The Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students Rocks!
I just returned from the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) that was held in Orlando from November 5-8, 2008. The annual meeting, which is configured like most life sciences conferences with plenary oral sessions and poster presentations, is primarily intended to expose minority students to possible career opportunities in the life and biomedical sciences. I was at the meeting working for FASEB Careers as a career development and resume critiquing consultant.
I have to say that this year's ABRCMS was one of the most exciting and motivational meetings that I have attended in my career as a scientist and educator. Part of the excitement and upbeat feeling at the meeting may have been a direct result of last Tuesday's historic election of Barack Obama (who wasn't excited?). Nevertheless, I met countless numbers of bright, highly motivated and talented minority students who want to pursue careers in science, medicine and sometimes both! I was pleasantly surprised to learn that many of the undergraduate students who attend this meeting are actively engaged in basic research in laboratories at their institutions. Further, unlike many of their non-minority counterparts, most of the students who I chatted with were well informed about their intended careers and had divined well thought out strategies to help them realize their career goals and aspirations.
Kudos to the conference organizers and their sponsors! I look forward to attending next year’s conference in Phoenix, AZ.
Until next time…
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!
Great article and insights!
Why encourage people into a career with no job prospects as you mentioned a multitude of times in several posts!!?? You basically stated that there is no guarantee to a job and you shouldn't expect one. If anything, encourage them into stable and well paying professions and tell them to tell science to take a hike.
If anything when I meet a person who wants to be scientist, I completely discourage them.
As a PhD bioengineering scientist who was lied to throughout my career from high school to college to graduate school to biotech comapanies visiting graduate school to my postdoc etc that my career would be the way of the future and there needs to be more scientists and that scientists hold the key to solving our key problems, I find these sorts of seminars and outcries that they need more scientists and more science education ridiculous.
Also, call me and my family completely ignorant. I/We thought and were told that if you choose a difficult and competitive field that could make serious contributions and performed to extremely high standards at high end institutions and worked long hours that you would have a some sort of job in your field.
Also, please, like many of my graduate school colleagues, I thought about jobs from the beginning of undergraduate and on. I attended a multitude of traditional and alternate career seminars and looked into tons of possibilities. Biotech company frontmen that visit campuses when you start out in grad school are all encouraging about your job choices, but when the rubber hits the road, nothing.
Another post on this site states that we are falling behind in science and math and that it is such a terrible disaster. If being great at science and math (the typical MD does not fall into this mix at all since what they excel at is memorization and following protocol), creates a multitude of smart, hard-working people who are regularly unemployed, then the fact that we aren't good at science and math is actually a very good thing. What sort of economy do you want -- one with a bunch of smart unemployed scientists who have the capacity to fix real problems like energy or diabetes or pollution but can't because they are in the unemployment line or do we want an economy with a bunch of well paid marketing managers, public relations specialists, investment bankers, lawyers, and doctors who do nothing to solve tomorrow's problems but instead either maintain the status quo or help create problems. Talk to me a few years ago and I would have picked the former. Now, my vote is for the latter. Employed people eat and don't live on welfare and can actually afford to send their children to college.
Also guess what!! in china and in india and in europe being a scientist is extremely respectable and their relative income compared with the rest of the economy is much higher than in the US. In many countries even their undergrad is paid for so unlike most top American students they aren't $200k in the hole at 21.
Yes, China and India are getting all of our research jobs. So they actually have a future in their career!
When I worked in Europe, they actually made fun of American scientists in terms of how little they are paid and how poorly they are treated.
Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that math and science education and curriculum is encouraged by parents and teachers in those parts of the world. Capitalism works to some extent everywhere.
Most parents want their children to yes -- have good and steady jobs -- apparently something as an American I am way too greedy and selfish to think I should have.
Only in the US do we Walmartize intelligence and innovation. It is ridiculous to me that you find no correlation between the fact that becoming a scientist leads to a life of perpetual unemployment and poor compensation and outsourcing in this country and the fact that Americans do not value science and math education.
People want their kids to have jobs. You have to put food on the table. Life isn't an intellectual exercise unless you have a trust fund. Therefore, it should be obvious why Americans don't value it.
The depressing fact to me is that it means the average American is far far smarter (despite all these ridiculous degrees from fancy institutions) than I am in determining my god awful job prospects.
We expect people to improve and innovate for free. Why do you even care if we fall behind?? Apparently, in the short term, it doesn't matter to the economy. The economy might actually be better off without all the unemployed scientists. In the long term, we might be screwed but who cares. I have long stopped caring about the future of our nation when I realized that no one really cared about mine to the point they lied to me to just get me to work my tail off for them for years for little to no compensation in a hostile work environment.
Like Keynes said, "in the long run we are all dead," and it isn't as if any executive cares about anything besides their compensation package.
I for one am happy that we are doing poorly in science and math. We deserve to fail. If we don't reward science and math (and yes that actually means a job not just warm fuzzy feelings and propaganda), we don't deserve it. China and India, my hats off to you. You actually nurture and foster and value your scientists. You should become the super powers. If only I was from there, I would have a real future.