Tag Archives: graduate

The urgent need to recognize and value academic labor

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Two Harvard professors share their thoughts on the latest from the US Republican Party’s tuition waiver tax plan.

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Recently the House of Representatives essentially voted to destroy graduate education in the United States. By taxing tuition waivers as income — and therefore treating their taxable income as two to three times the amount graduate students are actually paid — the Republican tax bill would effectively put graduate study outside of the reach of all but the independently wealthy. While the Senate version of the tax bill does not include this provision, it is far from certain what the final bill after the reconciliation process will look like.

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New to graduate school? Pay attention to those core courses

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Finding the right balance between coursework and research is critical to success in graduate studies, says Tolulope Morawo.

By the end of your first semester in graduate school, you may find yourself drowning in all sorts of emotional episodes if care is not taken. Often, the excitement and challenges that come with conducting research can be overwhelming. If you’re fortunate enough to have been offered a graduate research assistantship, the dual responsibilities of being a student and researcher can be tricky at first. It is imperative that new students balance that fine line until they become established.

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Tolulope Morawo

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It’s time to reduce the number of PhD students, or rethink how doctoral programs work

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Gwilym Croucher, University of Melbourne

There are not enough academic jobs vacant in Australia each year to employ all our PhD graduates.

This imbalance risks training an increasing numbers of doctoral students on a promise that cannot be fulfilled: that is future academic employment.

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We need to accept a hard truth that Australia needs to rethink the design of the PhD and the expectations around it, or radically reduce intake to doctoral programs. Continue reading →

Back to basics: Cracking an academic interview

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Mit Bhavsar runs through some simple tips he learnt in his quest for an academic position.

Staying and working in academia is a good career choice but finding the right position in academia is still a tricky thing. Blanket-applying to as many positions as you can find and crossing your fingers isn’t going to cut it. Recently, I managed to crack some of my own postdoc interviews. Here’s what I learnt.

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Image source: Grant Snider https://www.incidentalcomics.com/2013/05/message-to-graduate.html

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Uncertain Airspace: Changing career paths is disorienting and exhilarating

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Pursuing a new career makes PhD student Jonathan Wosen feel like a baby goose—and he loves it.

Sometimes I ask people, “if you weren’t studying biology, what would you do?”

At first, they’re taken aback, and I don’t blame them. PhD students are self-selected for a certain kind of persistent, focused thinking; that’s what it takes to become the world’s leading expert on your thesis project. We are as deeply immersed in our work as a fish in water. That makes asking a graduate student to consider a different field of study a lot like asking a fish to imagine life on dry land.

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“We are as deeply immersed in our work as a fish in water. That makes asking a graduate student to consider a different field of study a lot like asking a fish to imagine life on dry land.”

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Panic and a PhD

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The authors are recent PhD graduates who’ve all experienced anxiety during and after their doctoral program.

Here they share their story to support current doctoral students working to navigate and maintain a healthy work/life balance.

The lifestyle of graduate school has been associated with the presence of mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, in students during their academic programs. A 2013 analysis of the 2009 National College Health Assessment found that 61.3% of current graduate students reported ever feeling anxiety, with 43.8% feeling anxiety within the past 12 months. As recent graduates from a doctoral program, we’ve experienced this anxiety firsthand, and hope that our stories and recommendations can help to tackle this problem head-on.

Stress is an essential reaction to danger, a mechanism ingrained in us long ago to force a “fight” or “fly” response. However, it’s how we react to stress that impacts our long-term health, including the potential development of anxiety through cognitive distortions and unhealthy coping mechanisms. While we three may have already been naturally anxious people, this became increasingly heightened when under the stress of working on our PhDs.

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Study system envy

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Graduate students must often weigh the pros and cons of straying from an advisor’s research program

Guest contributor Carolyn Beans

Early in graduate school, I had total study system envy. In many biological fields, including my own field of evolutionary ecology, a study system is a specific species that a scientist uses to run tests. Some of these species like mice, zebrafish, and the plant Arabidopsis are model organisms, and have been well-studied for decades or more. Whether scientists choose a model organism or a relatively unknown species as a study system can have drastic consequences for their research.

