Survey Your Society to Gather Demographic Data

If you have been to a scientific conference and looked around a bit you see students, postdocs, faculty and other professionals. We care mostly about the scientific abilities of these folks - how well they present their findings, the significance of their work, the ambition of the young, and the impact of the senior members. But we should also care about the demographic make-up of the members of these academic societies. (If I have to explain why diversity is good stop reading here.) Each society should know: What is the ratio of the sexes: 50/50? How may folks are internationals/locals? Are there members with disabilities? What about the make-up of different races and ethnicities? Does your academic society look like the general population? Does it even look like your academic institution?


I would like each member of a society to ask their governing body to send out a simple demographic survey to all its members to gather these data anonymously. The survey below is crude and oversimplified and based on the one from the National Science Foundation, but it is better than nothing. Keeping this anonymous ensures that no members should feel uncomfortable revealing this information. The results of the survey should be presented as simple pie charts of the metadata presented on a groups public website.
 

So why do this survey? For starters you can learn how well your society is doing recruiting and retaining a diverse membership? You won't know without a baseline survey. Doing the survey annually will tell you if you have a problem with retention and recruiting. It can help you improve your groups diversity. Does your society have few female members - have you thought about having more female members as part of the governing body, balancing the gender ratio of invited speakers, and perhaps having some parental care options for young parents attending your conferences? Does your society have few African Americans - have you thought of sending some members to recruit and visit at HBCUs?

I hope that every scientific society starts keeping track of this kind of information. We can compare across groups that way. Those comparisons will help us know if there is a general problem across academic societies, or if it is just an issue in some sub-disciplines.

As the Chair of Diversity Committee in my college I know we try to get a diverse pool of candidates to apply to open positions in my university. Part of the way we do that is by contacting groups with a diverse membership. If your scientific society lacks a diverse membership, you won't be helping with our goal. A simple survey like the one below can help you identify potential issues and help you begin the process of trying to solve them.

Please try to convince your academic societies that this survey of membership demographics is important.

EXAMPLE SURVEY 
send out an email to members and then send out an anonymous survey monkey questionnaire.

Dear XXXX Members,

We want to collect diversity data from our membership.  You will get an invitation to participate in a survey monkey questionaire from zzz@yyy.com

Please complete the survey by xx/xx/xx.

As a society we want to be aware of our ability to recruit a diverse group of scholars from different backgrounds, this survey will help us better understand how well we reflect the general population and compare to other scientific and academic societies and organizations. Please help by taking a few minutes to fill out this survey.

ETHNICITY (choose one)

_____Hispanic or Latino

_____Not Hispanic or Latino

_____Do not wish to Provide

RACE (choose one or more)

_____American Indian or Alaskan Native

_____Asian

_____Black or African Amerian

_____Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders

_____White

_____Other (describe)

_____Do not wish to Provide

DIABILITY (choose one or more)

_____Hearing Impairment

_____Visual Impairment

_____Mobility/Orthopedic Impairment

_____Other (describe)

_____None

_____Do not wish to Provide

GENDER IDENTITY(choose one or more)*

_____Female
_____Male
_____Transgender
_____Other (describe)
_____Do not wish to provide

And then adding

SEXUAL ORIENTATION (choose one or more)*
_____Straight
_____Lesbian
_____Gay
_____Bisexual
_____Queer
_____Other (describe)
_____Do not wish to provide


*UPDATED - thanks to Jeremy Yoder (@JBYoder) and Allison Mattheis for providing these categories from their Queer in STEM survey

So you want a recommendation letter…

‘Tis the season for writing recommendation letters for medical and dental school applicants. Many of these requests are from undergraduates who took my large (nearly 100 student) Evolution course. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to interview all of the students individually, and I usually only get to know a handful of students well enough to write a proper letter. I typically reply to a request for a letter with a request for more information. I ask the students for the following:

(1) What is your overall GPA?

(2) Why do you want to go to Dental/Med School?

(3) Where did you grow up?

(4) What were the topics of your assignments in my class? 

(5) What was your final grade (numerical) in the class?

(6) Why did you choose LSU?

(7) What volunteer opportunities have you taken advantage of as an undergrad?

(8) Do you have research/internship experience?

(9) Please send along a CV/resume if you have one.

(10) Your preferred pronouns ... 

