The BSD PDA at the 2016 National Postdoctoral Association Annual Meeting!

This past weekend the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) held their annual meeting in Grand Rapids, MI on “Supporting Postdocs, Promoting Discovery”.  Five BSD postdocs traveled to the meeting to talk about the BSD PDA Survey Committee’s 2016 National Postdoctoral Survey, Future of Research symposia with colleagues from New York and Boston, and to present posters on FOR Chicago and Outreach efforts. 

The leaders of the BSD PDA Survey Committee, Erica Westerman, Joe Pierre, and Sean McConnell facilitated the workshop, “Creating a National Postdoctoral Survey: A Way of Seeing an ‘Invisible’ Population”. First, Erica Westerman introduced the need for a national postdoc survey and shared some of the data analysis from past BSD PDA surveys to highlight the kinds of information that could be gained nationally. The BSD PDA Survey Committee has surveyed our postdoctoral population since 1999-2000.  Nancy Schwartz, Dean of Postdoctoral Affairs, gave specific examples of how the BSD PDA and Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs have utilized survey data to inform divisional and institutional postdoc policies (e.g. salary/benefits, mentor training for postdocs, and the complaint resolution process) over the past 16 years.  Joe Pierre and Sean McConnell led a discussion with the audience of postdocs, administrators, and postdoc advisors on the process of creating a national survey and ideas on how to disseminate the survey to postdocs.

Kyle Dolan, co-lead organizer of Future of Research (FOR) Chicago, worked with postdocs Rodoniki Athanasiadou (New York University, NYU Postdocs Interdisciplinary Symposium) and Sarah Mazzilli (Boston University, FOR Boston) to hold an Innovation in Action session on “Creating Policy-Focused Regional Symposia for Grassroots Advocacy”. In this session, the audience learned from regional Future of Research leaders on what goes into planning a FOR symposium. In small groups, the attendees worked on different aspects of planning a symposium on postdoc advocacy with actionable ideas to bring back to their region or home institution.

Kristina Martinez, PDA President and co-chair of the Teaching and Outreach Committee, presented the poster “Scientific Outreach: University of Chicago Lab Tour for South Side Chicago Youth,” authors were Kristina Martinez, Abby Stayart, Nate Boylan, Andrew Chidester, Cara Froyd, Laurie Risner, and Nancy Schwartz.  Kyle Dolan presented the poster on “Postdoctoral Advocacy in Action: Lessons from the Future of Research Chicago Symposium,” authors were Kyle Dolan, Rianne Ellenbroek, Erin Heckler, and Nancy Schwartz.  Kyle Dolan won the first place award for this poster!

Nancy Schwartz was a plenary speaker on the “Managing Your Postdoc: Mastering the Core Competencies” panel and moderated sessions on postdoc career development collaborations with the PDA/OGPA, UChicago GRAD and myCHOICE and with the NRMN CIC Academic Network. In addition to all of her work supporting postdocs here as Dean of Postdoctoral Affairs, Nancy Schwartz has also been involved on the national level advocating for postdocs for many years.  Nancy served on the founding NPA Advisory Board among her many other advocacy efforts to support postdocs. In recognition of all these, Nancy Schwartz received this year’s NPA Distinguished Service Award! She gave an inspiring acceptance speech thanking the nominating committee and lauding all postdocs involved in active PDAs, especially giving a “shout-out” to the Future of Research organization while reminding the audience that “we are all postdocs”.

Overall, the annual NPA meeting was a very informative weekend where the BSD PDA presented their work and shared ideas with other postdocs and PDAs from around the nation.  We brought back many new ideas that we will discuss at the next PDA Steering Committee meeting and at the Friday seminar series on April 15 in conjunction with the Public Affairs Committee who will present their experiences from the AAAS Annual meeting!

If you are interested in learning more about the annual NPA meeting, the agenda is on the NPA webpage or you can look up #NPA2016 on Twitter.  Because the University of Chicago is a sustaining NPA member, all postdocs are eligible for free affiliate membership which will give you greater access to the web resources.  You can learn more about the BSD PDA on our website or by attending our next meeting!

The Future Is Ours: Make Your Voices Heard, Postdocs!

