Jen, John, and the science ladder

A CV and cover letter are sitting on your desk – or rather desktop. They’re from a recent college grad who wants to get some more research experience before applying to grad school. This wasn’t a standout student, but you see potential. You consider the academic achievements, the research experience, the letters of reference from professors. To hire or not?

Many things factor into the decision, but have you stopped to check whether gender might be one?

Last fall, a striking study was published in PNAS using this very scenario. Tenure-track faculty from chemistry, physics, and biology departments at six large research universities were asked to assess the likelihood of hiring a student for a lab manager position. Some saw materials for a male candidate, some for a female one. They were actually the same materials, only with “Jennifer” switched for “John” and “she” for “he”. You might know what’s coming…

John ranked higher than Jen. Actually the faculty “liked” Jen more, but John’s ratings for competence and hireability were higher. John was offered a higher starting salary (by about 15%). And John was offered more mentoring – as defined by providing help with a tough concept or encouraging him to stay in the field or focus on research. The scores for both John and Jen were moderate, but John’s scores were consistently and statistically significantly different.

The study also compared the scores given by male and female faculty. Depending upon your perspective, the result might be surprising or not (I’m in the “not” category). Both male and female faculty exhibited gender bias.

Jo Handelsman, the senior author on the PNAS paper, is a professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale and an HHMI investigator; the study was run by Corinne Moss-Racusin, a psychology postdoc at the university. At a panel on gender bias in academia this week, I listened to Dr. Handelsman explain how she ended up on a social science experiment. The curious thing about this study is that, unfortunately, the results should not be that surprising. They recapitulate observations from decades of social science studies. With equal qualifications, men are considered more competent, better qualified, worth more money.

Yet as she discussed the issue of gender bias with her colleagues, she kept encountering denial. I’ve heard some of them myself. “Do you really think that’s still a problem?” “It might happen at _____ but not here.” ”That doesn’t happen in science, because we’re trained to look at evidence.” Now we have the evidence that it really does happen in science. So what do we do about it?

From ASBMB Women in Academe Task Force Report (ASBMB Today, Feb 2012)

Often discussions regarding the gender gap in science (with regard to recruitment, advancement, and pay) seem to focus on what women can do (Act this way! Negotiate!) and what can be done to convince us to join and remain in the pipeline (Programs! Education!). In biochemistry, women are joining the pipeline in equal numbers as men. But in academia, attrition occurs at the application phase. Women make up less than 30% of the applicants and appointees to tenure-track positions. Women cite family and work-life balance as influential factors in making career decisions.* These are important issues, and I think the emergence of more family/life-friendly policies are fantastic and beneficial for both men and women.

But we also need to consider what to do about subtle gender bias, which influences the mentoring women receive (or don’t) and the valuation of our work. There were some suggestions in the panel discussion aimed at addressing gender bias more directly – and there’s substantial overlap with tactics to combat racial bias, as well. One was helping both faculty and trainees understand bias and the evidence for it, because raising awareness of bias can reduce its impact. To this end, UW-Madison developed a guidebook for search committee chairs to help reduce the impact of bias and improve diversity in faculty searches. Even games can help raise awareness of bias. Another possibility (which is highly debated in science) was blinding reviews of papers and grants. One of the more subtle ideas was making sure that images of women and minorities in science are visible everyday, because visual priming also reduces bias but only lasts 24 hours.

Much of the conscious bias toward women in science (and society, in general) has dissipated. But the data illustrate that we’ve still got a long way to go. The first step is to recognize and accept that. The next…? That will depend on departments and administrations – with some continual prodding. Looking around my institution, I have hope that the gender gap in science will continue to shrink in the years to come.

 

* Men more frequently cite “departmental culture” as a major factor. I can’t kind of wonder if things like work-life balance and family issues are coded in it.

 

Related

Eva Asmen has posted two ideas to fix gender balance that don’t make her cringe

And Nature has a entire feature about the women in science, including an interactive way to explore the NSF data for their biennial report Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering.

A harebrained scheme for science careers training

Last night, I left you with a brief rambling about the point of Ph.D. training in science (tl;dr – to be a scientist; not a PI or a researcher, but simply a scientist) and a flurry of questions on expanding Ph.D. training to become more career-oriented. As promised, here is the continuation: my modest, quite possibly harebrained proposal to make Ph.D. training something more.

Element I – Exposure

As a grad student, I was perilously naive about the state of Ph.D. production and career tracks. As far as I knew, research was the primary way of life for one with a science Ph.D., and the other major option was teaching. I might hear about other career tracks about once a year, during a career development session at a conference. I seriously doubt that I was alone in my limited view of science careers. Early in my postdoc years, when I waded into the online science community, I discovered many scientists whose paths had taken them out of academia and/or research, and I realized that life off the tenure track was the norm, not the exception.

Students should be learning about career paths and job market trends early in training. It should be part of their introduction to grad school. Josh Drew is a faculty member in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University and director of Columbia’s MA in Conservation Biology program. All first year students are required to take a thesis development seminar. Last semester, Dr. Drew covered a wide range of topics: committee selection, research resources, grant writing, and ethics (you can find some of his lecture slides on FigShare). He also thought it important to, per his syllabus for the course, “explore the realities of funding and the post-graduation job market”. He included a lecture on the job market and used social media to invite outside perspectives on science careers.

An intro seminar could easily be done in a single lecture of 60 to 90 minutes a week for one semester. From day one, be honest about the job market. Show the relevant statistics for your field. Use the data available! Professional societies (like American Chemical Society) and funding agencies (see NIH and NSF) have Ph.D. completion and employment data. If your own department has complete data for graduates, put it out there. The point is not to scare new students but to say, “Here is the lay of the land.” Now you get to tell them about the exciting opportunities outside the tenure track or industry research. Bring in 2 or 3 locals and alumni to talk about their careers for a few meetings. In a month, you can cover a lot of possibilities.

Element II – Planning

In terms of career advising in academia, it seems the default assumption is that trainees plan to pursue research careers, and that assumption is often not challenged until late in the game – like around the time you start discussing dissertation writing and defense dates. Although not often fully utilized, completing an individual development plan early during the Ph.D. (say in the second or third year) and revisiting it annually is one way to initiate the discussion of career plans with mentors.

For an IDP to be effective, though, departments and mentors must create an environment where trainees can be honest about their career goals. Too often students and postdocs feel that any path outside tenure track is mocked and disdained, and the truth is, many reactions and behaviors, both subtle and direct, that reinforce this impression. Mentors should be ready and willing to discuss the pros and cons of career tracks but need to remove themselves from the equation. Statements like “I don’t really think you’d be happy doing…” or “I’m not sure that’s what you really want to do…” can shut down discussion pretty quickly.

We also need to be open to talking about alternatives, by which I mean an alternative to whatever your primary career goal may be. Plan A is necessary but not sufficient. The training process in science is long – 4 to 8 years for a Ph.D. then maybe another 2 to 6+ years as a postdoc… We can easily hit a decade of training between completing our undergrad education and beginning a job search. Oh how things can change in a decade – the economy, the market, the funding climate, and the life we have outside the lab. The job we thought we wanted might not be there. Or it might be beyond our reach. Or it may simply not be the job we want anymore. Things change, that’s all. But when things change, we need another plan. We should start thinking about Plan B and Plan C and Plan Q now. We should be able to talk about those plans with colleagues, advisers, and mentors without having our commitment to Plan A questioned.

Of course, the careers for which we’re planning can very quickly expand beyond the experience of our mentors. Most people engaged in training scientists have held one or maybe two types of career positions, i.e. most academics have been academics most of their careers. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re not going to be the best source of advice for other careers. Guess what, mentors? It’s OK to admit that. It’s simply one reason why we need Element III.

Element III – Network

If you’ve been in science for a few years, you’ve probably been beaten over the head about the importance of networking. Networking can be a difficult thing, though, especially if you’re like me and find it difficult to walk up and talk to complete strangers or worry about whether you’re annoying someone with that email or wonder how you’re supposed to maintain connections when you don’t have a specific reason for contacting them at the moment. Another challenge is that networks can be very insular. As you’re training at an academic institution, it’s likely that most of your connections will be within the academic research community. How we can we enhance the breadth and career diversity of our networks?

In some ways, it’s easier now than it was a decade ago because of the vibrant online science community. Via blogging and Twitter, I’ve connected with new and established faculty members, editors for society publications, policy fellows, and science communicators. I would never have interacted with people in some of these positions if I’d had to rely on face-to-face introductions.

At the same time, it’s valuable to have more direct connections through institutions, departments, and mentors. You’re the coordinator for a graduate program. About 15% of your graduates have tenure track positions, and I’d wager you have a pretty good idea where they’re at. What about the 25% who are doing research outside of academia? What about the 25+% who have careers outside of research? Programs could potentially help trainees with career planning and development by building an alumni network to tap into. Plus there’s the benefit of data and potential speakers in Element I.

Element IV – Opportunity

As trainees, we need to remember that we have the largest stake and investment in our careers, and ultimately, our career is our responsibility. With the aid of mentors and advisers, we should identify courses and activities that will benefit our career goals. Activities could include writing courses, pedagogy workshops, guest lectures for an undergrad course, outreach activities for an elementary school class, mentoring high school students, grantsmanship workshops, writing for a department blog or a journal spotlight, or courses on law and science. For career development, there is no one-size-fits-all. We have to tailor a plan to our interests and plans. We have to figure out what matters for our career and how to strengthen weak points and improve our strengths.