(11) Please provide any additional information you think would help me write your letter…

Once I get the answers to those 10 questions/inquiries I usually have plenty of information to write a more personal and useful recommendation.  Question 1, overall GPA, usually gives me a clue what the chances are that this student will actually get into medical or dental school. Q2, tells me why they want to go to one of these schools – if they don’t have a good answer to why they want to be a doctor - they are unlikely to become one. Questions 3-6 basically tell me (a) are they truthful (because I already know their grades and assignment scores) and (b) their level of ambition and undergrad background. Question 7 and 8 tell me if they are just trying to do well in classes or if they actually tried to accomplish something outside of class. Why would you come to an R1 (Research 1) university and not try to work in one of your professor’s labs? If you haven’t done any research or volunteer work then all you have are your grades, and that isn’t enough. Those students with lots of volunteer hours or research experience have taken advantage of their time as a student and are the most likely to succeed. Q9 and Q10 help me round out the letter and make it as personal as possible.

            Not only do these questions make me write the best letter possible for the students, it also helps me write the letter more easily. Rather than struggling to remember how the student stood out in my class, I can have more direct answers that tell me what kind of person they are and how they compare to my other students (because they all answered the same questions). Also with these answers I can plug in big chunks of text into a letter already formatted for medical and dental school applications. Most professors are modifying the same letter over and over again (we often get dozens of requests a year), at least with these questions I can still make my “standard" letter pretty specific to the individual student.

On Academic Peaks

I like to use the metaphor of peaking when talking about highly productive times at different stages of your academic career. Think of these peaks as the high-water marks (i.e., year your most high profile papers came out any you get a new grant). These peaks are preceded by periods of high data gathering and much writing; and followed by periods of transition, where new methods are being learned, and the finishing touches are put on loose ends of major projects. I think these peaks should come every three to five years and they are important milestones in your academic career. The first major peak should be around the 3^rd year of your PhD program, another sometime during your postdoc, and your highest peak should be during the midpoint of your time as an assistant professor (3^rd year pre-tenure or so). There are other peaks (e.g. just before going up for associate and full professor) but let’s talk about the three majors ones in more detail.

            When you are starting off in grad school (let’s assume a PhD program), you want to be a sponge learning new techniques and gathering data over the first couple of years. As you learn to write during these years it usually takes until at least your 3^rd year until the publications from those early works start coming out. That’s a good thing because that’s usually the time you go up for your qualifying exams (to be a PhD candidate in good standing). The students that have some pubs coming around this time are usually on the fast track. Those pubs will be some thesis chapters, but also collaborative side projects with others. Once you reach this peak, the thesis committee usually is okay with passing you for these qualifying exams making you a PhD candidate. After that peak, students typically focus on the meatier sections of their thesis and getting them ready for publication.

            Another peak should come at some point during a postdoc. You’ve learned some new skills as a graduate student, and those techniques will make you marketable to others. After you get a postdoc, you won’t need to worry about the constraints you had in graduate school like classes, or friendships (just kidding here, but usually postdocs are kind of in limbo in their new short-term work environment, so friends are harder to come by for sure). Without these constraints you should hit the ground running and publish like mad, collaborating with your new lab, finishing up old projects, getting your last thesis chapters published. This peak should push you out onto the job market.

            So you got a job, time to finish your own personal Mount Everest climb of academic peaks. As you get your new desk tidy, turn on your new computer for the first time, and figure out how to order everything from pens to major lab equipment, you should also be setting yourself up for big peak around the midpoint of your time before you go up for tenure (again around the 3^rd year). Your pubs from your postdoc should be coming out (always include your new and old address on these pubs) but also the new cool things you started on at your new position; those things you always wanted to try but didn’t have the independence to attempt. It is all those ideas you put together for your “future plans” slides in your job talk that are coming to fruition. During your first and second year of your job you should have a good bit of start-up to spend and hopefully you have been applying for grants at this time. If you get that grant before your start-up runs out you are in good shape. This time should be the most productive period of your career, you still have postdoc skills, but you also have your own lab, and those people are being productive as well feeding off your ideas and plans.

