Engineering Science - Postdocs

100% effort? 100% confusion

2007-08-30T15:14:00Z

Science this week has a piece entitled "POSTDOCTORAL TRAINING: NSF, NIH Emphasize the Importance of Mentoring" that talks about the mentoring plan requirement for NSF-funded postdocs in the America COMPETES act and a new statement on mentoring from NIH:

...supervisors must also hold up their end of the bargain by being good mentors. That's what two key science agencies have reminded investigators this month in policy directives that emphasize their role in helping postdocs grow into independent researchers.

The NSF requirement looks like a step forward; the NIH provision, on the other hand, left me scratching my head. The difference, as I see it, is this: The NSF provision tells PIs that they are required to do mentoring and that they have to document their mentoring activities. The NIH tells PIs that they are allowed to do mentoring, but not too much. That right there should tell you a lot about the different cultures in and outside of the life sciences.

Some background on the NIH statement: most postdocs are funded on research grants, which means that they are essentially contract workers participating in a larger project. 100% of their funding comes from the project, so they are typically listed on grants as committed to spending 100% of their time on the project.

My understanding is that the percent effort information is included on grants for a couple of reasons: (1) it prevents PIs from taking double salaries, say, one from their university for teaching a few classes and one from the NIH for doing lab research, and (2) it prevents universities from loading additional responsibilities onto PIs that take away from their research time. Universities get audited on such things, so they take 100% effort provisions pretty seriously.

The NIH statement says that it is OK for a PI to provide some kinds of basic mentoring as part of that 100% effort as long as the "mentoring activities are not readily separable from activities related to supervising the participation of students and postdoctorates in the funded research project." So a postdoc can, say, receive feedback from her PI on her performance without having to take vacation time to listen. Thanks, NIH!

But what about "readily separable" activities?

If mentoring interactions are considered a regular part of the individual's academic duties, then effort for mentoring activities is excluded. If mentoring activities are readily separable, for example, a specific event devoted entirely to mentoring, then this effort would be excluded.

If I'm reading correctly, a lot of basic things that postdoc offices do for career development are excluded from 100% effort: e.g. seminars on grant writing / giving better research talks / teaching / lab management / project management - in short, structured training in many of the basic skills that a postdoc might need to become an effective independent researcher is not counted as part of the job.

In short, while the NIH defines a postdoc as someone who is receiving "advanced training to enhance the professional skills and research independence needed to pursue his or her chosen career path," postdocs have to get much of that training on their own time and dime.

So what's a conscientious PI to do?

Commit postdocs to less than 100% effort on grants? Were I to list my postdocs at, say, 98% effort, what would be the administrative implications? Would I have to pay the remaining 2% out of some other pot of money? Or could I just pay people at 98% of whatever arbitrary wage I set for them? The remaining 2% time (1 week/year) could be used for career development. That sounds like something that might run people afoul of HR, since less than 100% effort might be viewed as making someone a part-time worker ineligible for certain benefits.
Define "activities related to supervising the participation of students and postdoctorates in the funded research project" very broadly to include structured training activities outside the lab? That sounds like something that might run one afoul of overzealous auditors.
Give postdocs extra vacation time that they can use for professional development activities?

The vacation idea gives rise to another question: what does 100% effort mean for people who work far longer hours than the standard 40 hour week? If I'm working on a project in which I come into the lab 7 days a week to care for my mice / worms / slugs and I put in 50-60 hour weeks (not uncommon), am I exerting less than 100% effort if I put in a 40 hour week and take a couple of afternoons off to attend professional development classes? I have heard some PIs answer "yes" to that question at conferences - it's an interpretation that can be used to justify preventing postdocs from ever leaving the lab.

I think that without further clarification from NIH, their statement leaves things more or less as is. If you are an enlightened PI, you can get your postdocs the training they need through a few different (but awkward) workarounds. If you are less enlightened, you can use the "clarification" to keep your postdocs chained to the bench.

I think the NIH would do well to make it explicit that there is an expectation that postdocs, because they are by definition trainees, should receive some amount of training. And moreover, that it is perfectly acceptable for postdocs to receive a modest amount of training outside the lab without requiring either PIs or postdocs to go through contortions.

Meanwhile in the Senate...

2007-05-10T16:24:00Z

I've just taken a look at the Senate's hefty bill to reauthorize the NSF, S 761. Like the House equivalent, there are some good and interesting things in the bill.

There is a lot of new money for graduate fellowships:

IGERT - Increased funding to the IGERT program, like in the House bill. This would fund provide funding for more graduate students, but IGERT programs appear to be much better suited to providing people with more of a range of career options than traditional PhD programs. The stipends, which are semi-portable traineeships rather research assistantships, are pretty hefty, too. $30K/year is more than some postdocs are paid - perhaps it will stimulate some upward growth in S&E graduate stipends overall.

The Senate's numbers are a lot lower than the House numbers - $22M/year in 2008 to $55M/year in 2011 (as opposed to ~$75M-$150M/year for the House). Since there was pushback from the administration on the way the House was proposing to fund IGERT (as a fixed percentage of the NSF's budget), I imagine something more like the Senate's version will go through.

Graduate fellowships - The Senate bill also allocates a good chunk of money for new old-style fellowships, ranging from $24M/year in 2008 to $60M/year in 2011. The House bill doesn't provide any new money for fellowships apart from the overall budget doubling.

DOE graduate fellowships - $9M/year-$35M/year in fellowships for "students pursuing a doctoral degree in a mission area of the Department [of Energy" - energy and nukes, presumably.

So altogether the Senate is proposing increased funding for graduate fellowships in the amount of $140M by 2011, which translates to about 2,800 new doctoral students per year.

