Mar 22, 2019 | Events & Networking, FOR meetings, Ideas for change
On March 13th 2019, FoR ED Gary McDowell led a workshop, “Training Transitions: Pathways to Independence in Research” at the University of California Irvine School of Biological Sciences. What does “independence” mean for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers? The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study for The Next Generation Researchers Initiative (of which FoR ED Dr. Gary McDowell and FoR President Dr. Jessica Polka were members) took the definition of independence from a previous 2005 Academies study, Bridges to Independence: “The definition of ‘independence’ as a researcher in a tenure-track faculty position who has received his or her first R01 research project grant is outdated… …we define an ‘independent investigator’ as one who enjoys independence of thought… …In addition, the committee has affirmed the interconnectedness of scientific research and research training. Mentoring and research training cannot be separated from scientific research for anyone in postdoctoral- or graduate student- positions and should not be considered as separate objectives.”” The barriers that early career researchers (undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs and junior faculty) may face in establishing themselves as independent scholars are a topic of increasing discussion, in an ever more hypercompetitive academic environment. For example, a major issue for postdocs is the tension between being supported from research project grants, fulfilling the aims of someone else’s research project, rather than being in the ideal postdoc position of developing their own research project and goals, and learning how to lead a project, with mentorship from another investigator. This is just one example of the conflict that has arisen between fostering academic scholarship, and providing the labor for...
Jan 28, 2019 | Ideas for change, Policy, Sexual Harassment
The deadline to comment on changes to Title IX (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance) has been extended to January 30th. We are urging you to contact the U.S. Department of Education and submit comments; to learn more, please read on. What is Title IX? Title IX protects students and employees of educational institutions from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance. Title IX states that: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Title IX has helped women in education in various ways. What is happening with Title IX right now? At the moment the Secretary of Education is proposing rule changes to Title IX, which you can read in detail here, but a great summary is here at 500 Women Scientists. They are currently taking comments – over 65,000 have currently been submitted – on the proposed rule changes. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=ED_FRDOC_0001-0830 For more information, please check out the Take Action Tuesday page at 500 Women Scientists, this page at UAW 5810, or this site set up by a Faculty group which aggregates a resources aiming to help faculty and other educators who wish to write comments, and to encourage commenting by others inside or outside academia. It includes information on how to easily submit relevant research. You can also...
Jan 3, 2019 | Diversity in science, FOR meetings, Ideas for change, Mentoring, Personal perspectives
This is part of a series of blog posts explaining our push for centering mentoring in academia. We are organizing a meeting in Chicago in June 2019 to take action – you can learn more about the effort here. Donate to our mentoring effort! This is a post by BoD member Dr. Kaliris Salas-Ramirez. This takes us into January, which is National Mentoring Month. We will continue to discuss mentoring and provide updates as our conference planning progresses here. Mentorship, leadership, institutional policies and systemic change should be something that researchers, as part of institutions, should always be thinking about. Understanding power structures, power dynamics and engaging in bias training that includes learning about racism as a social construct, is critical for bringing about transformative change in the sciences. As professionals committed to innovation and improving the lives of others, understanding these different aspects of systems will allow us to deepen our mentoring relationships within our laboratories and departments. These play a critical role in the development of scientists at every career level and can elevate the voices of even the most marginalized and oppressed groups to promote equity in the research enterprise. Based on my lived experiences, identities and roles, I have many things to say when it comes to privilege, bias, racism and relationships in the academy. I am a Puerto Rican Neuroscientist that trained at Michigan State University (the first to graduate with a doctorate from an underrepresented group (URG), Black and Latinx, in Neuroscience) and is currently faculty at the CUNY School of Medicine (one of three people of color with PhD’s in the...
Dec 31, 2018 | FOR meetings, Fundraising, Ideas for change, Mentoring
This is part of a series of blog posts explaining our push for centering mentoring in academia. We are organizing a meeting in Chicago in June 2019 to take action – you can learn more about the effort here. Donate to our mentoring effort! We are focused on our project to center mentoring as a priority at academic institutions. We are organizing a meeting in Chicago on June 14th 2019 that is looking on what changes, and importantly how to effect them, need to take place in departments and institutions. We are aiming to bring together those working in this space already, and are discussing our proposal for a third-party to evaluate mentoring at the departmental and institutional levels. We have released a brochure summarizing the meeting, and in brief what we are doing and why we are doing it. We are calling for abstracts from those who may have best practices to share, particularly from who are not at the research-intensive institutions on which these efforts usually focus. If you would like to submit an abstract, or know of someone who would be interested, please submit using this link. We also aim to have satellite meetings, live-streaming the Chicago talks to campuses around the country but allowing departments or institutions interested in moving forward in the mentoring space to hear the discussions and discuss how to take action. Please let us know if you think your campus/organization might be interested in providing a space for a satellite meeting, by emailing info@futureofresearch.org We are still asking for help in raising funds for this meeting, and hope that maybe at the end of the...
Dec 29, 2018 | FOR meetings, Ideas for change, Mentoring, Resources
This is part of a series of blog posts explaining our push for centering mentoring in academia. We are organizing a meeting in Chicago in June 2019 to take action – you can learn more about the effort here. Donate to our mentoring effort! Today we wanted to share some reading, “Transforming mentorship in STEM by training scientists to be better leaders” – and the blogpost by the authors explaining the paper in Small Pond Science – for those who have not yet seen it. The authors provide survey data pointing to both the need and desire for better mentoring, and suggests best practices, including resources and a model implemented at the University of Colorado Boulder. Donate to our mentoring effort!...
Dec 27, 2018 | FOR meetings, Ideas for change, Mentoring
This is part of a series of blog posts explaining our push for centering mentoring in academia. We are organizing a meeting in Chicago in June 2019 to take action – you can learn more about the effort here. Donate to our mentoring effort! This is a guest post by a member of the FoR Board of Directors, Dr. Jack Nicoludis. Despite diversity initiatives throughout the biomedical research enterprise, from institutions to funding agencies, there is still a lack of diversity in academia, with the least amount of diversity in the highest positions. While enrollment in PhD programs by underrepresented minority (URM) students has increased significantly (from 2.5 to 9% of the total population of graduate students in basic sciences from 1980 to 2014), URM assistant faculty have grown only moderately (3.9% to 5.8%) (Gibbs et al., 2014). In fact, Gibbs et al. (2014) found, using a model of the pathway from graduate student to faculty, that the percentage of URM graduate students is statistically uncoupled from the URM hiring rate. Here I will discuss how improving mentoring may be a way to increase diversity in academia. Within the corporate world, there is also a problem retaining and promoting URM workers (Dobbin and Kalev, 2016). Many measures to combat workplace discrimination, such as mandatory diversity trainings, fail to increase diversity and in some cases even show regression in diversity. Even more poignantly, when grievance systems fail to seriously investigate claims, workers stop speaking up and companies become oblivious to discrimination problems. In this example we can see a clear parallel to a major discrimination issue in...