            These peaks aren’t set in stone at these different time periods but I like to think of them as goals you are trying to reach. Of course you can have a brilliant career peaking at very different times but you don’t want to have your highest peak as a postdoc, or in grad school and Peter out at your new job. And of course these recommendations are just based on personal observations of people’s work and career paths that I’ve generalized here. Sometimes new graduate students get impatient and discouraged about the pace at which publications are coming out, so I always tell them it is important to be patient and that it really isn’t until their 3^rd year that we expect them to really be getting those pubs coming out at a regular clip. Likewise, a postdoc with no pubs for a few years certainly isn’t peaking, and almost certainly isn’t getting a tenure-track job anytime soon. A new faculty member in his/her 4^th year without a grant and with few pubs might have quite a few things come out in Year 5 but by then the voting faculty will already be thinking of that person with whispers of them not having the stuff to get tenure. That person might still get tenure with the last minute drive but that late peek will be remembered and sometimes considered a negative (e.g. they might say, "This person couldn’t get their stuff together in time for their 3^rd year pre-tenure review. Will they be a good scientist with tenure?"). So yes these peaks are generalizations but they are good things to keep in mind as you move up the academic landscape with all its peaks and valleys.

Guest Post for Wiley - The Top Dos and Don’ts for your First Month of Grad School in a Research Lab

I wrote a guest blog post for Wiley:

 The Top Dos and Don’ts for your First Month of Grad School in a Research Lab

http://exchanges.wiley.com/blog/2014/08/22/the-top-dos-and-donts-for-your-first-month-of-grad-school-in-a-research-lab/

A Terrible Cover of Science Magazine & An Example of The Power of Today's Social Media

I checked my mailbox this afternoon, and looked at the cover of my Science magazine and thought: “Whoa, this should have been in a brown paper covering like they had for dirty magazines.” I saw an image on the cover of provocatively clothed women, the title being “Staying a Step Ahead of HIV/AIDS.” Why did this picture need to be on the cover for that story I thought? The image made me think that Science was trying to be incendiary, hip or edgy or something. I put the magazine and my thoughts about it aside; then just before I was about to have a meeting in my office, I decided I needed to put the journal face down and out of view.

I tweeted the joke about the brown paper covering but then decided the cover was still bugging me and tweeted. “When we said we wanted more women in Science this is not what we meant.” and tagged @AAASmember

I thought that would be the end of it, but then Jim Austin (@SciCareerEditor) the Editor of Science Careers (from Science) quoted my tweet and sarcastically replied “Good one.” Shortly after he tweeted, “Am I the only one who finds moral indignation really boring?” I was off Twitter, but Jacquelyn Gill (@JacquelynGill) and others were luckily paying attention. They called him out and the twitterverse went after him and the stupidity of that cover pretty strongly. A few hours later we got a response from Marcia McNutt (@Marcia4Science) Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine, “From us at Science, we apologize to those offended by recent cover. Intent was to highlight solutions to HIV, and it badly missed the mark.”

It was nice of them to apologize especially after Jim Austin’s comments. Read more about the entire exchange from the tweets I highlighted on Storify https://storify.com/LSU_FISH/sexist-and-transphobic-cover-of-science

The cover is still up on-line, and the magazine is still on my desk face down. I was disappointed in Science for publishing a cover that I thought objectified the people in the image, and I was more disappointed by the initial response from Jim Austin. I’m glad the head editor apologized but I was most moved by the quick response from Twitter. In the old days (when they really did put brown paper over dirty magazines) we’d see something like this, maybe shake our fists, maybe even write a letter (like actually write a letter) to the offending party and maybe in 3-6 weeks something would come of it (usually nothing). We might have thought, “well just another example of sexism” and let it slide. Thanks to social media I’m glad at least we all got to vent and share our collective impressions and opinions. I found out I was not alone in being offended, and we all shared a common message that the image was inappropriate. We even got a rapid apology from the editor. And maybe, just maybe, I think the people behind that cover of Science will think twice next time they consider a cover that might be sexist, homophobic, or otherwise just wrong.

The Funding Cycle Wheel of Feels

I'm already on Kermit, two days after hearing about my grant.

I “made it” in academia, and that means you can too!