A little digging in WebCASPAR shows that NSF funds about 20,000 full-time graduate students (about 5% of all full-time graduate students). If we make the assumption that the NSF funds primarily doctoral students and that NSF funding is spread over 5 years, we find that NSF funds on the order of 4,000 doctoral students/year.

So the combination of a budget doubling plus the new fellowships, if allocations are held constant, would increase NSF-funded doctoral students by about 4,000+2,800 = 6,800. This estimate is probably on the high side, since IGERT stipends are pretty high, some NSF funding probably goes to master's students, and the new money for fellowships may result in reallocations of other funds away from graduate fellowships; let's say there will be 5,000 new NSF-funded doctoral students per year. In 2005 there were 29,000 S&E PhDs granted, 13,000 of which were in the physical sciences and engineering. NSF's funding is concentrated in the physical sciences and engineering - NSF's existing 4,000 or so fellowships combined with 5,000 new ones would mean that NSF could end up funding most doctorate recipients in those fields.

Will this increase the number of doctorates granted per year? Maybe - Richard Freeman has some interesting work that suggests so - but perhaps not by 5,000. Once a department has its teaching needs covered, the incentive to enroll graduate students is reduced. New money from NSF frees up existing departmental funds that pay TAs for other purposes. Labs will be staffing up once new NSF grants start flowing, and I'd bet that they'll want to hire postdocs, not graduate students. I predict an increase in the total number of postdocs in many math and physical sciences fields. In fields, like CS and engineering, in which most people go to industry after graduating, postdocs will probably be harder to come by, so they'll end up with more grad students.

There is a modest amount of money to fund Professional Science Master's degree programs.

Professional Science Master's programs were created by grants from the Sloan Foundation back in 1997. I have met several people who have been through PSM programs, and they sound great - they're essentially hybrid-MBA/science degrees. If the country needs more scientists to spur economic growth, this is a great way to get them. The programs graduate people who know enough science to do useful things in theory, but who also know enough about navigating companies to actually accomplish things in practice.

I'm very encouraged to see the possibility of the NSF picking up PSM funding. Once institutions get into the business of bringing real, professional skills into science curricula, it's only a matter of time before the ideas diffuse into more mainstream science programs. There's nothing in the House bill about PSM programs, so I think this is iffy, but since the amount of money is modest ($9M/year in 2008 to $20M in 2011), I'm hoping it will pass.

There is a ton of additional material in both the Senate and the House bills about teacher training. More on that in a future post.

Postdoc Progress

2007-05-04T17:00:00Z

This past weekend I spoke at a workshop at the FASEB meeting on how to manage postdocs in the lab. I go to a lot of these things, but this one seemed particularly promising.

People have complained for years (maybe even decades by now) about the quality of mentoring, or lack thereof, for postdocs and graduate students. Why is progress so slow? In part, it's because academia is an incredibly conservative institution - the incentives under which academics operate don't reward many kinds of process improvements, and there is very little turnover in the workforce, so a lot of times you are stuck with old ideas for decades until people retire. In part, though, the process of making institutional changes is complex.

What was encouraging about the FASEB meeting was that I saw signs that for the case of postdoc mentoring and management, the process is well underway:

Motivation: All too often one hears, "We have the best system of science education in the world -- why jeopardize that?" It's an excuse that is selectively applied, however. To fend it off, one needs a compelling reason. In the case of postdoc management, a lot of reasons have been put forth over the years. At this particular meeting, a reason that I think is particularly convincing was the common theme - that effective management of one's postdocs (and grad students) pays off in increased scientific output (disclosure: I am one of the sources of this idea). My friends in the real world are always amazed that there is anyone who doesn't see this as obvious, but my experience has been that it's a hard sell in some academic quarters. The National Academies and the Sloan Foundation both deserve a lot of credit for getting the ball rolling here.
Methods: Once an organization is convinced it needs to change, the next hurdle is figuring out how exactly to go about it. What is the best way to improve mentoring for postdocs and lab management in general? This next step involves a lot of documentation and training. A process needs to be laid out, tested, and revised / tuned / optimized. Training materials need to be developed, trainers need to be trained, and the training needs to be somehow incorporated into the non-curriculum for postdocs and their supervisors. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund and HHMI have really stepped up in this regard and have produced an outstanding lab management course. Maryrose Franko gave a nice presentation on the course.
Dissemination: All the motivation and methods in the world won't help if people don't know about them. Getting the word out to postdocs is pretty challenging since they are so widely diffused. Here the National Postdoc Association is playing an important role. They helped organize the workshop, and through their own networks are continually in touch with postdocs. Most of the time, these kinds of conferences involve postdocs and a few sympathetic senior people preaching to an audience of postdocs. At the FASEB meeting, it was mostly senior PIs talking to new PIs. A sympathetic audience, to be sure, but one that is a lot more likely to do something with the materials presented. Again, the Sloan Foundation has been instrumental in making this happen.

One particularly interesting sign that ideas about improved postdoc management are diffusing into the right places is in the bill reauthorizing the NSF, HR 1867:

SEC. 8. POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWS.

(a) Mentoring- The Director shall require that all grant applications that include funding to support postdoctoral researchers include a description of the mentoring activities that will be provided for such individuals, and shall ensure that this part of the application is evaluated under the Foundation's broader impacts merit review criterion. Mentoring activities may include career counseling, training in preparing grant applications, guidance on ways to improve teaching skills, and training in research ethics.

(b) Reports- The Director shall require that annual reports and the final report for research grants that include funding to support postdoctoral researchers include a description of the mentoring activities provided to such researchers.

I am guessing this addition, like HR 1453, has arisen from the input of a AAAS congressional fellow. I haven't looked at the Senate version of the reauthorization, so I don't know if there's anything similar there. However, the fact that mentoring requirements have made it this far is certainly encouraging.