Association
of Neuroscience Departmentsand Programs
Association
of Neuroscience Departments
The
Association of Neuroscience Departments and Programs (ANDP) held their annual
Spring Meeting May 6-8, 2000 at the Georgetown University Conference Center.
New to the meeting was a workshop planned, organized and presented by the
inaugural class of ANDP Training Fellows entitled “The Trainee’s Perspective”. The
workshop addressed issues in graduate and postdoctoral training including how
students choose a graduate program, professional development training
opportunities, irregularities in postdoctoral salary and benefits, and the
invisibility of postdoctoral fellows.
Alison
Hall, chair of the ANDP Training Fellows program, opened the workshop by
describing the goals of the Training Fellows program and outlining the
activities of the Training Fellows during the past year.
The activities included a leadership interview with their program
director, designing and distributing a questionnaire to students and postdocs,
and organizing the 2000 Spring Meeting workshop.
Laura
Stone, a postdoctoral fellow at the Vollum Institute of the Oregon Health
Sciences University, introduced the workshop and described how the activities of
the Training Fellows over the past year culminated in the topics of the
workshop. She discussed how the workshop evolved out of both the
leadership interviews and the results of the questionnaire administered to peers
at 6 institutions, with approximately 80 responses.
Stone focused on how the Training Fellows used these two experiences to
identify issues of concern to both trainees and program directors.
From
the leadership interviews, the Training Fellows learned that program directors
were very interested in how students choose a graduate program.
Anne Baldwin, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
discussed many facets of a student’s decision to choose a graduate program.
The primary resource students utilize is the World Wide Web.
Baldwin provided tips on how to improve a program’s presence on the
web, from the departments web page to the importance of keywords and
descriptions. The ultimate
decision-maker for a prospective student, however, is the “gut reaction”. Baldwin discussed how an effective recruitment weekend could
sway that “gut” feeling.
Respondents
to the Training Fellow’s questionnaire indicated they desired greater training
in professional skills as a component of their graduate education.
In particular, students desired additional training in teaching and
communication skills such as grant writing as well as exposure to applied skills
including business principles and technology transfer.
Anita McCauley, a graduate student at Wake Forest University School of
Medicine, described many different approaches being utilized by universities
across the country to implement these types of training experiences into
graduate education. McCauley also
emphasized the need to talk to graduate students so that professional
development resources could be implemented that best fit faculty as well as
student interests.
The
Training Fellows workshop also focused on important issues in postdoctoral
training. Annette Gilchrist, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern
University, addressed inequities in postdoctoral employment.
She indicated many of these inequities arise due to disparities in job
classification and position titles. With
each job title for a postdoctoral fellow comes a unique set of guidelines for
salary and benefits. As a result,
postdoctoral fellows in the same lab with similar training can have very
different salaries and benefits, which can be very demoralizing Gilchrist said.
She emphasized the need for postdoctoral training committees to evaluate
postdoctoral training experiences and equity issue as well as to balance the
needs of the postdoctoral fellow with those of the principal investigator.
Concerns
about postdoctoral training extend beyond job classification and employment
status. Benjamin Walker,
postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University Medical Center, said that in many
institutions postdoctoral fellows are “invisible”.
They are viewed as the property of the PI and therefore ignored by both
the department and the institution. The
result is an inability to identify postdoctoral fellows within and across
programs, limiting opportunities for networking and research collaborations.
Because postdoctoral fellows are largely invisible, the additional
training they need to successfully advance in their career is left up to the PI.
Walker indicated that postdoctoral fellows and their respective programs
would be better served if professional skills’ training, such as how to give a
job talk, was a collaborative effort provided by many faculty members.
He also suggested establishing a postdoctoral listserv and a postdoc
organization to provide regular communication and a sense of community to
postdoctoral fellows.
In
addition to the presentations given by each Training Fellow, two outside
speakers were invited to share their perspectives on graduate and postdoctoral
training. Dr. Teresa Sullivan, the Vice President and Graduate Dean of
the University of Texas-Austin described the professional development program
instituted for graduate students at the University of Texas.
Dr. Eliene Augenbraun, Vice President and CEO of ScienCentral, Inc.,
described her experiences in establishing a postdoctoral training program at
Johns Hopkins University.
Submitted
by Anita McCauley, 1999-2000 ANDP Training Fellow
1999-2000
ANDP
Fellows' PowerPoint Presentation
1999-2000
ANDP Training Program Fellows
Photo of
1999-2000 ANDP Training Fellows