A good point which brings up a larger question. I know colleagues who only value basic ecological research and testing theory. Applied ecology and working in a particular geographic area or on particular organisms is considered provincial. Do we as professional ecologists need to rethink our own hiring priorities as well as graduate education philosophy?
************************** Dr. Kenneth M. Brown Emeritus Professor of Biological Sciences Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 70803 225-578-1740 [email protected] ************************** ________________________________________ From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news <[email protected]> on behalf of Mitchell, Kendra <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 3:08 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Some ideas for advancing grad education in the face of scarcity The idea that an academic position is "winning", that it is the only worthwhile endeavour for scientists to undertake, is one of the biggest problems in ecological education today. This is the reason that many PhD students don't talk to advisers about non-academic careers; suggesting that we don't want to follow in your footsteps moves us into the loser category. Becoming an expert in an ecological field has many important applications beyond training more experts. Only accepting students that say they want to follow the academic track is not the way to advance ecological education, its the continuation of the status quo and a good way to ensure that ecology is seen as a vanity science rather than essential for managing our society and world. -- Kendra Maas, Ph.D. Post Doctoral Research Fellow University of British Columbia ________________________________________ From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [[email protected]] on behalf of Ryan McEwan [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 5:00 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Some ideas for advancing grad education in the face of scarcity As the semester kicks off, I wanted to share some thoughts I had over the summer on graduate eduction: --- August 25, 2014 Some ideas for advancing graduate education in ecology in a time of scarcity The science of Ecology, like most scientific disciplines, is in the midst of a crisis of sorts stemming from at least two underlying factors. First, funding for science at a national level is stable or in decline, while the number of labs that need funding to persist is rising sharply. Second, the number of PhDs being granted is vastly outpacing the job market. According to some analyses the percentage of newly granted PhDs that got a job as a tenure track academic in the 1970s was nearly 50%, while that number today is less than 10% <http://www.ascb.org/ascbpost/index.php/compass-points/item/285-where-will-a-biology-phd-take-you> . In the face of this gloomy picture, action is required and I believe there are some clear steps we can take. In my view, lobbying for more federal money, tweaking how funds are distributed, working toward some supplements to federal funds (e.g., crowdsourceing..like this <https://www.kickstarter.com/> and that <https://experiment.com/>) are good things to fight for. Those are "supply side" issues...I would like to also propose some practices in graduate training that may be helpful: (a) revive and respect the Master's degree. In my experience, some faculty view a Master's degree as a kind of failure. They tell their very best undergrads to avoid doing a Master's and head straight to the PhD. It is a "waste of time" they advise, “the Master's degree is functionless”, "you can't do anything with that degree," etc. In fact, many, talented, intelligent, undergraduates have no business doing a PhD because they are not suited to the particulars of the academic enterprise. We should do our best to only bring people into PhD programs who are clearly dedicated to every facet of the pursuit (see below). A MS is a good option for many (most, all?) students interesting in career in ecology. A MS serves as a vital testing ground, even for students who feel confident they want to do a Doctorate. A MS gives the student a chance to discover if research is really an endeavor they want to dedicate their life to-- statistical analysis, writing, digging through the literature-- in addition to field work, lab work, or setting up and maintaining an experiment. In my experience ~50% of the undergraduates who think they want to do a PhD, who faculty might say "you really should do a PhD," will change their mind during a MS degree. In which case, that student can finish up the MS and head off to a job, instead of leaving a PhD partway through, which is a bad situation for both the student and the mentor. Screening students in this way will help the PhD glut we currently face, resulting in fewer "ABDs" in the world, fewer PhDs who leave the field, and will allow those involved with training PhD students to focus energy on students who are more likley to stay the course and succeed. (b) filter hard for students coming into our PhD programs. I would recommend a MS and at least one peer-reviewed article submitted, as a general qualification for admittance into a PhD program. GREs and course grades are relatively poor indicators of future success in research and they have absolutely no power to predict whether someone will have the passion for the professional grind that is needed to succeed in this new era of science. I would also recommend that Universities generally employ the approach of refusing to admit into a PhD program undergraduates who just graduated from that same program. With some important exceptions, that practice is built on faculty who don't want to bother with searching externally for students, and accommodates undergradutes who really don't know what they want to do with their life. "I dont know what to do with my life" isnt really a good qualification for launching into a PhD track, which is a training pathway that is for those who are ready to commit to research as a life-long endeavor. Overall, applying a fine filter on students entering our PhD programs could be a great help. (c) be terribly clear about the state of things during mentoring. We need to speak frankly, to undergrads working in our labs, to MS students, and especially to PhD students about the state of things in the field. Very few PhDs get academic jobs, because there are not nearly enough jobs to accommodate the glutted market. Some of those who get jobs, won't make Tenure because of the crisis in federal funding. We have to clearly and consistently tell students these things. (d) be open to students becoming professionals that are different than us Increasingly, tenure-track positions are an abnormal outcome for a person with a PhD. Even for good students, landing a faculty position has become the exception, not the rule. We can and should fight this as individuals by pushing our students to be one of the "winners," but we also have to face the reality that the tenure-track is extremely hard to get on, and increasingly hard to stay on! As mentors we have to be open to our students taking different pathways as professionals if the pursuit of a tenure-track job does not work out. Increasingly we should be thinking about skills training and networking opportunities that might position our students to jump out of the Academy into other walks of life. Doing this without compromising productivity of the lab, per se, is crucial, but there may be opportunities for synergy wherein students get training and exposure and the lab picks up new tools or useful connections. Perhaps most important is that we as mentors reject the attitude of disdain that can sometimes hang in the air around non-faculty positions. So those are some ideas.... any comments, corrections or criticisms are welcomed either on-list, direct via email, or leave a reply at the blog post: http://mcewanenvironecolab.wordpress.com/mentoring Best, Ryan -- Ryan W. McEwan, PhD Associate Professor of Ecology Department of Biology The University of Dayton 300 College Park, Dayton, OH 45469-2320 Office phone: 1.937.229.2558 Email: [email protected] Lab: http://academic.udayton.edu/ryanmcewan Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcewanlab
