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.

A Proposal for a New #Altmetric, the Influence Score, to Accompany the H-Index and to Help Evaluate a Scientist’s Impact on Society

The H-index is among the most widely used metrics for evaluating the quality and quantity of a scientist’s publications; but what about their influence on society? Here I introduce the Influence Score that can help an outside reviewer better understand a person’s impact not just among other scientists but among the general public and those outside of academia. If the ultimate goal is to evaluate a person’s true overall role as a scientist, I think we should be considering how they communicate with all people not just other scientists (which is the case with the H-index). The new index can be used to accompany the H-index, but also incorporates it. All elements of the Influence Score can be looked up through simple Google and Twitter/Facebook searches.

            The H-index can be easily calculated in Google Scholar, I prefer it to the Web of Science or Scopus because Google Scholar counts books and other

Fig.1. Google Scholar Profile Page Showing H-Index in Red Box.

non-traditional peer-reviewed publications: and it is free! To calculate the H-index you essentially count down the number of publications and their citations until the numbers no longer overlap. A person with an H-index of 5, has at least 5 papers with 5 citations. Read more HERE to learn how to calculate the H-index.) Because a scientist’s main role is still to communicate their science among peers (via peer review), the Influence Score multiples their H-index by 100, and down weights the other elements, which are a little easier to accumulate (e.g., # of twitter followers).  I chose the H-index over say, total number of citations (which might be more similar to # of followers), because it is easier to calculate for a given researcher, especially one without a Google Scholar profile (Fig.1). 

            The other measures of the Influence score includes a measure of their visibility with the press (i.e, the Press Index or P-Index for short). Using Google News, one simple puts the person’s name in the search box and counts the number of articles that are found, which Google also does for you (Fig.2). Because

Fig 2. Red box shows Google News P-index.

Google News is only searching through a relatively recent window of time, few scientists will have much more than a few articles about them. Sometimes it is worth googling the person with “science” following their name, as I did for James Watson (e.g., “James Watson science”), to distinguish him from other news articles about people with the same name. This measure largely is to bump up those scientists truly making a social impact as newsmakers. That is without bumping them up too much, I’m trying to avoid giving too much influence to “celebrity scientists” that don’t do much science of their own. Therefore, I suggest that you divide the total number of search results of the Press Index by 100 so that this score is not completely overweighing the person’s academic accomplishments represented by the (albeit crude) measure of the H-index. Folks like James Cameron that are great promoters of science, but are best known for other things, are intentionally excluded here. If someone could separate press about science related activities from all others, they obviously could still be included. This is also the most dynamic element of the score because it can change so rapidly. Jane Goodall can skyrocket to the top of the list with the publication of a new book.

Fig.3. Twitter and Facebook Fan pages showing # of followers.

            The third part of the Influence Score considers your sway in social media (i.e, the Social Media Index or SM-index for short), specifically Twitter or Facebook. For someone on Twitter you get 1pt for every follower. For someone not on Twitter but that has either a Facebook “Fan” Page or Facebook “followers,” you get 1pt per fan or follower. You don’t get points for regular old Facebook “friends” because that isn’t necessarily measuring your scientific influence. If they have both a Facebook Fan page and a Twitter handle you only get points for whichever is the higher value. To learn more about the role of twitter for outreach read David Shiffman’s @whysharksmatter excellent article HERE).  As with the Press-Index you divide the total number by 100; again this is to allow the more academic H-index to still have some weight. The reason being that someone with 40,000 Twitter followers and an H-index of 0 might not really be more influential than a scientist with an H-index of 40 and only 4000 twitter followers.

            The Influence Score is then the total of your (H-Index X 100) + (Press index/100) + (Social Media-Index/100). I would round this to the nearest integer. All three can be discovered relatively easily through searches (e.g. GoogleScholar, GoogleNews, and a Facebook/Twitter search). Below I’ve compiled a list of some of the most well known scientists and have calculated their Influence Score. I’ve also added folks randomly that I admire that might not be the most famous folks but that I hope will be one day, I think adopting the Influence Score might help them get the recognition they deserve for the impact they have in society. This metric is imperfect: but I hope it is a good start.

I would like to thank Paige Brown @FromTheLabBench and her class #manship4002 for helping me figure out a more user-friendly way to compile this Influence Score. Also would like to thank Joshua Drew (@Drew_Lab) and David Shiffman (@WhySharksMatter) for their comments and advice.

Scientist	H-Index x 100	Press Index /100 (total articles according to GoogleNews)	Social Media Index /100 (Twitter/or Facebook followers)	Influence Score
Stephen Hawking	8400	781	9,591	18,772
Neil deGrasse Tyson	600	14	16,100	16,714
Richard Dawkins	4000	36	8,870	12,906
Bill Nye	100	140	11,500	11,740
Jared Diamond	10800	104	208	11,112
J. Craig Venter	9600	20	186	9,806
E.O. Wilson	8800	64	12	8,876
Steven Chu	8200	17	212	8,429
Buzz Aldrin	0	10	8,150	8,160
Sean B. Carroll	7500	.01	0	7,500
Jane Goodall	4500	21	1,650	6,171
Ed Yong	0	.12	4,660	4,660
Jane Lubchenco	4600	.71	0	4,601
Jack Horner	3600	.16	18	3,618
Carl Zimmer	1700	3.83	1700	3,404
Amanda Vincent	3200	0	3	3,203
Neil Shubin	3100	3.94	9	3,113
David Attenborough	1500	45	1,423	2,968
James Watson	2600	18	0	2,618
Hope Jahren	2200	0.01	24	2,224
Eugenie Clark	2200	0.01	0	2,200
Eugenie Scott	1800	0.06	71	1,871
David Shiffman	200	0.04	1,470	1,670
Sylvia Earle	1400	1	213	1,614

Note: As always I would like feedback on this post and if people have suggestions for changes or additions to the metric. Please e-mail me at prosanta@lsu.edu