Helping UC Berkeley Faculty to Prepare Graduate Students and Postdocs for Non-academic Careers
Claire Oldfield - UC-Berkeley [Originally published in the UC Postdoc Newsletter, Oct 2015] When Dr. Doug Kalish, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, obtained his PhD in biology 35 years ago he was the only student of his cohort to leave academia. In contrast, when I obtain my PhD in neuroscience next year, the job landscape for new graduates will look very different. According to a recent article published in Nature Biotech, while 36,000 PhDs in science and engineering were awarded in the U.S. in 2011, only 3,000 new faculty positions were created: that is a 12-1 ratio! As a result, PhDs’ career aspirations have been shifting towards non-academic careers in business, industry and government.
As a PhD and retired executive, Kalish has been offering online resources and workshops at universities throughout the US for students at all levels – from freshmen to postdocs - who are making the transition to non-academic jobs.
Faculty have mixed feelings about their graduate students and postdocs transitioning away from the tenure track. Reactions range from support and encouragement to open hostility. At the recent Beyond Academia conference at UCB, Associate Dean Rosemary Joyce asked attendees “to raise their hands if they had told their PIs they were attending.” Only half the participants did. Many graduate students and postdocs are still leery of confessing their career intentions to their PIs for fear of retribution and alienation.
There are, of course, faculty who want to support their graduate students and postdocs in the pursuit of any career path. However, as Kalish notes, “even with the best intentions many faculty are ill-equipped for guiding their nonacademic PhDs because they have not been through the experience themselves.” Sandra Wulff, Graduate Studies Coordinator at the UC Office of the President, said that “we see guidance for multiple career paths as an important issue.” It was while discussing issues regarding non-academic career development with Wulff that Kalish had an idea: why not provide motivated faculty with the resources and skills to counsel graduate students and postdocs about non-academic careers?
In December 2014, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at Berkeley sponsored a pilot workshop for around fifteen faculty from the life sciences. Dr. Marla Feller, a professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department, who attended the workshop, said: “Alternative careers is a big topic of conversation among the faculty here. The main difficulty is knowing how to guide our students. Resources like this workshop are eye-opening and helpful.” Kalish held the workshop, which provided information and tools on how to help their graduate students and postdocs navigate the non-academic job search. Topics included what skills are required for a successful job hunt, the difference between a resume and a CV, how to make industry internships work for the PhD and the PI, and how to emotionally support graduate students and postdocs who choose to pursue non-academic careers .
Kalish observed that “the faculty were enthusiastic and engaged, and eager to share experiences.” For example, one issue was the challenge of matching the time frame of job-hunting with the academic research process and calendar. Most employers in industry expect new employees to start within 2-4 weeks after a job offer. PIs related stories of postdocs accepting an offer and leaving unfinished research or papers in the lab. Feller pointed out that an open dialogue between PIs and postdocs on the timing of the job search could reduce “surprise” departures and provide for a transition that would work for both the PIs and the graduate students and postdocs.
These workshops are starting to take off. Kalish has already presented at UC Santa Barbara and has others scheduled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Brown University and the Mathematical Association of America. With a growing number of non-academic graduate career counselors, student-led initiatives, and faculty education, we are looking at a revolution in the way in which graduate students and postdocs are being prepared by their universities for non-academic careers.
[Claire Oldfield is a 5th Year graduate student in Neurobiology at UC-Berkeley and a co-founder of the student-led initiative Beyond Academia.]
