ASPB is joining forces with other societies on an NSF incubator grant.
Career development options – Next Generation Careers – Innovation in Environmental Biology Education (NGC) will seed a new network to support workforce development for college graduate career progression into environmental biology, including fields such as ecology, evolution, conservation, and natural resource management. New groups of professionals will be brought together through this Research Coordination Network Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) Incubator that include academic faculty, industry, government, and non-profit organization personnel. NGC program and participant management are directed by lead-PI Teresa Mourad (Ecological Society of America) and co-PI Geri Unger (Society for Conservation Biology).
21st century STEM professionals – By working together, the network will develop materials, programs and career development tracks designed for 21st century STEM professionals in environmental biology and inform the broader community of the nature of education and skills that are necessary for future jobs in this ever-changing field. This project addresses the goals and programs of NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education initiative, particularly the goal of building the professional STEM workforce for tomorrow.
Academia’s limits – The NGC incubator recognizes that academia is able to absorb only a limited number of Biology graduates. Data summarized by the American Society of Cell Biologists
Less than 8% of entering PhD students become tenure-track faculty. The rest must find their way into industry, government, or other applied and non-science jobs (Cyranoski et al 2011; McCook 2011). A recent study indicated that nearly one-fifth of life science students in the later stages of their PhD programs found faculty research careers to be less attractive than when they first started (Sauermann and Roach 2012).
Disciplinary society collaborations – There is a special role disciplinary societies fill to facilitate exchange and set professional expectations and standards. So the NGC project will work with the following environmental biology-based societies and their leadership to create interactive special sessions at societal meetings. These groups are:
- American Society for Plant Biologists
- Botanical Society of America
- Ecological Society of America
- Society for Conservation Biology
- Society for Economic Botany
- Society for the Study of Evolution
The NGC project is underway. The milestones slated for completion by January 2017 include:
- Two Survey instruments and two survey summary reports on the perspectives of chairs of biology departments, career development officers and higher education faculty
- Report on analysis of job ads
- Brief reports from disciplinary society meeting workshops
- Incubator Network Workshop Recommendations
- Next Generation Careers article
ASPB – through its Education Committee and aligned resources – looks forward to helping NGC facilitate interactive discussion sessions at Society annual meetings. Society members interested in nonacademic career options and students will be the initial audience; all-comers will be welcome. These sessions will be designed – with unified discussion guidelines and report formats from NGC – to share the findings of the NGC surveys; gather input on what a full-fledged RCN would look like and determine the ways in which disciplinary societies might contribute.
~This post was created with significant input from grant PI, Teresa Mourad.