Even though we must take responsibility for our careers, we still need support from our mentors and institutions. When engaged in activities outside of the lab, scientists – and especially those in training – are often confronted with the attitude of “Why are you wasting your time on __________ when you could be doing things that matter?”, and what’s implied by “things that matter” is research or writing papers or grants. Research and papers are imperative for Ph.D.s and postdoc training. They’re necessary to keep labs funded. Honestly most of us wouldn’t stick around if we weren’t engaged by the research. But papers are not the only things that matter for our careers, especially if we’re considering careers outside of research.

There are tons of career development, education, and outreach activities in our institutions, local communities, professional societies, and beyond. The opportunities are there, but sometimes we hesitate to take advantage of them because of implicit and/or explicit pushback from advisers and administrators. In other words, sometimes we feel like we need permission to participate in these activities, regardless of whether it takes an hour a week or 3 hours once a month or whatever the time commitment might be. Programs might help trainees carve out that time by recommending certain number of hours for “career development activities” per year. Maybe one day, the value of such activities will be widely accepted, but until then, I think it might take some extra encouragement.

Closing Notes

Regardless of what career we pursue, whether it be research or science policy or teaching, our successes will reflect back on the places where we trained. The point of the Ph.D. is to train us as scientists, a very broad goal, but I think programs and advisers should be invested in the career training of their students and postdocs. I don’t think that it will take a complete reinvention of training programs, but rather a few tweaks and additions to existing initiatives to change Ph.D. training into career training and to leave trainees feeling a little more prepared for that great, big, exciting world of science careers.

What’s the point (of the Ph.D.)?

A fancy degree. A hefty book. If you’re lucky, a few journal articles under your name. And the title of “Doctor”. These are probably the most tangible deliverables of a Ph.D. in the sciences.

We talk about how Ph.D. programs and postdoctoral positions are “training phases”, preparing us for… science… and stuff. But for what exactly are these programs training us?

Some will say that Ph.D. and postdoc training are designed to prepare you to be a career in science and, more specifically, a career as principal investigator. If that’s the case, and given that 80% of Ph.D. recipients will not be on that career path 10 years after earning their degrees (see pg. 25 of NIH Biomedical Workforce Working Group Report), then programs are missing the mark by failing to train the vast majority of their wards for jobs they actually choose pursue.

But frankly, I don’t think the point of science training is, or really has ever been, to create a bunch of head lab honchos. The point is to train people to do science. That’s it. A Ph.D. program is meant to lay the foundation for a field of study, to teach concepts and theories, to develop critical thinking and analytical skills. When you finish a Ph.D., you should be able to form a hypothesis, design an experiment, analyze the data, and communicate the results to peers. Actually, I think NIGMS has a pretty good vision in its Strategic Plan for Biomedical and Behavioral Research Training, which outlines:

“… after training, well-prepared students:

• are curious, intelligent and creative;
• are critical, rational thinkers, capable of organizing and analyzing data;
• have a deep knowledge in a specific field but are conversant in related fields;
• are able to formulate significant, testable scientific questions and are technically proficient;
• have the capacity to listen effectively as well as to write and speak cogently;
• are tolerant of ambiguity and resilient in the face of setbacks;
• are able to work effectively with people who have different perspectives, priorities or intellectual approaches; and
• know and follow the standards, responsibilities and culture of the scientific community.”

That’s what you should get out of a Ph.D., and those are the training goals funding agencies should be concerned about. These elements are useful and important for any career track. Yet they’re not specific to any one career track.

So we say we need to do more to prepare young scientists for careers, especially for careers outside of academia. But what exactly do we need to do? How do you introduce additional training without detracting from the primary goals of a Ph.D.? How do you provide the variety of training required to cover myriad career paths? Or another way, how do you give someone skills s/he will need without burdening hir with unnecessary or irrelevant training? How do we move from crucial but rather soft training goals to preparing for actual careers? And what roles should each member – programs, PIs, trainees, funding agencies – play?

Tomorrow I’ll post a scheme floating in my brain, but in the meantime, leave your thoughts in the comments.

By the way, if you’re a grad student and think you have a good idea with “potential to improve STEM graduate education and professional development”, check out the National Science Foundation Graduate Education Challenge. You could pick up a cash prize for a 1000 words.

Science, the human endeavor

From astrophysics to microbiology to behavioral science, one common thread runs through all research – the human element.

Science is an intrinsically human endeavor. It takes human curiosity to ask the questions, human logic to design the experiments, human ingenuity to incorporate the results into an evolving model. Despite tropes portraying science as a purely logical enterprise executed by cold automatons, it is wonderfully, woefully, beautifully, messily human.

Yet sometimes it feels as though we’re expected to be both more and less than human. More in that we need to work longer hours at higher efficiency, through health and illness. More research, more papers, more grants – sleep is for the weak! Less in that we should not allow little things like stress and emotions and events outside the lab to influence our pace and focus. Chop, chop, no time for distractions – science waits for no human!