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Zebrafish{credit}Uri Manor, NICHD{/credit}

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Finding job satisfaction in technology transfer

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As a business development officer at STEMCELL Technologies in Vancouver, Canada, Ben Thiede evaluates new technologies and negotiates deals that bring scientific advances to market. He describes his move from graduate studies toward law and into his current position.

What do you do?

It’s a very diverse role; I’m writing and drafting a lot of agreements – like license agreements and supply agreements.  I’m helping the company evaluate the patents we have; I’m evaluating technologies that other companies are bringing to us. I’m always scouring publications; I have Google Alerts set for certain types of technologies. I feel that I am reading more scientific journals than when I was in grad school. Continue reading →

Graduate school survival skills

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by Jonathan Gross

During the course of graduate school we’ve all likely felt as if we were stuck on a deserted island or lost in a rain forest without a map. It’s tough. As graduate students, we strive to create knowledge, but we’re not explicitly taught how to practice science. I’d like to share three lessons about graduate school that I did not appreciate at the time, and that could help you find your path to the other side.

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Plan for progress

Just as any intrepid adventurer must plan ahead for food, water, or shelter, we need to plan how we progress in graduate school and not leave our paths to chance. For me this meant writing a plan for the week ahead with annotation of how it supported my goals and the lab’s focus. It helps when planning to think in figures, visualizing the answer we seek, to come up with the clearest path forward.

It seems simple, but the written plan lowered my stress level not just for arranging my time, but also when speaking to my PI. He often had quick chats to verify that we were on track and aware of the next steps. These talks shaped his impressions and assumptions of each of us as scientists.

Many of us, myself included, often fumbled these chats: “Oh…um…just working on this experiment and data analysis. Want to see it?” But once I started writing plans I could quickly say, “I am re-developing method X, which I noticed was not working because of Y. I will know tonight whether it worked and will send you the data. I expect that by Friday we will have moved on to Z to bring us closer to finishing paper A. Perhaps we can chat then about the next steps we expect?”

Quick, to-the-point progress updates helped him help me, seizing the most value from his limited attention to ensure my project would advance smoothly and that he understood my value to his lab.

As I see it, plans aren’t just the domain of corporate staff; planning is essential, deliberate preparation for a successful scientific career.

Share knowledge

I have noticed that successful scientists do not go it alone; they have support scientists and staff helping on the sidelines. Unfortunately, individual recognition is often over emphasized, leading academics to not share certain knowledge until problems arise. Continue reading →

Chemists face employment woes – but there are ways to prosper

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The rise of the biochemist and the challenges faced by recent chemistry graduates were among US employment trends discussed by analysts from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in a webinar last week. We’ve summarised the key points for you below – let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Troubling figures

Unemployment among ACS members in 2009 and 2010 was at the highest level since 1972, when the society started collecting annual data, according to ACS researcher Gareth Edwards. “It’s a very troublesome figure,” says Edwards. “We are hoping it has at least plateaued or is going to decrease in forthcoming years.”

But biochemistry is blossoming

Brian Roberts from the BLS says employment trends for life scientists are much more positive than for chemists.

One of the reasons is that while chemists are “falling out of favour” in pharmaceutical research, biochemists are flourishing due to the shift in emphasis towards biotechnology and other life sciences in the sector.

Experience beats youth

Recent chemistry graduates are losing out to older, more experienced employees when it comes to finding a job. “In the race between people with experience and new graduates, people with experience are winning,” says David Harwell, assistant director for careers at ACS.

“Having seasoned vets on staff seems to be cheaper than hiring two [less experienced people] at half the price,” adds Edwards.

“Try before you buy”

The unpredictable financial climate in the United States has resulted in an increase in the number of people being employed on fixed-term contracts. “That’s especially true at the bachelor’s or associate level,” says Harwell. “It’s a little bit of ‘try before you buy’ for the employers.”

Have you been affected?

Are you a recent chemistry graduate struggling to find a job? Are you looking at biochemistry as an alternative option? Share your experiences in the comment box.