Career Development Meeting
Boyer Hall 6th Floor Conference Room
Tuesday 20th June, 2006
Chair: Sehat Nauli (SN)
Attending: Marcus Kaufmann (MK), Catherine Millar (CM), Graham Davies (GD) & Yungok Ihm (YI)
Election of new Vice Presidents
The election time and date will be discussed at the next SoPS Executive Committee Board Meeting to occur on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006. SN has agreed to serve as VP of the Career Committee until December 2006
GD mentioned a couple of things related to the SoPS in general. There are varying amount of resources available for Postdoc Society at the various UCs. UCLA is probably right in the middle. GD would like SoPS to have more resources/budget to plan events but also to have a backbone staff that would take care of the logistics of events such as providing food etc. In order to achieve this, the SoPS will have to write a letter convincing UCLA administration that a separate budget hast to be set aside for SoPS. All members of the Career Committee will work on writing a draft to give to GD as soon as possible.
Brown Bag Lunches
Two BB Lunches are planned for August and September.
In August, SN will coordinate with Earl Weinstein from the UCLA Technology Transfer Group for a lunch between 12-2p. Dr. Weinstein got his Ph.D at MIT working on micro RNA and is currently working with UCLA scientists interested in starting companies or licensing their technologies to other companies.
In September, MK will plan a lunch with Eric Scerri, a Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr. Scerri studies how chemical concepts could be explained through Physics as well as how certain aspects of Chemistry is being taught.
Events
Two events are planned for Fall 2006.
A seminar discussing various aspects of time management for postdocs and faculty. This event will be organized by Maggie Wang with the help of SN. GD suggested a potential speaker, Prof. Sandra Schmid from The Scripps Research Institute. Maggie/SN will contact her before our committee next meeting.
A seminar on writing will be organized by MK. MK contacted Michael Alley at the Univ of Virginia, who wrote a book on scientific writing. As it happened, Prof Alley usually gives daylong workshops on writing. Given the cost associated with flying him to UCLA and hosting a 1-day event, this is probably not going to happen anytime soon. He did suggest a few names of potential speakers to MK and MK will investigate which ones would be available to come before our committee next meeting.
There were some discussions about what future events will be interesting. YI mentioned that she's mostly interested in events exploring academic careers. Based on our Committee's experience in the past, the most well-attended events were those about academic careers for example: the Hiring Committe, Surviving as an Asssistant Professor etc. Less attended events were those exploring optional careers such as the Careers in the Liberal Arts. Despite the decreasing number of postdocs getting jobs in academia (from ~60% in 1960s to ~20% now), that still seems to be the type of jobs that everyone prepares for. The committee will discuss in the future possible ways to inform postdocs about some statistics regarding employment in academia, as opposed to industry and government as well as some other places.
Suggestions through email
Julie Akana sent an email to suggest future events that the Committee should consider:
1. Non-traditional career paths such as science writing, editing, project management
2. Perfecting your resume
3. Networking
4. Working a career fair
Minutes of SoPS meeting held on 10/19/2005 (Minutes by GI/CM)
Attending: Catherine Millar (CM), Izabela Giriat, (IG) Yohannes Shiferaw (YS), Ann Simon (AS), Marcus Kaufman (MK), Gopal Iyer(GI) and Sehat Nauli (SN)
Panel Dicussion with Professors from Liberal Arts Colleges
SN brought us up to date on the progress he has made finding Professors from Liberal Arts colleges to participate in a panel discussion. SN has confirmed 5 panelists and will look after logistics (room reservation/lunch and parking reimbursements). The tentative date for the panel discussion is Wednesday January 18th 2006.
Panel Discussion with Professors from UCLA: Maximizing the impact of your research.
YS has has written a proposal for a panel discussion dealing with the process of getting research published. YS suggested that this may be too focused for a 1hour event and suggested a broader discussion. All attendants agreed that we should seek panelists who are experienced researchers and at least one member who has editorial experience at a major journal. Suggestions for panelists were made by the committee members, and YS agreed to contact them. The proposed date is sometime in the 1st week of December.
