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Yesterday, after giving a talk on social media to a great NYC-based PR firm called Ricochet,I decided to take an uptown trip to visit Professor Vincent Racaniello at Columbia University Medical School to talk about the new applications that we plan to introduce to BioCrowd.

When I arrived at Professor Racaniello’s office, which has an outstanding view of the Hudson River and George Washington Bridge, he was in the middle of taping this week’s This Week in Virology (TWiV) podcast with co-hosts Dick Despommier and Alan Dove. Much to my surprise, Vincent invited me to join the conversation although I am a bacteriologist not a virologist. The podcast was devoted mainly to answering questions that listeners had submitted to the show. One listener alerted us to a post at Newsweek Online entitled “Fight Flu and Falsehoods” while we didn’t agree with the author’s assertion that “that hand washing doesn’t affect the transmissibility of influenza”—it does reduce infections rates of other viruses, bacteria and parasites, so it is a good idea to continue to wash your hands—accompanying the article was an outstanding online quiz that assesses how much you really know about influenza and other viruses. 

I think it would be fun for BioJobBlog readers to take the quiz, report scores and then tabulate the results.

To take the quiz, click here and to report your score click here!  I will tabulate the results and share them in a later post if enough BioJobBlog readers and their friends take!

Until next time

Good Luck and More Luck On the Quiz!!!

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Unlike others, life scientists have been slow to use social media to look for jobs or network to enhance career opportunities.  Many scientists  have  Facebook accounts but view it and other social media tools like Twitter simply as a means to stay in touch with family and friends.  However, social media can be a very powerful tool for scientists who are looking for jobs or the next big career move.

To that end, I presented a seminar at Experimental Biology this past weekend in New Orleans entitled "Social Media and Career Development for Life Sciences" that offer suggestions on how to use social media to land a job or jumpstart a career in the life sciences industry.  For those of you who may be interested, I posted the presentation below:

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A panel of eight judges at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania was asked to identify the top 20 life-altering technologies that were developed over the last 30 years. The survey was sponsored by Knowledge@ Wharton, U Penn’s business publication and the PBS’s “Nightly Business Report.” 

Not surprisingly, the Internet was voted the top innovation followed by computers, mobile phones and e-mail. Interestingly, DNA sequencing and testing was listed as number 5—one of five technologies from the life sciences and medical sectors—the others being MRI, laparoscopy, genetically-modified plants, biofuels and anti-retroviral (HIV) drugs. Finally, Internet social networking, a recent innovation, made a surprise appearance on the list at number 20!. The entire list is as follows:

1. Internet, broadband, WWW (browser and html)
2. PC/laptop computers
3. Mobile phones
4. E-mail
5. DNA testing and sequencing/Human genome mapping
6. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
7. Microprocessors
8. Fiber optics
9. Office software (spreadsheets, word processors)
10. Non-invasive laser/robotic surgery (laparoscopy)
11. Open source software and services (e.g., Linux, Wikipedia)
12. Light emitting diodes
13. Liquid crystal display (LCD)
14. GPS systems
15. Online shopping/ecommerce/auctions (e.g., eBay)
16. Media file compression (jpeg, mpeg, mp3)
17. Microfinance
18. Photovoltaic Solar Energy
19. Large scale wind turbines
20. Social networking via the Internet
21. Graphic user interface (GUI)
22. Digital photography/videography
23. RFID and applications (e.g., EZ Pass)
24. Genetically modified plants
25. Bio fuels
26. Bar codes and scanners
27. ATMs
28. Stents
29. SRAM flash memory
30. Anti retroviral treatment for AIDS

If your favorite technology wasn’t listed in the Top 30, please let me know and we can add it to the list!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (try social networks)!!!!!!!

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I had many discussions with undergraduate students at the ABRCMS in Orlando last week who were interested in pursuing PhD degrees in the biomedical sciences. I felt that I had an ethical and moral responsibility as a former academic and career development professional to tell them that the job market for PhDs is not good and that it is likely to get worse over the next few years. These discussions prompted me to revisit the role and contributions of tenure to the lack of academic jobs in the US today.

As I stated in a previous post, systemic changes must be made to the current academic paradigm to increase the likelihood that PhDs will be able to find jobs at the end of their training. In that post, I suggested that abolishing tenure and replacing it with renewable, performance-based five year contracts may help to reduce the glut of jobless PhDs by freeing up a small percentage of new faculty positions every five years. While this approach has been tried at several academic institutions, it has been largely been deemed unsuccessful. That said, I came across a provocative article in today’s New York Times about a bold new tenure proposal put forth by Michelle Rhee, the new, 38-year old Chancellor of the Washington, DC school system.

Ms Rhee’s revolutionary proposal offers tenured teachers salaries raises of up to $40,000 per year to give up tenure. It is important to note she has not proposed to completely abolish tenure. Under her proposal, teachers would choose between two compensation options—the green or red plans. Salaries for teachers in the green plan would rise meteorically, nearly doubling by 2010, but they would have to give up tenure for one year, after which they would need a principal’s recommendation to keep their job or face dismissal. Teachers who choose the red plan would also get big pay raises but would lose seniority rights that allow them to bump more junior teachers if their school closes or is overhauled. Red plan teachers who are not hired by other schools would either have to take early retirement, a buyout or face eventual dismissal. I like her plan because poorly- or under performing teachers can opt to take the cash and then either drastically improve to keep their higher paying jobs or do nothing, get paid well for a year or two and then get fired.

While Ms. Rhee’s proposal may work at the primary and secondary school levels, it likely would not be effective at the college and postgraduate levels, where salaries vary widely and are largely grant driven. Instead, I propose that tenure-for-life should remain intact at these institutions but be replaced with a “for cause” tenure review system. This system is tried and true and similar models have been successfully used for over 100 years by employers and labor unions. In this model, management and its unions agree upon the job responsibilities and performance metrics for individual that must be met each year, e.g. an annual performance review.  If a person is under performing or fails to meet his/her performance metrics, an employer can attempt to dismiss the employee “for cause” reasons.  However, before a dismissal for cause can occur, the employer must convince a judge or arbitrator in a hearing that the employee in question has violated the “dismissal for cause” provisions.  Because an employer must prove that an employee has violated the provisions that constitute for cause dismissal, the “for cause” claims against individual employees must be fastidiously documented and vigorously substantiated. This prevents employers from arbitrarily firing employees who are either outspoken troublesome or disruptive. According to my wife, who has been a union-side labor lawyer and union representative for 20 year, this system works well because the players (management and unions) all understand, abide by and play according to the rules of the game.

So what are some of the performance-based “for cause” metrics that I think ought to be considered for yearly evaluations of tenured professors? They are not much different than those currently used to adjudicate tenure decisions. That said, I propose the following five categories: 1) teaching, 2) publication record, 3) grant support, 4) institutional service and 5) commitment to innovation. In my opinion, adoption of the “for cause” tenure review model would help to do two things: improve the overall performance of tenured faculty members and provide newly minted PhDs and postdoctoral fellows with regularly occurring new job opportunities.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

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