the research enterprise. Continue reading →

Faculty position at WUSTL: The employer’s perspective

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Jeff Milbrandt talks about the hiring process behind a faculty position that recently went at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.

Robert Boston is the photographer, Washington University School of Medicine

{credit}Photo credit: Robert Boston, Washington University School of Medicine {/credit}

As head of the genetics department at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis (WUSTL), what do you look for in new faculty members?

As a genetics department we’re very interested in computational approaches and new technologies because I think they’ve driven the genomic revolution. So we’re interested in finding people that are either utilising or developing new technologies to study fundamental disease pathways, with the hope that they will collaborate with more clinical people at Washington University to translate some of their discoveries into something that would benefit human kind.

What was the position you were trying to fill?

Essentially, we were looking for young, energetic, creative and accomplished scientists that are going to fulfil the dream of being able to study basic disease mechanisms using genomic technologies across two departments: genetics and developmental biology.

The fundamental role of the new faculty member is to do world-class research. There is not a huge teaching burden and there is a minimal administrative burden. The position was designed for someone to develop their laboratory, to obtain external grant funding, attract students and postdocs to the lab to help with the exciting work described by the candidates. Continue reading →