Career Development Committee Website/SoPS website
CM asked members of the committee for feedback on the SoPS website. AS said that the website was intimidating for many postdocs, and all other members agreed. It was decided collectively that several members would meet to add content to the site and to work on educating the postdoc community on how to effectively use the site. GI volunteered to find a venue for this meeting.
Vice President Nomination.
A brief discussion was held to choose a suitable candidate for the Vice-President for Career Development, beginning November 2005. IG has volunteered for the position.
Chair: Catherine Millar (CM)
Attending: Yohannes Shiferaw (YS), Marcus Kaufmann (MK), Sehat Nauli (SN) & Leanne McKay (LM)
Minutes taken by LM.1) Feedback from faculty panel discussion
General feedback – those who attended the faculty panel discussion found it informative and useful.
Committee discussed ways to improve future discussions:
- Be more focused on what should be discussed.
- Have each panel member summarize at end.
- Have a clearer outline of what should be discussed as it was clear from this panel discussion that the topics were many and varied.
- Have someone mediate the discussion and questions.
2) Teaching event(s)
SN proposed inviting a faculty member from a Liberal Arts College to discuss what is involved in this type of institution.
It was decided upon that this event should be a panel format. This panel is tentatively scheduled for January.
SN will look into who to contact to take part in this panel discussion.
If this is a success and there is interest in hearing from faculty at different types of institutions e.g. community colleges or research institutions like UCLA, then this will be organized in future.
CM to add a link on SoPS website to the UCLA graduate teaching program
3) Ad hoc Lunchtime events
CM waiting to hear back on a potential guest speaker.
4) Manuscript-writing seminars
YS suggested organizing a seminar on manuscript writing – will put together a synopsis of the type of discussion that would be helpful.
Committee members will refer all comments/suggestions to YS.
Tentative date: November 2005
CM – UCLA website has information on courses offered to help with writing – UCLA SKILLNET.
6) Career Committee Organization
CM’s term of office as VP of Career Development (6 months, as per SoPS Constitution) ends in October. This position will therefore be open and the Career committee would like to hear from anyone interested in this post.
7) Additional items
CM – career centre has many seminars/discussions organized over the next few months for graduate students and postdocs. Information will be posted on the SoPS website.
LM – to meet with Jayshree this month to organize HR seminar in Jan.
Career Development Meeting
Tuesday 18th April, 2006
Chair: Izabela Giriat
Attending: Marcus Kaufmann (MK), Catherine Millar (CM), Yohannes Shiferaw (YS), Anne Simon (AS) & Maggie Wang (MW)
1) Brown Bag Lunches
IG updated the panel on the planned Brown Bag lunch with a consultant from RAND this event has been postponed from April 7th due to a scheduling conflict with SoPS pub night. MW will follow up with the speaker and this event will be rescheduled – hopefully for the end of April.
IG mentioned another possible lunch speaker that she and Gopal Iyer are planning to invite. MK suggested a colleague in the field of philosophical chemistry and AS suggested inviting people from the biotechnology industry (she has a contact at Amgen). We discussed the possibility of a series of invitees from different types of biotech companies, and IG will contact the SoPS Business Development Committee to see if they have some contacts.
2) Jean Luc Dumont "The Three Laws of Presentation" May 4th 2-3:30pm
YS will organize refreshments. All panelists will post flyers closer to the event. IG will email the postdoc list closer to the date.
3) Women in Science Panel
A significant portion of the meeting was devoted to planning the upcoming "Women in Science" panel that will be co-hosted by SoPS and the UCLA Career Center. AS has discussed the format with Jayshree Radhakrishnan (Career Counselor) and she presented their plans to the committee. The format for the panel includes an introduction, prepared questions posed by AS, and questions from the floor. AS will draft questions and send them to the committee for approval.
