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March 30, 2022 12:46 am
You're in the second year of graduate school working in a laboratory and finishing your last year of coursework. Your grades are fine and you're committed to your doctoral program, but you have some misgivings about working "at the bench" for most of your life. You've heard that there are alternative careers for PHD graduates, but are unsure what they are and how to gain some practical experience in these areas. What do you do?
A few years ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to the late Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford University Commencement Address, a video that has been viewed on YouTube almost 40 million times since it was uploaded on the site. He spoke to the college graduates about his family's humble beginnings, about going to college, and about dropping out after losing interest in his studies. However, following his innate curiosity and intuition, he began to take classes that interested him, including a calligraphy course. Knowledge he acquired from that course later changed his life as Apple CEO ten years later when designing the Macintosh computer, the first computer with an elegant typography.
Here are some ways you could identify your interests while developing skills in graduate school:
Dual degrees — Aside from the highly competitive MD-PhD programs that are beyond the scope of this piece, graduate students who choose alternative scientific career paths may benefit from a second graduate degree. There are a near endless number of degree combinations that can assist a graduate student carve out a future niche in the market. One classmate of mine became the first dual PhD-MBA student of our department. A PhD student in another department also enrolled in an MS degree in bioethics. A second degree can be a tremendous time commitment that may distract from a student's required laboratory work, so this option should only be undertaken after thoughtful consideration.
Groups and clubs — Participation in groups and clubs are underrated and underutilized strategies in developing working skills outside the lab. I participated in a graduate biotechnology group, where science and non-science graduate students (primarily MBA students) voluntarily partnered with one another on projects for deliverables, like business plans and market reports, for real clients. This was a fantastic way to prepare for a career in consulting for those interested in that path. Scientific associations are not only helpful for networking and presenting research, but also to join clubs and events targeted to student scientists that can help advance a budding investigator's career. Volunteering part-time at a trade association or a local nonprofit may also provide invaluable experience for the young scientist.
Building transferrable skills in your department — For those of you who are reluctant to expand into these areas, plenty of opportunities exist within your own department and regular laboratory-based and ancillary duties to learn transferrable skills important in alternate scientific careers. Standard coursework often includes computer programming or modeling projects, which can help you develop useful skills for careers in bioinformatics or information technology in a variety of fields. Tutorial courses provide students with an opportunity to investigate a subject they may not come into contact with during the normal course of their work. Writing research and review articles, a normal part of graduate studies, can be a gateway into the field of medical communications (medical writing and editing). Ask to work with your mentor on any book chapters that he/she has been invited to write according to your area of expertise. One graduate student I know even designed and patented her own liquid transfer device.
In summary, you should take full advantage of the invaluable resources available in colleges and their surrounding communities to advance your skill development in alternate scientific careers.
April 6, 2022 10:48 am
Hello David Keleti and forum.
Just doing a checkin and saw this post, figure I can add a couple insights and give some comments based on experiences. First let me comment on the above recommendations on practicality.
1. Dual degree: forget that piece of advice. Yes it is noted the time committment and distraction, not to mention endorsement of the PI but its a high time/energy spend for questionable value. If one looks to non-traditional pathing, then one is simply has no real-world experience in not 1 but 2 areas of study and time-investment.
Solution: focus on targeted course work that is aligned to interest, and ideally in a time of the day that does not conflict with lab work. While in grad school I took an evening course on technology commercialization with a focus on biotech start-ups. Got some good insights, networks and key learnings that made me more able to have more informed informational interviews.
2. Groups and clubs - well and nice with exception of when they are within the small confines of one department or even grads school program. Outside expertise is limited - so its a bunch of Amateurs leading Amateurs. Be weary alot of learning on topics outside the conduct of independent academic research while in an envirnoment of academic researchers - as an-example a fellow post-doc does not know what bioinformatics is, probably never sat in front of a data-set and can't tell you two hoots of what that means in the external world.
Solution: find outside experts to guide a club or group with real world activities; ideally a better solution is for your program to identify a presceptorship external to the lab (of you find it yourself) where for a limited time (both in time of day and duruation) where you can get some learnings, then share those experiences back into the academic groups you may be part of, or ..simply your colleagues.
When in grad school i found my own preceptor ship in medical writing. I used the power of my hospital setting to find a physician (a clinical expert published in drug company clinical trials) to go on a grand rounds to understand how she was using a certain drug. I fed a report back to a medical communication agency. Most important, Long story short, I shared my findings and journey with colleagues and low and behold, I opened the door for a career pathway for those in my program to consider where at least 3 of my peers followed me to joining a med comms firm after the Ph.D. ... (these were the days before med comms was considered a career path for PhDs).
Other solution, join a real professional society! you have the benefit in todays world that all if not most activites are now on-line and a professional society not only offers networking but tremendous amount of educational resources and tools..at your finger tips. You want to learn about medical writing? Join the ISMPP! you want medical technology (lab tech work), join ASCP! and so and so on.
3. Building transferable skills in your department:
Unless you have a person who as actually transferred to a role outside the lab, this has high risk of failure, unless it is lead by someone who has. It is not possible to learn about tranferrable skill from those who have never done it, so back to amateurs leading amateurs. They will not know for example soft-skills, the technical aspects of project management or rare cases how to deliver an effective non-academic presentation. The latter can be found but rare cases.
Solution: bring external expertise in to learn the text-book theory behind the skill one is looking to tranfer. Consider how you can position them and communcate them. I didnt do this for my department or colleagues but something I did for myself when I was looking to leave academia, was...I called a friend who was a banker. Actually one of the top banks in the world. He was the one who trained me on how to better communicate myskills and he was the one who helped me write a CV that got the call backs. So get external help.
Also - not mentioned here, do Community Service!!!! I can't emphasis that enough. And NOT in your academic center. Go outside. This is what I did at night time in gradschool, and through that community service, I was rewarded on many many fronts, to include....paid formal training and development (not out of my pocket). I received courses on people managment, leadership etc. etc. all free..well as part of my volunteer service.
So take home message, if you can do it again...get external help and expertise, don't look to your department or those in it, avoid being lead by amateurs. This is not to say don't use your academic center as a resource, do so indeed just dont'only focus on your program or department, go to other offices/schools/centers - for example you want to learn about grants administration? why on earth would you go to your department? you go to your office of research and grants administration and talk to those experts. You want to learn about technology and commercialization, again the big zero from your peers and department, go to your office of techonology and business development. And finally, get out side have a life out side the lab - get in the real world as much as possible (as I did). Do all of the above..outside the lab/department. Then share your learning internally if you...you may benefit others, like I have.
Best,
DX
