I don’t ordinarily post job listings on this blog, but this is a great opportunity for a talented student interested in environmental microbiology. Don’t be thrown off by the location, Fairbanks is a top notch school with a world class graduate program (the state of Alaska has to use all that oil money on something…). To keep this article interesting for everyone who isn’t looking to go to graduate school I’ll take the opportunity to give a quick explanation of how an academic career begins. If you aren’t sure how academia works there are a few things worth knowing. First, the announcement:
A graduate student assistantship is available in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Collins at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (http://www.reric.org). Contact Dr. Collins (student-app@reric.org) to discuss the position in more detail. Please include a brief description of your research interests, experience, and academic preparations. Competitive applicants will have a strong academic background in the natural sciences, prior field or research experience, and a demonstrated interest in microbial ecology and evolution in cold environments. Applications for the graduate program in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/prospective/graduate) will be reviewed beginning March 1, 2013.
** Seasonal Synergy between Bacterial Osmoprotection and Algal Production in Sea Ice **
Funding is available for an M.S. student to develop a thesis project investigating the evolutionary and biogeochemical roles of compatible solutes in sea ice microbial communities. The student will engage with a team of researchers at the University of Washington and the Greenland Climate Research Centre on the broader question of how biophysical processes (e.g. sea ice, primary production) influence the entry and fate of elements, greenhouse gases and contaminants in Arctic marine ecosystems. This is an inter-disciplinary project that includes experts on sea ice, polar oceanography, biogeochemistry, microbial ecology, and genomics. The candidate will have the opportunity to engage with students and faculty across these disciplines. Field work for the project is based primarily in Nuuk, Greenland, with the potential for additional field work conducted on the R/V Sikuliaq (http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/sikuliaq). Prior experience with bioinformatics or computer programming are highly desirable, as is experience with NMR, mass spectrometry, or other methods of molecular identification. The research project is sponsored by National Science Foundation Award #1203262 (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1203262).
Please see the following websites for more information about UAF (http://www.uaf.edu), the Institute of Marine Sciences (http://www.ims.uaf.edu), the UAF Graduate School (http://www.uaf.edu/gradsch), and Dr. Collins’ research (http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/people/profile.php?uid=3198). The University of Alaska Fairbanks is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. UAF is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and educational institution.
Now a little more background information. Eric Collins graduated from the Deming Lab (my current home) at the UW School of Oceanography in 2009. Like most doctoral students who wish to remain in academia (as opposed to taking a position in industry, or a pure teaching position) he took a post-doctoral position, in his case at McMaster University in Ontario. The postdoc is an important intermediate step between the dependent lifestyle of a graduate student and the independent existence of a professor. As a graduate student low pay ($20-30k/year, depending on your program) and long hours are balanced by the simplicity of your mandate: be creative and exhaustive in the pursuit of your research objective. Some of us choose to stretch the boundaries of this mandate – writing proposals, attending workshops, writing this blog – but there is always comfort in knowing that we don’t NEED to do these things.
The mandate of a new assistant professor is very different (the professorial ranking system goes from assistant -> associate -> full. It takes a long time to get to full, for male professors a corresponding progression might be hair -> gray hair -> no hair). Contrary to what many people think, academia is an extremely capitalistic place. I don’t know the details of Eric’s new position, but it is likely that UAF expects him to teach classes with 50 % of his time (probably 30 hours of work/week) and pays him 50 % of his salary for this service. The rest of his time will be spent in academic service (committees, outreach, etc.), administrative work (budgets, reports), training graduate students (such as the one sought in the above announcement), and actually doing research (labwork, writing code, reading papers, writing papers, editing his student’s papers…). Fortunately he’s not doing these things for free, the 50 % of his salary not accounted for by teaching covers it. The hitch? He has to raise that 50 % on his own, by writing good, fundable grants to the various federal agencies (primarily NSF) that fund basic research. Considering that an NSF proposal is a 15 page document that requires significant thought and preparatory research, and that the funding rate for grants is around 10 %, assistant professors spend a lot of time submitting proposals. They don’t sleep much.
I describe this process as capitalistic because success in academia often leads to more success. One funded proposal allows a new professor to hire a graduate student, leading to results and publications, providing the material for new proposals. More funded proposals allow for the hiring of more graduate students, lab technicians, a systems administrator, even a manager. The resulting snowball is limited only by the stamina and creativity of the academic in question. The system of review and tenure provides additional pressure. Lose out in too many proposal cycles or lose a graduate student (they get lost easy) and you might be out of a job before you really had a chance to get going with it.
The postdoc is a critical position because it exposes a young researcher to the stress of proposal writing without the added responsibilities of teaching, administrative work, and coming up with one’s own salary (usually a postdoc’s salary, about twice what they made as a graduate student, comes from a fellowship provided by the NSF or another agency, or someone else’s successful proposal). Few postdocs are successful at getting a full proposal funded, it is likely that Eric’s success in this contributed heavily to his success on the job market. Since universities take 50 % or more of each federal grant as overhead, a postdoc with a funded proposal is money in the bank for an institution. 50 % of an NSF proposal is MUCH more than the 50 % salary paid to a new professor.
The reason that I’ve taken the space to write all this out is that I didn’t know any of it five years ago when I started graduate school, and I’ve yet to meet a graduate student who did. I’m still not sure that I’ve got it all right. Knowing a little bit about how the system works before entering it is important though, everyone loses when initially promising students are turned off by the work-life balance and financial realities of academia and leave.
DISCLAIMER – As I indicated early on I don’t know any of the details of Eric’s appointment, but what I’ve described is something of a standard model. Best of luck Eric!