AS also reported that Jayshree has proposed a bi-monthly meeting for women in science, where they could discuss issues that are relevant to them in their careers.
4) Time Management Event
MW proposed an event dealing with time management for postdocs – she and YS will look into finding a speaker(s) and are aiming to stage this event in late July/early August 2006.
5) Foreign postdocs
The committee discussed the possibility of organizing an event dealing with issues faced by foreign postdocs working in the US (suggested last month by Sehat Nauli). The diverse nature of the postdoc population makes a panel event hard to organize, so it was suggested that perhaps interested foreign postdocs could meet at a casual event (possibly lunch).
6) Future Events
IG had information from past Career Committee Member Shilpa Gandre on an interesting speaker who deals with alternative career pathways for postdocs. IG will make enquiries in order to find out how much this speaker would charge and to get feedback from other postdoc organizations.
Minutes of SoPS meeting held on 01/13/2006 (Minutes by IG)
Attending: Catherine Millar (CM), Leanne McKay (LM), Ann Simon (AS), Marcus Kaufman (MK), Gopal Iyer (GI) and Izabela Giriat (IG).
Finalized the details of the Liberal Arts College event - the event was to be video tapped, and the recording would later on be put up on the web-site.
Started discussion of future events:
Publishing in science – Yohannes had brought up a while ago the idea of having a panel of professors speak about the process of publishing papers. The committee was interested and thought it would be a good idea to put up such an event. Some questions that came to mind were:
How important is the cover letter when submitting a paper?
How do you decide when and where to send your manuscript?
How do you deal with rejection? How do you appeal the decision?
IG will e-mail Yohannes and ask him if he’s still interested in pursuing the event. MK and GI said that they would be willing to help him.
Human resources – LM had previously contacted two companies with the idea of having their HR department come and talk about the job application procedures in their respective companies. The idea has morphed into possibly including people from start-ups and small companies too. LM was going to re-connect and see what she could make out of this idea, in collaboration with Jayshree of the career center.
Women in science panel – Last year’s "Women in Academia" panel discussion organized by the career center was very well received. A follow up event sounded like a good idea, maybe with focus on sciences in particular (versus academia in general). IG will call Jayshree from the career center to ask her what kind of feed-back they got from the "Women in Academia" panel discussion and see if they are thinking of doing a follow-up event where we could collaborate. Ideas that came to mind in regards to the event:
Have a psychologist on the panel to help give back-ground and relevant information on the issue.
Address the myths versus realities (e.g. Is it easier to be a mom in academia?)
Should general family concerns be included too?
Brown bag lunches or after hour drinks series – discussion has been going on of installing a casual series where a small group of post-docs can get together with a person that has pursued interested outside research. Possibilities include people in:
Government (e.g. policy makers)
Think-tank organizations
School administration (e.g. chancellor or dean)
Science writer or reporter
LM was going to approach a science writer she has seen on campus, and AS was going to ask Arlene Russell (a senior lecturer in the chemistry department). An attempt will be made to get this series up and running by February.
A comprehensive university panel – depending on the success of the liberal arts college panel the idea was put forward by GI that a similar event could be organized focused on comprehensive universities.
Commented on up-coming events by the career center:
Networking Skills for PhDs. Thurs. Feb. 9, 2006. 5:30-7:30 pm at the Career Center, 3rd Floor
Creating the Doctoral Level Resume. Thurs. Feb. 16, 2006. 5:30-7:30 pm at the Career Center, 3rd Floor
Other issues – how to recruit new people to the career committee? A few suggestions came up:
Advertise the meetings on the SoPS web-site. IG will be doing this from now on.
Use fliers to inform people of the meeting. AS will try and design a flier that we can use next time.