Sometimes the pressure to be more and less than human comes from external sources – those above us in rank or, more often in my experience, those at our own level. But much of the pressure to perform is internal. We see funding woes and dire job prospects and competitors’ papers, or maybe we just see an unanswered question, one that we know we can resolve if only we work hard enough. We dial up the pressure to be “better”. That compulsion drives us and can be a constructive force. We also use it to build unreasonable expectations we set for ourselves.

Sometimes we try to keep our lives outside the lab compartmentalized, to keep it from interfering with our work. But you know how we’re fond of saying that science isn’t 9-to-5? Well, life isn’t 5-to-9. It isn’t so easily contained, packed into a box and placed onto a shelf, to be taken down at a less disruptive time. We must take care of ourselves and the lives we have – lives that bring change and crises and good fortunes that demand our time, focus, and attention.

There are times in life we need to let up on the pressure we place on ourselves. If we’re really lucky (or choose very wisely), then we surround ourselves with people who help us accomplish that. We circulate the stories of the departments and supervisors who set forth maniacal models of how science should be done. We perpetuate illusions of the excessive standards of Real Hardcore Scientists(TM). Do these people and places really exist? Sure. But there are also real scientists doing good work who believe it’s important to have a full life, who do not expect themselves or anyone else to place elements of their lives in suspended animation for the sake of science.

Science demands that we work hard, but our lives demand, on occasion, that we cut ourselves some slack. Science has always been and, unless we are one day converted into cyborgs, shall ever remain a human endeavor, complete with all its humany wumany madness. And in spite of this (or perhaps with its aid), science has marched forward and shall continue to do so with mere humans making the way.

Fitness of body and mind and #50APs

A recurring topic for many of us (and by “us”, I mean scientists & non-scientists alike) is taking the time to take care of ourselves. Sometimes it involves calling it a day in spite of the dozen other things we need to get done. Other times, it’s about daily practices to keep us healthy.

Lately I’ve been dealing with some major stress of the unbloggable kind; such is life. Of course, as fate/luck/coincidence would have it, this comes at a time when I have more than the usual amount of stuff on my plate at work, stuff that requires focus and attention, which can prove difficult when distracted and stressed out. I’ve been through enough stressful occurrences to know that I can easily fall into cycle of letting stress squeeze out those things which make it easier for me to deal with the stress (kind of ironic, isn’t it?).

So, especially since returning from the holiday break, I’m trying to be particularly vigilant in staying out of that cycle. I’m keeping up my food journal and sticking pretty closely to a meal plan. Almost every meal for the week comes from my kitchen, and on the occasion that I do get takeout, I’m mindful of my selections. (That being said, sometimes you need a cheat meal, and last night’s BBQ chicken pizza was heavenly, even if it did come from the freezer section at the grocery store.) I’m limiting my alcohol intake. I’m trying to keep a consistent sleep and work schedule, making an effort to catch the same early train even when I really don’t want to drag my ass out of bed (which can be difficult when it’s 3 friggin’ degrees Fahrenheit outside). I’m also trying to maintain a good level of physical activity.

It’s the last one that can be the hardest to keep up, the one that carries an element of guilt, especially when there’s much to do in the lab, because it actually takes time out of the day. Having a gym across the street helps, and I often try to plan my workout time around long incubations for experiments and take less time for lunch. It also helps that my boss considers maintaining non-science domains of one’s life as an essential part of being a productive scientist. Even so the motivation to work up a sweat can wax and wane. Two weeks ago was great but last week, not so much.

Sometimes, though, a little external motivation can serve as an excellent catalyst. Last weekend, Dr. Isis issued a challenge to earn 50 activity points in one week. One activity point is earned for every 80 calories burned… So that’s an extra 4000 calories in 7 days. I decided to take up Isis’s challenge. I typically walk to and from my apartment to the train, but this week I added a walk from the train to work, when I would usually take the bus. I also bypassed the elevator and took the stairs more this week. These activities to get places I was already going amounted to just over 14 APs for the week. Some days I added an extra 10 or 20 minutes of cardio to pick up an extra AP or two. My workouts – ranging from a couple of miles outside to a couple of hours in the gym (the full breakdown collected here) – accumulated almost 40 APs. I ended the week with 54 APs.

Activity points from the week of January 20th

I also ended up with the first consistent week of running I’ve had in ages – 4 days for 11.5 miles. And I pushed myself hard enough to clear some headspace, even if for a short time, and to a point that made it easier to sleep at night.

Today I’ll be taking a day of rest, after 8 straight days of feeling the burn. But tomorrow I’ll be back in the gym, for the sake of body and mind.

Oh, and thanks for the extra nudge this week, Isis!