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Annual Spring Meeting - Summary |
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SUMMARY
| REPORT ON TRAINING FELLOWS WORKSHOP
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
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