Minutes of SoPS meeting held on 02/09/2006 (Minutes by SN)
Attending: Catherine Millar (CM), Leanne McKay (LM), Ann Simon (AS), Markus Kaufmann (MK), Sehat Nauli (SN), Izabela Giriat (IG), Yohannes Shiferaw (YS) and Margaret Wang (MW).
*Publishing in science*
YS contacted several UCLA professors to gauge their interest and availability. Two professors have agreed to come: Robert Modlin and Steve Smale. One declined: Joan Valentine. Two others have not responded: Owen Witte and Charles Stewart. YS asked the other members to e-mail him more names that he could contact and asked MK to personally ask his boss if he would be interested. It was agreed that the panel should consist of at least 4 professors. The event is scheduled for March. YS will wait another week to see if additional professors are interested in attending, before deciding on a date/time and room. MK will take care of the refreshments for this event. SN suggested using the IPAM room if Boyer Hall is not available (SN will forward the e-mail of IPAM to YS).
*Human resources event*
LM is leaving in a month and has not been able to contact Jayshree at the Career Center to discuss the possibility of inviting HR representatives for a possible postdoc event. LM will not be able to finish organizing the event. No other member expressed interest in taking over the task. LM will pass information to the committee regarding what she has done and the event will be on hold until somebody expresses interested in it.
*Women in Science*
IG contacted Jayshree but won’t be able to meet with her until March. CM brought to IG attention the website for the Association of Women in Science (AWIS). The organization is based in Washington DC and has had various seminars dealing subjects such as career and family and mentorship. IG will e-mail the association to get more information on the events they have held.
*Brown Bag Lunch*
The first brown bad lunch event has been organized by LM and will feature Karen Heyman, a freelance journalist whose work has been featured in "The Scientist" magazine. AS suggested fliers be posted around the lunch table or meeting area, so participants can find the event. Future ideas for brown bag lunches are: guests from the Rand Corporation (to discuss possible careers in think tanks - MW), Arlene Russell (director of the "Preparing Future Faculty" program - AS) and teachers (PhDs that have transitioned into K-12 - IG).
*Other events*
The Liberal Arts College panel went very well, and it seems to have reached a population of post-doc (and graduate students) that we haven’t seen in other events. This led us to speculate that similar panels focusing on teaching-only and comprehensive colleges may be a good idea. AS will look into setting up the teaching only college panel (she already had people approach her telling her they would be interested in such an event). IG will e-mail GI to ask him if he would be interested in setting up a comprehensive college panel (he had mentioned it in the previous meeting). Such panels could be done in collaboration with the Graduate Center – IG will e-mail Christine to discuss the possibility.
MW suggested an event to address time management in academia. In particular, how do professors manage their schedules and what strategies allow them to equilibrate research, teaching, mentoring and service to the university. LM suggested asking a professional organizer to introduce basic ideas and concepts of time management (LM will contact her to see if she would be interested). This could serve as an introduction, followed by the real-life experiences of a professor that’s a good time manager. This event could also be done in collaboration with the Graduate Center – IG will e-mail Christine to discuss the possibility.
Jean Luc Doumont contacted IG to inform her that he will be touring Southern California in May, and was interested to know if UCLA would like him to give a talk again (last year he did a talk on successful presentations that was well received). IG would e-mail the rest of the committee the subjects he lectures on and depending on the preferences would then contact Christine (from the Graduate Center) to see if they would be interested in collaborating on the project – and costs (about $1500). IG would also have to clear the larger expenditure with the executive committee.
*Other issues*
A flier was made to invite by AS to publicize the career committee meetings, but we will also send out invitation e-mails, similar to the one sent out by the communications committee, which already generated 3 positive responses. AS will redact the e-mail.
*Career Center events*
The Career Center will be hosting "How to Create a Doctoral Level Resume" Thursday February 16th from 5:30 to 7:30pm in the career center.
Minutes of SoPS Career Committee meeting held on 3/17/2006, in little room in Ackerman (rain prevented from using our usual meeting point: Kerkhoff patio). Minutes taken by AS.
