ASSOCIATION OF NEUROSCIENCE DEPARTMENTS AND PROGRAMS
SPRING MEETING SUMMARY
Georgetown University Conference Center
Washington, DC
May 6-8, 2000

The Annual Spring Meeting 2000 of the ANDP was held at the Georgetown University Conference Center, May 6-8, with 83 members and invited speakers in attendance. Three half-day, plenary sessions included the following sessions:

Session 1.  Diversity in Science

“Women in Science: Is There Equal Opportunity and Equal Treatment?”

A number of topics relating to the current status of women scientists were presented with regard to questions of equal opportunity and treatment, increasing recruitment, promotion and retention and an update on government-sponsored and academic based initiatives.

ANDP President, Barbara Talamo (Tufts University) discussed data from the l998 ANDP survey indicating that women represent  45% of predoctoral students, 38% of postdoctoral fellows, 32% of Assistant Professors, 26% of Associate Professors  and 29% of Full Professors.

Data published in Nature show that on an international level, the membership of women in prestigious nationally recognized scientific academies continues to be relatively low:  Turkey - 15%, Norway - 11%, USA - 6%, UK - 3/6%, Italy - 2.6%, Netherlands - 0.4%, Russia - 1.7%.

Dr. Nancy Hopkins (MIT) described the discouraging situation with regard to the number women faculty at MIT and then addressed the question of “why does the pipeline leak?” and expressed concern that the relatively poor status of women faculty in terms of numbers, facilities, institutional support, etc. can lead to a negative perception among female students with regard to their professional aspirations.

Dr. Story Landis (NINDS) described the situation of women at NIH where 15% of intramural scientists are women and no laboratory or branch chief positions are filled by women.

Dr. Donna Dean (NIH) concluded the session with comments on the efforts of the federal government to address issues of adequate representation of women, minorities and handicapped personnel in the scientific workforce.  They recommend political activity, leverage, and empowerment of these groups, with mentoring provided at scientific societies.  Networking and high visibility of women leaders are important in career development at mid and senior levels.  The importance of considering a variety of career options and measures of success was emphasized

“Models for Minority Training”

Several models of minority training were presented and discussed by Dr. Joanne Berger-Sweeney (Wellesley College) who serves as Co-Director of the Minority Training Grant co-sponsored by the Society for Neuroscience; Dr. Joe Martinez (Univ. Texas, San Antonio), Director of the Minority Training Grant co-sponsored with the American Psychological Association and ANDP; and Dr. James Townsel (Meharry Medical College) who discussed a proposed minority training grant to be sponsored by ANDP.

According to data from the recent ANDP survey, of 412 Ph.D.s awarded in neuroscience in l998, 235 (57%) were Caucasian, 58 (14.1%) were Asian-American, 13 (3.2%) were African-American and 11 (3%) were Hispanic.  A panel discussion with speakers and questions from the audience produced a lively discussion with regard to such issues as how training programs can be made more attractive to minorities, criteria for identifying potentially successful students and how best to encourage them, the need for more minority faculty and, in general, how to encourage more qualified minority undergraduates to consider graduate training in neuroscience, including ways to develop effective partnerships with high schools.

Session 2:  Training

“Postdoctoral Training-- The Trainee’s Perspective” – This session was organized by a group of five ANDP Training Fellows and their mentor, Dr. Alison Hall of Case Western Reserve University.  This is part of a new ANDP program that provided the trainees with the opportunity to develop an appreciation of broad issues facing leaders in graduate education in neuroscience.  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. 

“Graduate Training Models” - This session included a description of the Penn State Integrated training program presented by Andrew Ewing and representatives of two of the 40 current NSF-supported IGERT training grants at Brandeis (Eve Marder) and University of Arizona (Leslie Tolbert) followed by a panel discussion.

Session 3:  Government Initiatives; Government Policy on Research and Training

A number of representatives from federal agencies gave presentations, including: Dr. David Lipman (NLM) “Implications of Electronic Publishing, Dr. Steve Koslow (NIMH) “Human Brain Project and Neuroinformatics”, Dr. Story Landis (NINDS) “NIH View of the Value of Physically Clustering Basic, Translational and Clinical Neuroscience Research Activities” among others.

The session closed with a panel question and answer period.

Session 4. ANDP Business Meeting

A brief business meeting was held at the close of the conference.  The Treasurer’s Report was presented by Dr. Cheryl Sisk (ANDP Treasurer).  Dr. Kay Fite (Secretary) recommended and received unanimous approval of six new programs as members of ANDP (Institute of Psychiatry, University of London – International Affiliate Graduate Program and 5 new undergraduate programs: Emory University, Northeastern Illinois University, University of Minnesota, Brigham Young University and Johns Hopkins University).  A proposed change in the ANDP By-Laws, Article III - Officers section was unanimously accepted.

Dr. Barbara Talamo (ANDP President) reported on a variety of ANDP activities undertaken over the past year, including publication of an article in Nature Neuroscience (R. R. Mize, B. R. Talamo, R. I. Schoenfeld, L. K. Huffman and R. E.  Fellows, “ Neuroscience training at the turn of the century: a summary report of the third annual ANDP survey” 2000, 3: 433-436.) The full survey is posted on the ANDP website.  President-Elect Ed Stricker will be developing a yearly survey that will be more focused and less-time consuming to complete than the 5-year survey.

The 2001 ANDP Spring Meeting is scheduled for the first weekend in May (May 5-6, 2001) and will be held at the Marriott Metro Center Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C.

Summary provided by Dr. Katherine V. Fite, Secretary ANDP