Back in undergrad I would have never imagined in 11 years I would become a postdoc. At the time, I did not know that postdocs existed. It was not until recently that I discovered that the person who mentored me during my summer research project was a postdoc. So what is this mysterious postdoc?

The National Postdoctoral Association’s definition of a postdoc is: “an individual holding a doctoral degree who is engaged in a temporary period of mentored research and/or scholarly training for the purpose of acquiring scholarly, scientific and/or professional skills needed to pursue a career path of his or her choosing.” ¹

This sounds like a fantastic position! If this is what a postdoc is supposed to be then why does the rest of the world not know more about us?

Sadly, the answer is that reality falls short of the expectations on paper. 

Jorge Cham of PhD comics said it right. ² A postdoc is like limbo where more times than not we are biding our time until we figure out what to do with our lives. 

You might be thinking that this is some overdramatic feeling. Everyone hates their job at one point or another. It cannot be that bad, right?

WRONG!

As Kendall Powell reported, postdocs are overcrowded and underpaid. ³ How can such a large workforce make almost half of the salary that non-postdoc person? Perhaps it is a case of supply and demand where the supply of postdocs is so great that people can toss out tinier wages due to resource competition.

By this point, you might ask why postdocs are putting up with this garbage. Postdocs should walk away from this lifestyle and find more jobs! That would be nice, except for the fact that majority of academic labs are still pushing for scientists to go the route of being a Principal Investigator. It is like an apprenticeship, where the master teaches the student to become like them and carry the torch of research. That would be nice except that…

Alberts et al., have shown that the number of young investigators becoming Principal Investigators and securing grant funding for their labs are on the decline. ⁴ Perhaps this is one reason why people have been doing postdocs over 10 years. People are hungry for a position but the reality of it is that jobs in academia are too far and few in between. There are plenty of jobs in other sectors such as industry, government, and non-profits where their skills acquired during their PhD and postdoc could be applied. However, many PhDs are lacking the training and mentoring to know how to look for those jobs, let alone land them. The postdoc is truly stuck in limbo waiting for their big escape.

And thus the postdoc remained unheard of…until now.

Organizations like the National Postdoctoral Association advocate for the better treatment of postdocs. Amongst other things, they have helped fight for higher pay, recognition of postdocs at institutions, capping the training period to 5 years, and encourage the mentoring and training needed to successfully transition postdocs into a variety of careers.

Nationwide, there is a movement called the Future of Research ⁵ where these issues and more are being brought to light. Symposia organized by postdocs themselves are being launched in New York, Boston, the Bay Area, and Chicago.

This is where we need your voices postdocs!

Let us change how the world sees postdocs so that we will no longer remain invisible. A postdoc should be a training period that will aid in developing the skills to pursue any career that he or she wants. It is our responsibility as postdocs now to ensure that future generations of postdocs get treated with respect and this training is a viable option for undergraduates and graduate students to consider.

Because I am a postdoc in the Midwest, I want to spread the word about our local Future of Research Symposium in Chicago is happening on October 29, 2015, from 8:00 am – 5:30 pm. ⁶

“FORChicago will be a one-day series of panel discussions and participant-led workshops with the aim to:

• Illuminate the fundamental challenges in training scientists in today’s research climate
• Propose solutions to equip the STEM postdoctorate to be leaders in diverse paths of the future career landscape
• Initiate a dialogue with key stakeholders in the Chicago area about embracing the rich community of PhD-trained talent as drivers of innovation”

Registration for the event is now open: http://futureofresearch.org/chicago/

I know I will be there. Will you?

If you are a postdoc, know postdocs, or are an advocate for postdocs please spread the word.

References:

1.       http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.nationalpostdoc.org/resource/resmgr/PDA_Toolkit/NPA_BYLAWS_-_Dec-28-2012.pdf

2.       http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1102

3.       http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-the-postdoc-1.17253

4.       http://www.pnas.org/content/112/7/1912.full

5.       http://futureofresearch.org/

6.       http://futureofresearch.org/chicago/

Written by Natasha Wadlington, Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago. 

Opinions stated are of my own belief and not directly associated with the organizations and people mentioned in this article. All images are from their respective references listed above.