Attending: Catherine Millar (CM), Sehat Nauli (SN), Gopal Iyer (GI), Anne Simon (AS) and Izabela Giriat (IG), as well as two new members, recruited through the invitation email: Helen Su (HS) and Simone Benassi (SB).
Sent email comments: Margaret Wang (MW).
Past events:
Invitation email
Successful: we recruited 2 new persons!
We will need however to recruit a new Chair in June, as our actual chair, Izabela (IG), is going on Maternity leave!
Discussion/Feed-backs on the Publishing in Science Panel
Good attendence.
There were a lot of graduate students.
If we do this again, it might be useful to have a basic introduction about publishing for people who did not publish before.
IG suggested having a technical presentation about how to write and present a paper as a possible follow-up event.
Discussion about the kind of question asked, and the role of the moderator:
The questions were very specific, it might be better if there is an opportunity for the panelist to say what they think is relevant without being biased by our questions.
Suggestions for next panel: give 5 min. for each panelist to let us know what they think is important. Give them the questions few days before the event, but only after they have time to think about the subject on their own.
Events planned
No major event planned for April (a possible Brown Bag Lunch April 7th), and several in May (May 4th, Jean-Luc Doumont workshop, May 11th Women in Science discussion Panel).
Jean-Luc Doumont’s workshop "Three Laws of Communications"
May 4th
In collaboration with the Graduate Center who will pay half of the expenses of this visiting speaker.
Women in Science Panel
Purpose: follow-up on the Women in Academia discussion Panel organized last fall by the career center.
Suggested date: May 11th, 2-4 pm.
This will be a collaborative organization with Christine Wilson from Graduate Students Affairs and Jayshree Radhakrishnan from the Career Center.
We want the panel to be about women in academic sciences, rather then science in general - although people liked the idea of hearing about women in science in general, they thought that could be a follow up panel.
Although Christine and Jayshree volunteered to moderate this event, we decided it would be best if a post-doc would act as a moderator, because they may be better in tone with what we want to get out of the panel. One of the members (AS) volunteered to be the moderator.
We need panelist who will not be afraid of being honest and direct to discuss about gender issues. We also discuss the idea of adding a psychologist, who might offer advice on how to deal with difficult situations, without counseling specific panelist but giving general suggestions instead. The psychologist could give some background information regarding the general problems encountered by women in academic sciences, and some key statistics. We should also mention the reduction in the salary gap, at UCLA.
Panelists suggested: Judith Smith – Life Sciences, Robin Houk – Chemistry and Carrie Miceli – Immunology.
Judith Smith was proposed by Jayshree Radhakrishnan (in a meeting she had with IG), Carrie Miceli and Robin Houk by GI. HS proposed to approach Carrie Miceli who she knows.
We thought it would be best to initially just describe the panel to the participants (e.g. not give them the questions we want to ask them) as to give them a few days were to think about the subject and come up with things they believe are important. But because we don't want to catch them off guard either, we would send them the list of questions we are interested in a day or two before the panel, so that they can look it over, and can let us know if there are specific questions they would prefer not to answer.
Brown Bag Lunches
We had a successful 1st Brown Bag Lunch last month with a Science Writer.
On March 23rd there will be another one with Pr. Fred Eiserling, Associate Dean of Life Science and previous Dean of Life Science, to discuss about what goes on behind the scene of academic research universities. The place should be the patio of Kerkoff, but we need to come up with another place if it rains. IG will email Christine to reserve a room. Setting: sign-up for a maximum of 15 people.
We will probably have another one for April, with someone from the think tank Rand, from Santa Monica. MW told us that one of colleagues (an economist) at RAND is willing to talk his experience at a think tank. He's available on the 1st Friday of April (April 7th). He's suggested Gotham Hall on Third Street (to be near Blue Bus stops)—but we could propose other places.
