Postdoc Advocates Step Into the Spotlight at National Postdoctoral Association 2015 Meeting

Name: Kyle Dolan, PhD, University of Chicago

Date: March 13-15, 2015

Location: Baltimore MD, USA

Website: http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/

Guest edited by: Cheryl Knowland, PhD

It's the final day of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore, USA. A crowd listens to the last few presentations on the agenda. They are postdocs, faculty, administrators and many others concerned with the state of postdoctoral training. At the front of the room, Belinda Huang, Executive Director of NPA, and Kevin Finneran, Director of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) at the National Academy of Sciences, are summarizing data on postdoc employment and career outlook from the latest reports commissioned by the NPA and the National Academies. Many already know the story the numbers tell: how the number of postdocs keeps climbing while fewer and fewer are moving into the faculty jobs that they are theoretically training for, how nobody can really say how many postdocs there are, or what happens to them when they finish their training.

The presentations end and the audience breaks into small groups to discuss what they've just heard. There isn't a sense of apathy, bitterness, or even the general kind of fatigue that tends to settle over the end of scientific conferences. Instead, the people at each table lean forward, talking rapidly, exchanging ideas in a continuous ebb and flow. Each group prepares a card full of notes to share with the room, but when the moderators ask people to share, so many hands go up that there's not enough time to let everyone speak.

As a first-time attendee of the NPA Meeting, this scene perfectly captured the energy that I felt during my three days in Baltimore, which not even the early spring rains that fell over the weekend could dampen. It also embodied the spirit of collegiality brought forth by the participants. While I could see that many of them had known each other for a long time, they made all of us newcomers (easily identifiable by the happy-face stickers on our name badges) feel welcomed and valued for being there.

The scene described above also highlighted a recurring theme of advocacy running through the meeting. Variations on this theme played out in session after session, but it sounded especially vivid when postdocs joined in the harmony. Postdocs from Harvard Medical School and Tufts who organized last fall's Future Of Research Symposium invited workshop participants to brainstorm ideas for improving the postdoctoral experience on Post-It notes. Thoughts and hopes took form as swirling clouds of pink and yellow paper squares on the walls of the room. A group of postdocs from Stanford recounted their experience in winning transportation benefits for their postdoctoral community, to let others know that change is possible.

I, too, had come to Baltimore to talk about advocacy. As the representative for the Public Affairs Committee of the University of Chicago BSD Postdoctoral Association, I delivered a poster talk about our group's activities aimed at improving advocacy and science policy awareness in postdocs. I was also helping to promote the upcoming Future Of Research Chicago symposium, which is taking place later this year. It was wonderful to meet several of the Boston FOR organizers in person, as well as postdoc organizers of similar events in New York and San Francisco. Moreover, many people from the Chicago area and around the Midwest seemed fired up to hear about our event; we even recruited several new people to our organizing team!

Certainly, the NPA Meeting is not the only conference where advocacy is a topic of discussion, but it may be one of a few, if not the only one, where postdoc-advocates can take center stage to talk about their efforts. In doing so, the NPA Meeting promotes not just the goals of these advocacy efforts, but also the accumulation of communication and leadership skills in these young men and women. Being in such an energetic and welcoming environment gives further impetus to the younger generation of scientists to get involved, get connected and make their voices heard.

Image from Gary McDowell