I’ve seen many posts recently about people quitting academia (check out hashtag, #QuitLit on Twitter if you don’t believe me, or this post, or this one) but I don’t see that many positive alternatives. (There are a few, I still love “The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc”) I want to tell my positive story because I don’t think it is all that unusual or special, and that isn’t because I’m special or different. I don’t want to call it a success story because success is defined by how you reach the goals you set, it doesn’t matter if you change them along the way. I hate when people look down on someone who dropped out of a Ph.D. program, or didn’t land a postdoc, or didn’t get a tenure-track position. Those people didn’t fail, they ran into a roadblock or had a change of heart that took them on a new career path: they found success elsewhere.

I think luck had a lot to do with my version of success, as did having a loving and understanding partner. I also think I had something to do with my version of success. I’m still relatively young (35) and I am one final step from tenure (positive faculty vote, Dean and President all give the thumbs up – waiting on the Board of Regents). Most of the people I went to grad school with at the University of Michigan are happy and I’d consider them successful (some are on the tenure track, others are still postdocs, some are teaching at liberal arts schools, others are doing soft money research, some are working in policy). I think most of these people initially envisioned eventually landing a tenure-track position – probably because you are essentially taught this is the only option. We all know this goal is not realistic for everyone. One of the much discussed graphics that came out recently shows less than 10% of PhD students get a faculty position (link here). There aren’t enough academic jobs for everyone in the graduate pool, a combination of talent, luck and support gets you there. But some of the people in the training pool decide this wasn’t the place for them after all.

Rather than be discouraged by all the negativity out there, I say – enjoy the process. Being in graduate school or a postdoctoral fellowship can be an amazing and fulfilling experience. Don’t waste your time being cynical about future prospects before you’ve given yourself a chance. I remember when my in-laws asked me what my future plans were early on in my graduate career. I said, “I want to be a professor but I’m still trying to find out if I’m good enough or not.” Around my third year of my PhD when my publications started to finally come out I started to feel like a scientist and I loved that feeling. I melted with joy when there was a proof of my new publication in my inbox and I treasured the smell of fresh new reprints in the mail (this was way back in the mid-2000s when we still used paper). I loved knowing the fruits of my labwork and fieldwork were going to get published. I loved every second of being a graduate student and my postdoc was even better: I travelled throughout Asia collecting fishes and would come back in between trips to write a paper. It was such awesomeness. If you don’t feel that joy, academia might not be for you. If you do love your “job” then stick with it and don’t worry so much about the next step. It’ll work out, trust me, I’m a scientist.

Of course there is more to it. I’m in a niche discipline, ichthyology. I’m also an evolutionary biologist and systematists but all my papers are on fish. I wanted to be a curator of fishes like my undergrad, Ph.D and postdoc advisors. I did everything I could to get a curator position in ichthyology. There aren’t many of these (very few actually) but I tried not to think of the few job prospects and just rolled with whatever happened. Except I did think ahead enough to put myself in contention when a job did become available. I went to meetings, especially the big ichthyology meetings every year so that I could get to be part of the community that would eventually hire me. I volunteered for everything, and I built a good network. I also made lots of mistakes and tried to learn from them. As I went through the process I steadily learned to write papers and do science and I got enough pubs that I landed a great postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History. Luckily for me a few curator positions in ichthyology opened up around that time. I interviewed at three places and had some heartache, but I got a great gig here at LSU. I’ve had many more failed attempts at grants than positive ones but I’ve had just enough to be doing okay. I’ve trained grad students and postdocs and they’ve helped me build a career, as have my many mentors and collaborators.

 

The point is I think that there isn’t enough voices saying “I made it, so can you - I know the road can be tough - but you can still make it if you still want it and if you are enjoying the process.” The toughest times in academia are when you don’t know your next gig: when you are a finishing Ph.D. student looking for a postdoc, or a postdoc running out of time waiting for a job. Maybe if I didn’t get the LSU job I wouldn’t have gotten another offer. I don’t know what would have happened then, I’ll try not to think about it. So yes circumstances have to be in your favor. If you stay positive, chances are the right opportunity will come your way.

 

I certainly feel like I’m living the dream. I’ve got great colleagues, a lab of students that are more productive and smarter than me, and a job that I real love. I get to write papers on stuff that interest me and write grants that help me fund that research. I’ve got enough flexibility to have plenty of time to hang with my twin daughters (my actual favorite thing to do). Yes, some days are tougher than others but I can’t imagine being in another profession. If your dream is still to be an academic, don’t give up on that dream if you are enjoying the process. Work hard and stay positive and there will plenty of room for you in academia.