Additional suggestion for Brown bag lunches: GI suggested Jared Diamond, and IG a person from the Natural History museum.
Panel Discussion projects
We need to try to have events planned for June and afterwards…
Teaching only Colleges discussion Panel
AS is interested in organizing it, but not in the near future. AS has contact with Santa Monica City College Faculty.
GI has contact with people in Cal State LA and other institutions; he could provide further contact information.
Comprehensive University discussion Panel
GI has contact information too and can help facilitate, but cannot be in charge of organizing the event.
Time Management Panel
Suggested by MW.
Christine Wilson knows someone who could do a practical talk, with tips on time management.
A second part would involve professors who feel they have good time management skills and would share that with us.
Panel for non-resident
Suggested by SN.
Purpose: discuss different issues, such as cultural differences, immigration issues etc…
CM believes the Chinese Association has organized something similar in the past. She will ask them for more details.
HR discussion panel
Idea started by Leanne McKay, who left for a post-doc in France.
Purpose: to understand how do companies hire Ph.Ds, what are small and big companies expecting from Ph.Ds, and how would a Ph.D fit in their company.
There are two sides to this: the point of view of smaller companies (start-ups, small biotechs), and bigger one (such as pharmaceutical companies).
SN suggested attending classes in the UCLA School of Business to learn about different companies, but GI mentioned that even though post-doc are allowed by the university to audit classes, they couldn’t do so in the Business School of Business.
Career Development Meeting
Thursday 18th May, 2006
Chair: Izabela Giriat (IG)
Attending: Anne Simon (AS), Sehat Nauli (SN) Markus Kaufmann (MK)
1) Search for a new chair
IG is stepping down as chair of the Career Development Committee meeting. SN will take over her tasks until July. By then, a new chair of the Career Development Committee needs to be found. AS is no longer able to attend the meetings of the committee. Thanks to both of them of for their commitment to the postdoctoral society and their contributions to the success of past event.
2) Brown Bag Lunches
The next Brown Bag lunch will be with Eric Scerri (www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/scerri/). He is a philosopher of chemistry and lecturer at the UCLA chemistry department. Date and time will be announced, it will be hopefully end of May or in June otherwise in September. Eric Scerri’s new book will be published this summer: The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance. MK is organizing this event.
Future potential guest: Jerry Diamond, will be contacted by Gopal. SN will contact Eric from the business development committee about representatives of biotech or a patent attorney. AS suggested Christine Miller, psychologist from the women in science panel, for a brown bag lunch.
Review of past events:
3) Jean Luc Dumont "The Three Laws of Communication"
IG, AS, SN and MK stated that he gave a clear and inspiring presentation. Noise, as a term to describe all disturbing factors in oral or written communication was found to be an often underestimated problem in communication. One take home message was: never blame the others, do the best with the circumstances you have (room, light, audience, number of words in an abstract or paper).
4) Women in Science Panel
A video of the event will be available at the postdoc web site. IG and AS were involved in organizing the panel with the career center. They mentioned that the audience thought that it was informative. The downside was that one panelist couldn’t make it and one was coming late. It would have been livelier with more panelists. Both panelist faculties were very determined and did not observe major gender differences in research. Psychologist Christine Miller gave a very good overview on gender issues at work place.
Future Events
5) Time Management Event
There is still an event planed on this subject. See minutes from the last meeting. SN mentioned that there is an event on campus this week on time management; he will post it on the web site.
6) Seminar in successful writing
After having a PI panel on academic publishing organized in March, AS, IG, SN and MK propose to have another workshop on effective writing. MK will find out if Michael Alley (http://www.me.vt.edu/people/faculty/alley.html), author of “the craft of scientific writing” is giving workshops at the west coast or if he knows an excellent teacher on writing in the Los Angeles area, preferentially a person that not only published scientific literature and a person who is able to teach writing in a lecture format to scientists.