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What do I want to be with my PhD? The roles of personal values and structural dynamics in shaping the career interests of recent biomedical science PhD graduates.

ABSTRACT: Interest in faculty careers decreases as graduate training progresses; however, the process underlying career-interest formation remains poorly defined. To better understand this process and whether/how it differs across social identity (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender), we conducted focus groups with 38 biomedical scientists who received PhDs between 2006 and 2011, including 23 women and 18 individuals from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds. Objective performance and quality of advisor relationships were not significantly different between scientists with high versus low interest in faculty careers. Career interests were fluid and formed in environments that generally lacked structured career development. Vicarious learning shaped similar outcome expectations about academic careers for all scientists; however, women and URMs recounted additional, distinct experiences and expectations. Scientists pursuing faculty careers described personal values, which differed by social identity, as their primary driver. For scientists with low interest in faculty careers, a combination of values, shared across social identity, and structural dynamics of the biomedical workforce (e.g., job market, grant funding, postdoc pay, etc.) played determinative roles. These findings illuminate the complexity of career choice and suggest attracting the best, most diverse academic workforce requires institutional leaders and policy makers go beyond developing individual skill, attending to individuals' values and promoting institutional and systemic reforms.

SUBMITTER: Gibbs KD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3846521 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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What do I want to be with my PhD? The roles of personal values and structural dynamics in shaping the career interests of recent biomedical science PhD graduates.

Gibbs Kenneth D KD Griffin Kimberly A KA

CBE life sciences education 20130101 4

Interest in faculty careers decreases as graduate training progresses; however, the process underlying career-interest formation remains poorly defined. To better understand this process and whether/how it differs across social identity (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender), we conducted focus groups with 38 biomedical scientists who received PhDs between 2006 and 2011, including 23 women and 18 individuals from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds. Objective performance and quality of advisor r ...[more]

PMID: 24297297

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Project description:IntroductionMany recent mentoring initiatives have sought to help improve the proportion of underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities (URMs) in academic positions across the biomedical sciences. However, the intractable nature of the problem of underrepresentation suggests that many young scientists may require supplemental career development beyond what many mentors are able to offer. As an adjunct to traditional scientific mentoring, we created a novel academic career "coaching" intervention for PhD students in the biomedical sciences.ObjectiveTo determine whether and how academic career coaches can provide effective career-development-related learning experiences for URM PhD students in the biomedical sciences. We focus specifically on vicarious learning experiences, where individuals learn indirectly through the experiences of others.MethodThe intervention is being tested as part of a longitudinal randomized control trial (RCT). Here, we describe a nested qualitative study, using a framework approach to analyze data from a total of 48 semi-structured interviews from 24 URM PhD students (2 interviews per participant, 1 at baseline, 1 at 12-month follow-up) (16 female, 8 male; 11 Black, 12 Hispanic, 1 Native-American). We explored the role of the coach as a source of vicarious learning, in relation to the students' goal of being future biomedical science faculty.ResultsCoaches were resources through which most students in the study were able to learn vicariously about how to pursue, and succeed within, an academic career. Coaches were particularly useful in instances where students' research mentors are unable to provide such vicarious learning opportunities, for example because the mentor is too busy to have career-related discussions with a student, or because they have, or value, a different type of academic career to the type the student hopes to achieve.ImplicationsCoaching can be an important way to address the lack of structured career development that students receive in their home training environment.

Project description:BackgroundCardiology is one of the most popular of the hospital medical specialties in the UK. It is also a highly competitive specialty in respect of the availability of higher specialty training posts. Our aims are to describe doctors' early intentions about seeking careers in cardiology, to report on when decisions about seeking a career in cardiology are made, to compare differences between men and women doctors in the choice of cardiology, and to compare early career choices with later specialty destinations.MethodsQuestionnaire surveys were sent to all UK medical graduates in selected qualification years from 1974-2009, at 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 years after graduation.ResultsOne year after graduation, the percentage of doctors specifying cardiology as their first choice of long-term career rose from the mid-1990s from 2.4% (1993 cohort) to 4.2% (2005 cohort) but then fell back to 2.7% (2009 cohort). Men were more likely to give cardiology as their first choice than women (eg 4.1% of men and 1.9% of women in the 2009 cohort). The percentage of doctors who gave cardiology as their first choice of career declined between years one and five after qualification: the fall was more marked for women. 34% of respondents who specified cardiology as their sole first choice of career one year post-graduation were later working in cardiology. 24% of doctors practising as cardiologists several years after qualification had given cardiology as their sole first choice in year one. The doctors' 'domestic circumstances' were a relatively unimportant influence on specialty choice for aspiring cardiologists, while 'enthusiasm/commitment', 'financial prospects', 'experiences of the job so far' and 'a particular teacher/department' were important.ConclusionsCardiology grew as a first preference one year after graduation to 2005 but is now falling. It consistently attracts a higher percentage of men than women doctors. The correspondence between early choice and later destination was not particularly strong for cardiology, and was less strong than that for several other specialties.

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What do I want to be with my PhD? The roles of personal values and structural dynamics in shaping the career interests of recent biomedical science PhD graduates.

Publications

What do I want to be with my PhD? The roles of personal values and structural dynamics in shaping the career interests of recent biomedical science PhD graduates.

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